Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about a significant development in a significant US Senate race.
Faithful readers probably already know how pessimistic I feel about next year’s Senate election in Texas. Incumbent Republican John Cornyn has trailed ultra-MAGA state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary ever since polls began testing a matchup between the two, and while it is by no means certain that Cornyn will lose, that’s the way you’d bet it with half a year to go.
The problem is that Ken Paxton is a moral sewer, one whose endless personal sleaze and multiple prosecutions makes him singularly risky as a statewide candidate in Texas in 2026 — a year that, absent some wild external act of force majeure (on the scale of a Martian invasion), is going to see a backlash election against Trump. …
… The stars have been aligning for a potential disaster: a Democratic senator from Texas. Trump is nowhere nearly as popular among Hispanics as he once was, because of simple pocketbook politics. Paxton will be toxic. All the Democrats have to do is nominate someone bland and inoffensively competent-seeming — a UT Austin tackling dummy would do — and find themselves with a prebaked 47 percent of the vote in the race, with room to grow. With an eye toward all the forces at play that are making a nationwide 2026 walloping of Republicans likely, I watched this race develop early in the year and wrote a two-word lament in my notes: “Roy Moore.”
But now there is hope — not the hope that Paxton will suddenly become a decent person, or even popular statewide, but hope that the Democrats can magically snatch defeat from the jaws of a potential Texas victory: by nominating Dallas-area Representative Jasmine Crockett for the seat.
Yes, Jasmine’s in! After disclaiming her intent to run for Senate earlier in the year, America’s favorite self-consciously trashy sass-talking gutter queen … announced her candidacy for the seat at the last second in a publicity stunt just before the filing deadline.
