Democrat Talarico Wins Texas Senate Seat, Breaking Republicans' Three-Decade Hold

Democrat James Talarico has won the U.S. Senate race in Texas, according to a race call by the Associated Press. His victory breaks the Republican Party's three-decade monopoly on statewide offices in Texas.

Talarico defeated Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a close ally of President Donald Trump, in one of the most closely watched and expensive races this year.

The victory is described as a major blow for Republicans and for Trump himself. Trump and his allies poured millions of dollars into the race, and Trump often attacked Talarico in campaign rallies across the United States, using him as a national stand-in for Democrats.

Paxton becomes the first Republican to lose a Texas Senate seat since 1990. He had never lost a race since winning election to the Texas House of Representatives in 2002.

To capture the Republican nomination, Paxton defeated incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn in a primary runoff election. A last-minute endorsement from Trump helped him secure that victory.

But with the president's popularity having dipped, Trump's support may have acted as a drag on Paxton. The attorney general had expressed concern about this after Trump campaigned for him at the Republicans' midterm convention in Dallas in September.

Talarico, a four-term state lawmaker from Austin, tied or led Paxton in most statewide polls starting in midsummer. He led Paxton by a wide margin in fundraising for most of this year, although conservative super PACs allied to the attorney general offset that advantage with heavy advertising spending in the final two months of the campaign.

Talarico first rose to prominence in the state in 2018 by flipping a heavily Republican state House district that had voted for Donald Trump for president two years earlier. A former San Antonio middle school teacher and a Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico focused his campaign on education and staunchly opposed efforts to inject religion into the public school system.

He was one of the most vocal opponents of a law requiring the display of an explicitly Protestant translation of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, a law now subject to multiple federal lawsuits.

Talarico gained national attention through an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in July 2025, followed by a February 2026 interview for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that CBS declined to broadcast but that subsequently went viral on YouTube. That built his national name recognition and transformed him into a fundraising force.

Throughout the campaign, Paxton also battled negative perceptions of his record related to past scandals involving alleged corruption in office — which in 2023 led to his impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives, of which he was subsequently acquitted by the Texas Senate — as well as his ongoing divorce from state Senator Angela Paxton over alleged marital infidelities.