Andrew Schneider, Senior Political Reporter for Houston Public Media, explains how competing narratives about the Texas Senate race have emerged.
ADRIAN MA, HOST:
With voters concerned about the cost of living and President Trump’s approval rating hitting new lows, there’s a chance that Democrats could gain control of the House of Representatives after this year’s midterm elections. And while it’s a longer shot, some Democrats are also dreaming of winning control of the Senate. One race that is feeding that dream is happening in Texas.
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MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: …U.S. Senate seat. State Representative James Talarico was the winner of the Democratic primary, that according to a race call early this morning by…
MA: Earlier this month, state representative James Talarico defeated U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett in the state’s Democratic primary. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, leaned into his faith. He pitched himself as a candidate who would appeal to a wide swath of Texans. Meanwhile, Crockett leaned into the national reputation she’s received as a fire brand for directly confronting congressional Republicans and President Trump.
In the end, Talarico prevailed, and Crockett gave him her full support. Now, with the Republican Texas primary, there is still no clear winner. Here’s NPR’s senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: There is a runoff that is going to now take place on May 26 because neither John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, or Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, was able to get 50% of the vote. And now this is going to be a knock-down drag-out fight that has already been the most expensive Senate primary in history.
MA: And this has also got Democrats excited – that Republicans might be so divided in November that Talarico will ride that division to a Democratic victory in the Lone Star state. But Democrats have also tried and failed for decades to win a statewide race in Texas. Here’s Andrew Schneider, senior political reporter for Houston Public Media.
ANDREW SCHNEIDER, BYLINE: You know, it’s always difficult to tell with Texas whether you’re at an inflection point. Democrats haven’t won statewide office in Texas in more than 30 years. And every few years, you know, you seem to come to a moment where Democrats are enthusiastic, more enthusiastic than usual, more optimistic than usual.
MA: And he’s been covering this primary. I wanted to hear what it looks like on the ground to cover an election that both Democrats and Republicans across the country are watching so closely. And so for this week’s Reporter’s Notebook, I called up Andrew in Houston and started by asking him what narratives were emerging from both Democrats and Republicans in the wake of the March 3 primary.
SCHNEIDER: Well, there are several different narratives. For the Republicans – both the Paxton and Cornyn camps – as soon as it became clear that James Talarico was the nominee, immediately started coming out by saying he is way too radical for Texas. And this is standard Republican playbook in Texas. Regardless of how extreme the Democratic nominee is by conservative standards, the idea is that if you’re nominated as a Democrat, you’re too extreme for Texas. Your values are not in line with Texas values, and people need to be concerned about you. And I think that’s the message they’re going to continue to push no matter who the Republican nominee is.
On the Democratic side, there are several different arguments that are being made. Talarico would like to be able to make, particularly if Paxton were to become the nominee – is that this is a man who has been dogged by scandals for years. He is not trustworthy with the office of United States senator.
I think it’s a lot more difficult to make that argument if Senator Cornyn is the ultimate Republican nominee, but he’s – you know, he can also conceivably make the argument that, look, Republicans have been in charge in Texas now for decades. They claim that they are in a position to solve problems. They are largely responsible for making a lot of these problems.
And beyond that, Talarico can and has made the argument that he has been elected in a district that previously voted for President Trump by a fairly wide margin. So he’s looking to appeal not only to Democratic voters and independents, but Republicans that might be dissatisfied with their choices as well. That’s, as always, a heavy lift in Texas.
MA: It seems like politics in Texas right now is also of national interest. It’s attracting attention and investment from outside the state. So does it feel, in a way, like the Texas Senate race is going to be a main event in the midterms?
SCHNEIDER: Absolutely. It becomes more of an issue in the midterms if John Cornyn doesn’t win for the simple reason that it would be the first truly open seat in the Texas Senate delegation in many, many years, you know, long since before I started covering the state. You know, I think in terms of, you know, how this affects the rest of the country, what goes on in Texas inevitably affects the rest of the country simply because so much political power is vested here, so much – you know, the state has such a large population. The state is, for better or for worse, a major engine of economic growth that affects the rest of the country. So regardless of who is running, it’s – it should be of interest to people outside Texas as well as in. And certainly, if John Cornyn were to lose either in his primary race or, if he were to be the nominee, to lose the general election, that would be a significant political upset by any measure.
MA: You’ve reported that President Trump has been kind of weighing an endorsement of a Republican candidate. How does it look right now? Does it make a difference who Trump endorses in this race?
SCHNEIDER: It certainly could. One of the more interesting polling results that I saw from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, before the first round of primary voting, looked not only at the candidates themselves, but also at the question of would a Republican voter be more likely to support somebody that President Trump endorsed? And I think something in the order of 55% of the likely Republican primary voters who responded said that they would be more likely to support somebody that Trump endorsed.
Now, at the same time, there’s a lot of commentary on social media from Republican primary voters saying if – you know, if the president supports John Cornyn, I will nevertheless support Ken Paxton, I support Ken Paxton all the way, and my mind is made up on that score.
Now, the question really becomes, I think, given how divisive the primary has been up until this point, can Trump, by weighing in, manage to convince enough Republicans to close ranks, that they’ll be able to heal the bad blood within the party in time for the general election? And the general election is still more than half a year away. That’s a long time in politics. But there’s – you know, there is a very real question of whether people who – you know, if Cornyn is the eventual nominee, will people that supported Ken Paxton come out to vote for him? It’s unlikely that they will cross the island and vote for James Talarico, but they might stay home, and that would work to the Democrats’ advantage.
MA: You’re based in Houston, which is, I think fair to say, is sort of an island of Democratic support in a state that is largely Republican. So how do you make sure that you get a really full picture of Texas politics?
SCHNEIDER: Well, I have to make sure that I’m interviewing people not only from the liberal core in Houston or the progressive core in Houston, as well as surrounding counties. I think it’s worth stating that while Houston is perceived – as well as many of the other large cities in Texas are perceived – as being sort of blue islands in a sea of red, they’re not completely homogeneous. You have plenty of Republicans here. They’re just not concentrated in the same way that the Democrats are, and it’s a matter of simply going out and looking for them.
MA: OK. Well, Andrew Schneider, Houston Public Media’s senior political reporter. Thanks for taking the time to talk about your reporting.
SCHNEIDER: Thanks for having me.
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