Intelligence Briefing #1: This is how we win in Texas

A Texas Senate seat has been the white whale of the Democratic Party since at least 2018 when Beto O’Rourke came within a whisper of winning the seat even as Ted Cruz sat at +5% net approval. The margin of victory was 2.6% but the important number is the raw number of votes he lost by: 214,821. We will come back to why that number is important later. In 2024 Ted Cruz was in a much healthier position with a net approval of +12%, despite that Allred raised and spent $99.9 million dollars, or about one ten thousandth of a percent of the net worth of the world's first trillionaire, Elon Musk. Not much at all for Musk but a lot to spend on a doomed senate race. 

There is no doubt that in 2026 James Talarico and his opponent, Ken Paxton, will spend equally absurd amounts of money, and that even more money will flow into the race from outside groups. The difference is that James Talarico is, right now, in a better position than Beto O’Rourke ever was in 2018. His opponent isn’t the firebrand Ted Cruz or the party goliath John Cornyn. His opponent is a man so corrupt and so immoral, that his own party tried to impeach him. Ken Paxton is a man who puts the CON in conservative. For the first time in over 30 years, the Democrats’ white whale is within reach. We can, and will, win in Texas. Here’s how: 

First of all Ken Paxton, despite winning the Republican run-off against Cornyn, is wildly unpopular. His net approval is at -8%. Comparatively, James Talarico was at +18% the last time his approval was checked; it will likely dip as we get closer to Election Day but barring unforseen circumstances it still be well in the positive. Despite that wild difference the polls show a very close race. That makes sense when you realize that Talarico is still building his name ID in much of the state. He is not the infamous man his opponent is.

Even with that disadvantage two of the last three polls showed Talarico leading Paxton by 3%. That means a lot in the traditionally red state of Texas. Remember that 2020 was a banner year for Democrats but even in that year John Cornyn cruised to victory in this race by a number too large to discuss in a race that was never seriously competitive. Ken Paxton is no John Cornyn. Here is the other thing about 2020. In Texas in 2020, 395,989 Democrats voted that have not voted before or since. That number is almost twice Ted Cruz’s 2018 margin of victory, a year they did not show up in. 

These 395,989 voters are our secret weapon and they are why we are going to win. These voters didn’t show up in 2024 for Harris. They didn’t show up in 2022 to vote in their congressional districts. They didn’t show up in 2018 for O’Rourke. Why? The answer is actually surprisingly simple, nobody asked them to. They showed up in 2020 because of the particular chaos of that particular election year. But we can get them to show up again.

Here is the other thing about those voters. They aren't showing up in most polls. In 2024, 11,228,847 people voted in Texas. In 2022 that number was just 8,102,908. A good estimate for 2026 is probably around 9,725,000. That would put the number to win at 4,862,501. That is an interesting number because it is 396,625 fewer votes than Biden received in Texas in 2020, which is very close to the number of voters who have not turned out before or since 2020. If just half of our 395,989 voted they could turn a very close race into 2 point victory, and it could turn a 2 point victory into a convincing, landscape changing win.

In 2026 we are not just going to ask them to show up, we are going to give them a reason to. In order for these voters to show up on Election Day they have to believe three things:

• Ken Paxton is bad for the United States and bad for Texas - they already believe that.

• James Talarico will be good for the United States and good for Texas - they aren't going to just take this on faith, but they are going to get there.

• They have to believe that their vote will really matter - this is the point we really have to drive home.

  
  

These voters need to know that they matter, that their vote matters, and that it can really change things. We are going to convince them of that. When they show up, Ken Paxton’s history of corruption, the incompetence that allowed violent sexual predators get out of jail for free, and his MINUS 8% approval rating are all going from being a liability to being an insurmountable problem. James Talarico will be the first Democrat Texas sends to the US Senate since 1993. But first we have to do the work. 

The party isn’t going to reach these people, it almost never does. The campaign isn’t going to reach these people, even with massive funding they are going to focus on the 4,250,283 voters that showed up in two of the last four elections, along with new voters and independents they think they can flip. The work of convincing our voters is going to fall to people like us. 395,989 voters, each contacted seven times, means 2,771,923 voter contacts. It means showing them why Democrats winning back the Senate matters. Most of all though it means showing them that they matter and we know it.

The math is simple, when a voter knows that they are being heard and that their voice matters, they show up and vote. We have to show them that; 2,771,923 times, that means contacting each of them seven times. To do that we are going to need a lot of volunteer hours and a little bit of money. Okay, more than a little bit; we are going to need $852,899.39. The thirty-nine cents is important. The good news is that when all that work is done and the money is spent ($852,899.39 is a lot less than Allred’s $99.9 million by the way,) we are going to have something special to show for it. A Democrat from Texas who not only says he cares about everybody, but shows he does.