3/4/26: James Talarico Defeats Crockett, Dan Crenshaw Goes Down In Texas

13:45Murtaza Hussain:It was. And I did meet Hispanic voters who were saying their family was MAGA the last election or they've got right-wing Catholic family who share memes on Facebook and they can't believe they're a Democrat. But they can send them a Tallarico video about something specific and say, well, this is what I believe. And it's not going down the litmus... The litmus test of a Catholic voter who's pro-life, he's not going to match that. He's a gender-critical person, he's not going to match that. But just talking about faith in the way he did, quoting the Book of Matthew, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, just doing that versus the secularism they were used to from other Democrats.

14:20Murtaza Hussain:Beto O 'Rourke is not very comfortable doing that. A lot of Democrats are not. They don't go to church very much. They don't talk about it. But going to church, the fact that he was a seminarian and talked about God at all, I think I was maybe a little bit cynical about that. Because when going in before I went there. But just they had not heard that. They were hearing Democrats talk about shouting your abortion. And he would talk about Christian nationalism, which I think is more for the John Oliver audience. But the part they were hearing was, well, he's quoting the Bible. I haven't heard a Democrat come here and quote the Bible because he's not like Henry Cuellar who knows the region.

14:54Murtaza Hussain:He's at least trying. and he made some inroads that way but that plus the ice thing this is i and i've heard that from arizona and from other places too that look they're not saying abolish ice they're saying there has to be some goldilocks bowl in the middle that is that is a protecting the border and not chasing my friend down because he has a mexican flag on his truck because he's fifth generation

15:14Emily Jashinsky:he just has a mexican flag well last point before we go to uh needle alarm and you may have something to add srota it's just crockett was flirting with um pull like just dragging this out last night was saying, looks like there's cheating in Dallas County. This is what Republicans do. It was unclear what she totally meant by that. Stop the steal? Just a half an hour ago, yes. No, she really was going full stop the steal last night. Yeah. Pulled back from that. And so she has conceded as of this morning, but she was going in that direction. I don't know if anyone wants to jump in.

15:41David Sirota:Yeah, I just wonder if all of this is actually something like more simple in that it is an anti-system vote. Yeah. Right? I mean, I'm just thinking through the last many elections. The last time the party that was perceived to be in power was reelected was 2012. Right? Like, think about it. Like, Obama winning re-election. And then, like, every election seems like a referendum on who is perceived to be in power. And so I think, you know, when it comes to dicing different voting segments, I think the larger question is maybe it's as simple as the whoever is perceived to be the anti-system candidate is going to be the one to get that swing.

16:32David Sirota:Like we like our swing voters, Latino voters, are they working class voters?

16:35Emily Jashinsky:Maybe the swing voter is like none of those categories.

16:39David Sirota:And it's the anti-system voter who feels like they keep voting for change and not getting any change.

16:45Emily Jashinsky:Right. Which is in all of those categories.

16:46Dave Weigel:Just keep voting for it. Yeah, exactly. So in Arkansas, we don't even have to go deep into this, but they had a Supreme Court election. Kamala Harris lost Arkansas by 31 points. The Republicans seems to have won it by about 10. So a 21-point swing in Arkansas, not great. Now, a race that we covered a lot in North Carolina for. Valerie Fushi elected in 2022 with an enormous amount of crypto money and APAC money. She evolved in 2026 to APAC money and AI money. So better or worse. I don't know quite a path. Wherever you can get it. She vowed she wouldn't take any APAC money, so it ended up getting rooted through this other pack.

17:30Dave Weigel:She raised very little herself. And so two plus million dollars kind of rained down on her opponent, Nita Alam, in the last like week and a half, two weeks of the race. We can put up the results there. Has not been called yet. The Fushi is up by a thousand and twenty point twenty votes or something like that. A little under one, roughly one percent. Doesn't seem like there are enough votes for Nita Alam to come back. But what it does suggest is that absent this$2 million plus, Anitta Lam had her own kind of anti or pro-Palestine super PAC that's linked to Bernie. Hannah Ferdig, old Bernie. Can't beat him, doing him.

18:12Dave Weigel:Yeah. It kind of organized Muslim money. It's finally kind of breaking onto the scene. So she had some support, nothing approaching what food she had. It does seem like that was decisive. Like, without that two-plus million in the last couple weeks, she ends up, you know, this incumbent would have gone down. What was your rate on this race?

18:36David Sirota:I mean, my question coming out of this race is how much is this going to change how all of the other House Democrats incumbents can't pay? Because nobody wants to win by a thousand. You'd rather win by a thousand than lose by a thousand. But you don't like to win by a thousand. You don't like to have to work that hard. Right. Right. I mean, and there was that I think there was an Axios piece earlier this week that was 30 House Democrats now have primary challengers who've raised more than one hundred thousand dollars. Now, one hundred thousand dollars is not going to win you a Democratic primary, but it makes you nervous, makes you nervous.

19:09David Sirota:Right. I mean, and I thought what's funny was it was like that, you know, unnamed sources, the House Democratic leadership are like enraged that there's so much money being spent on. And my takeaway from it is they've gotten so used to never having to fight at all for their party's nomination. And again, I go back to. Dem tea party. Exactly. And the thing is, I wrote a book back in 2007 saying like this was going to be a moment all the way back then. That's how old we all are now. Okay.

19:45David Sirota:I was 14. There you go. Okay. That the rage of that moment was going to be channeled in one direction or the other. And I think what happened on the left end of that spectrum was it was channeled into the Democratic Party through the Hope and Change brand. And it was on the right, it was channeled into the Tea Party. And I think now the difference in this moment is it's the same, if not more, level of rage. But the polls that show that the Democratic base is annoyed and angry and frustrated with its own leadership was not a condition that existed back then. And so I think that is what the current Democratic Party leadership is just not used to and is sort of scandalized by.

20:32David Sirota:Right. Because on the right in the Republican Party, the idea of Republican primaries against incumbents, that's become somewhat more normalized than in like the idea that like a Democrat. Like I'm I live in Colorado. The idea that John Hickenlooper might have and he does have a primary. Yeah, he's got a challenger. Right. The whole idea like you talk to people in Democratic circles in Colorado. I was like, no one could possibly. It's a blue state. No one's going to primary a sitting senator. I'm not sure what's going to happen in that race. But I guess the point is, it's a long way of saying the presumption for so long has been that there will not be a challenge, that the people who are in power are scandalized.

21:16David Sirota:And I think to come back to this primary, I think every House Democrat is going to look at that and be like, I don't want to have to run for just my party's nomination and have to deal with something like that.

21:27Dave Weigel:Yeah. And Dave, not every Democrat can get the kind of help that she got from and particularly from Hakeem Jeffries. So, yeah, he put her within days of this in days of Nidalam launching her campaign. He put her on this three person Democratic task force to to write A.I. policy. And what that is, is that is a giant signal to the AI industry that you need to shower money on this person. The others are Ted Lieu and Josh Gottheimer, like both voracious fundraisers, Gottheimer in particular. And so they did. They came in 1.6 million at last counting. I bet when we get the final numbers, it'll be higher.

22:06Dave Weigel:It was Anthropics Coalition of AI. So it's the AI safety people, the good guys. But so he did that. And then he then there was also this PAC that he's connected to that raised money from a PAC, moved it through a separate PAC so that it could call Article One PAC. So that she could abide by her promise to not take any more APAC monies. But Jeffries can't do that for everybody. I mean, maybe he can. Can he? So how are, to Sarota's question, how are House Democrats responding to this? And do you have any other thoughts from covering this race?

22:41Murtaza Hussain:I covered more close of the 2022 race when it was an open seat. And at that point, it was a more fair map. But anyway, it was a safe Democratic seat. And in that race, which you've been setting up, it was very clear that Fouché was the pro-Israel candidate. She got the APEC support. It just was not in the Democratic conversation as a top issue right then. what did she do in advance of this race? She disclaimed the AIPAC money. It helped her in the end, but she made a very splashy, at a town hall announcement that she was not going to take their support anymore. She co-signed Block the Bombs. When the Iran war started, NIDA was very quickly, she went to her house and cut an ad while she was against the war, Fushay didn't do that, just a less energetic candidate in general, but she was opposed to the war too.

23:29Murtaza Hussain:So would she have won had she not done that? I don't think so. I don't think with that money, If she was running as Dan Goldman in that district, she would have lost. She needed to be critical of Israel. She needed the pro-Israel money and she needed to be answer to Israel. Some memorable, okay, well, I'm voting for this person and she's moving in the right direction. In 2022, and this is, I interviewed the then CEO of AIPAC in 2022 about how they run ads on what works. But in 2022, it was, this is good politics, but maybe we're going to do the issue. We're not going to say this is the best candidate on Israel.

23:57Murtaza Hussain:We're going to say something else. And now it's they're giving them a little bit of permission structure to denounce pro-Israel politics just because maybe they'll get there and they don't want more voices in Congress that are criticizing them. So I think that is one lesson for all these candidates. And there's Illinois primaries in the next week. But for all these races, if you have a progressive challenger, what do you say on Israel? It's important that the permission structure has been created for you to denounce them three times and then get elected anyway. But what does that say about the power of their issue?

24:32Murtaza Hussain:We can look at the polling, but I think this is even more powerful to say that you cannot – in order to survive a primary by one point, she had to very performatively say, and also I'm against the issue. I don't think she said genocide by the end, but I'm against what Israel's doing. I'm against the war, et cetera, et cetera. You need$2 million and that. That's new.

24:50David Sirota:I think, and just one other point. I think it's interesting to think about the AI issue and the AI issue. The AI issue for a long time had been an issue where there wasn't as organized and motivated an anti-constituency. So the money could go to candidates and the candidates didn't have to worry about an organized, popular opposition in a Democratic primary.

25:16Murtaza Hussain:They were kind of helping the moderate. Oh, you're moderate and you're going to get the APEC money. Right.

25:20David Sirota:And the voters don't really care. Now the voters really care. Where I think I'm terrified about like, is the world going to survive? Are we going to go into like Skynet world? is that the AI money assumes that there isn't a similarly organized voting bloc against them. In other words, the AI money presumes for now that we can give a lot of money to Democrats, get them to be pro-AI because they don't have to worry that in taking the money and in being pro-AI, they're going to prompt an organized popular resistance with political consequences when they run for election. You saw it with crypto too, right?

26:05And you think about these dynamics where you want a candidate to go out, you know, if you're a progressive,

26:11David Sirota:maybe you want your candidate to go out there and say crypto is terrible or go out there and say AI is terrible. Why aren't they doing that? Well, the answer is because I think at a candidate by candidate level, They fear that if they speak up, even if they sort of in their heart agree with speaking up and against deregulation of the financial sector, AI, et cetera, et cetera, that not enough voters will care. And all it will do is prompt a flood of money. Again, they'll become the next Katie Porter in that Senate. Sherrod Brown. Exactly.

26:44Murtaza Hussain:They bragged about that. Exactly. They bragged about that. That's our example. We have Sherrod Brown's head. Do you want to be him?

26:49David Sirota:Yeah. It's like the money is organized on those issues, but the people aren't. AIPAC was exploiting that in the sense of the money was organized, but the anti-APAC people weren't organized. Now that's an organized constituency in a way that does what happens.

27:07Murtaza Hussain:One very small point is that Alam, and as I mentioned, she did try to tie that to Vachey by saying, and she's supported by the sort of AI companies that are helping prosecute this war. and the ones that are building the data centers. And it was, I think maybe she was a couple weeks early for that or a couple, who knows how long it is. She started to make that argument, but it wasn't there yet. That's where she took it. I think that's where the people you're talking about will take it.

27:29David Sirota:Yeah, and I think the data, the local data center stuff has the chance to actually create organized political institutions. It's already been happening.

27:39Dave Weigel:If I were her, I would have, yeah, she said, you know, it's the AI used by ICE and used by Venezuela and then Iran. Palantir. Palantir. But I think, yes, it's the data center. The data center in your district with the water and the energy and my electricity bill is going up. I'm against it and they're coming in to try to railroad you. Because otherwise it's like crypto and AI are tough. It's like a bank shot. It's a hard sell because a lot of people like crypto and AI.

28:04Emily Jashinsky:And also we're looking at monster turnout in Texas, by the way. I think that's something worth adding. It looks like right now that it's roughly double what it was for Beto. Not a hugely contested primary. In Beto's case, I think he won with like 90 % of the vote. So you can understand why you would have a higher turnout this time around. But that's a signal the Dem base is organized and energized and ready to go in November.

28:26Murtaza Hussain:Yeah, if you told somebody a month ago, Crockett's going to get a million votes, they'd say, oh, she's going to win. Like, nobody gets a million votes in Texas Democratic primary.

28:33Emily Jashinsky:That's usually the total. It's usually around a million. This looks like it's going to be north of two million.

28:37David Sirota:Can I also say that, like, as somebody who has worked on campaigns, I do appreciate that if, you know, in broad strokes here, that Tallarico seemed to run, as we were discussing before this, run like a quote unquote a real campaign. Like organizers, like the ads had a message, sort of much more of a grassroots footprint than Crockett. Crockett sort of, you know, I think basically ran as like an influencer campaign, like a purely influencer campaign, not like not as much of a real campaign. And I think I worry about turning campaigns into just I am with my iPhone, you know, making TikTok videos, not really out in the community and that being validated by voters.

29:28David Sirota:Like I think there's something good about the person whose campaign was more grassroots, more in the community, more of a traditional campaign was actually validated by voters.

29:41Dave Weigel:And still used TikTok and Instagram. Yeah, for sure. In the service of that rather than as a thing in itself.

29:47Emily Jashinsky:Interestingly, he got more money from K Street. Politico had an analysis of that. But they both did.

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31:58Dave Weigel:Let's move to the Republican results in Texas. We'll talk about Ken Paxson and Cornyn, who are going to go to a runoff in a moment. But let's start with Dan Crenshaw. So this is a very well-known Republican. I'm so happy. Emily, you might have talked about this. We're kind of reviled. It's just a gift.

32:17Emily Jashinsky:It's such a gift.

32:19Dave Weigel:Actually, I want to ask Emily first. Why do people hate this guy? Yeah, why don't you say that?

32:22Emily Jashinsky:He got absolutely obliterated, by the way. It was 50, as of right now, with 95 % of the votes in, it's 55.8 % to 40.6%. Crenshaw, I believe, got elected. I mean, he got trounced.

32:35Dave Weigel:And Emily's very happy. And we're like, he seems like the other Republicans. Standard issue. Tell us why people hate him.

32:42David Sirota:I don't get it coming from Colorado where we have like Lauren Boebert and would never happen to Lauren Boebert. I don't think. Is she inside of her primary? What's Boebert and Crenshaw?

32:48Dave Weigel:Do they hate each other?

32:49Emily Jashinsky:I'm sure they hate each other. He's, I mean, he hates anybody who is aligned with Tucker Carlson, but he also very high profile, had picked high profile fights with Sean Ryan, who is really popular with conservative podcast listeners. But, you know, just on a substantive level, he was out of touch with the base on foreign policy. He is an insider trading maven. He loves to trade on.

33:14Dave Weigel:He's going to follow his trades now that he's losing access.

33:16Emily Jashinsky:Well, he was a, he wouldn't call it, he wouldn't call it insider trading. But, of course, he's in Congress and he's trading stocks prolifically, which is actually, interestingly enough, one of the things that this White House has zeroed in on being an important part of the Trump agenda for the midterm cycle. That's what they were at Capitol Hill Club talking about. Maybe do something about it.

33:35Dave Weigel:That's what they're saying.

33:36Emily Jashinsky:They're saying that Trump is going to run Republican candidates in 2026 on stopping congressional insider trading.

33:41David Sirota:So do it. Because the insider trading should happen only in the White House.

33:44Emily Jashinsky:It's only happens on, it's only in the polymarket for people named Trump and Winkoff. It is a sacred task. But anyway, so. The insiders.

33:55Murtaza Hussain:I'm sick of these candidates creating their own coins and having people buy them for access.

33:59Emily Jashinsky:Amazing. But he was, he's self-aggrandizing, listen, he's just, my perspective on him, he's self-aggrandizing anti-populist in ways that were wildly out of touch at the moment and just made him a really bad guy. From my perspective, I think voters probably had a similar perspective. But Weigel, I think I've only ever talked to him like once. And in that conversation, he was talking to me about Tucker Carlson unprompted.

34:21Murtaza Hussain:So you set it up very well. He also, the remap of the state gave him areas he had not represented. They had not seen his campaign ads. And he stopped doing these. But are you aware of his action movie ads, the Michael Bay things, where he would parachute into people's districts to save them? that they hadn't seen those. But they had seen, Tucker, Steve Toth, who won, Tucker had a long interview with him four months ago. Didn't make a lot of news because that's who outside of Southeast Texas knows who Steve Toth is. But everything you said, he was a interventionist, anti-populist, who was believed that part of the American First movement, not all of it, was going to wreck the Republican Party.

35:07Murtaza Hussain:And that if that is, It's the people who are voting, they might take objection to that. It's really that simple. And I was a little surprised that you were saying you were surprised, but it wasn't on more people's radars because this is a project for years to get rid of that guy. I don't know who first coined Eyepatch McCain, but that was the way he was seen. This is a long-running— It might have been. Probably him, yeah. But he did not cultivate support from people who didn't like him in 2018. I was also struck. Chip Roy.

35:38Emily Jashinsky:He was giving everyone the middle finger, basically.

35:39Murtaza Hussain:He was doing that, and Chip Roy is running for AG. He had, Ted Cruz, I'll finally say, Ted Cruz endorsed Toth, endorsed his opponent. A lot of Republicans wanted him gone. So part of it was personal, but it wouldn't have been possible if he wasn't so alienated from America first. I was going to say, Chip Roy, running for AG, came in second to a MAGA candidate, and that was more about Trump, but it was also sort of the heterodox, can we trust this guy? His instincts are not the same as those of us who want to just keep resources in the country who have questions about the 2020 election. And these are both guys who I think had bigger, big profiles in DC because this is how media works.

36:14Murtaza Hussain:You know, you're more interesting to the media if you'll criticize your party for them sometimes. No interest in that in Texas. Very, a lot of love and confidence that Donald Trump is doing the right thing. So if your brand is trashing not just Trump, but influential conservative thinkers and speakers, you've alienated more people than you'd alienate by, you know, going to the Rotary Club and insulting They hear about that. And their media diet has changed in ways that clearly Crenshaw, who I think also has or had a podcast. He was trying to get in that case. That was not as popular in his district as it was here.

36:48David Sirota:I also wonder if in a race like this, how much somebody like Crenshaw is hurt by the fact that independent voters in an open primary.

37:01Murtaza Hussain:Yeah, you just pull a ballot.

37:02David Sirota:But you have to choose. In other words, how many independent voters were animated by voting for Tallarico and didn't come into a race, couldn't pull a ballot for somebody like Crenshaw? I mean, in open primary states, you can be a candidate in a primary and think you're going to be rescued by or helped by independent voters. But if there's a race higher on the ticket where most of the independent voters are going to be voting, they can't come help you.

37:33Emily Jashinsky:Right.

37:34David Sirota:You should be able to pick. Right, race by race? Yeah, that's not how it rolls.

37:39Emily Jashinsky:Granted, this is a pretty decisive margin so far. Totally. But who knows where? Yeah, I think that's a great point.

37:43Murtaza Hussain:Definitely bigger. The surprise is definitely that it was that big. It was that big. Texas knew he was at risk, but not that he was just walking down the white line.

37:49Emily Jashinsky:100%. Yeah, and he's someone who came in with a lot of momentum because people might remember he got made fun of as looking like a porn star by Pete Davidson on SNL. And everyone was like, he's a veteran. So they brought him back on SNL. And he was on Weekend Update. and everyone was like, this is the way Republicans will win young voters. Dan Crenshaw knows how to use new media and pop culture. So he had youth summits, Crenshaw Youth Summits of his own. Hello, fellow kids. Where conservative organizations, he was trying to do like a mini CPAC for young people in Texas where conservative organizations would like buy booths and it never really got off the ground.

38:23Emily Jashinsky:But he saw himself as a light for the Republican Party. And this is a really decisive refutation of that. Let's talk about Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton, like Chip Roy, headed to a runoff with John Cornyn. We can put F3 up on the screen. This is the results. Very, very interesting results in this race. Cornyn overperformed what a lot of people expected. He's not quite a Crenshaw-style figure. He's been around Texas for a long time. He's obviously a senator, so he has probably more built-in goodwill, but is definitely friendly with leadership. He's a member of the GOP establishment, no question about that.

38:59Emily Jashinsky:Lots of people in Texas angry about that post-Ubaldi gun bill that Cornyn got behind. That's definitely been a problem for him. Wesley Hunt pulls in 13.5%. Senate leadership fund aligned with Cornyn, then lashes out at Wesley Hunt as he's defeated. And it's basically like, well, we could have avoided a runoff if you hadn't even gotten into this race. Those are not Cornyn votes.

39:21Murtaza Hussain:Wesley Hunt voters.

39:22Emily Jashinsky:What do you think, Weigel?

39:23Murtaza Hussain:By the end, I don't think they are because the last two weeks in Texas, you'd see the ads. The last two weeks was SLF going after Hunt. They wanted they wanted this number. So what is their theory of this race? It is get Cornyn above Paxton by any margin at all. If it was a if it was like the polls were a month ago and it was Paxton 43, Cornyn 33, Hunt better than he did. Then Trump would look at that and say, this guy's a loser. I'm not going to endorse him. They just want Trump to endorse John Gordon. Forget any other issue in the race. Just endorse him. And right now, in other rooms, I'm sure they're saying they got we got Tallarico, not Crockett.

40:01Murtaza Hussain:There's no runoff on their side. So we're not sure Paxton can win. Texas Republicans are not that worried. I mean, they voted for this was the story I covered in 2022. You're running it for AG after all of his indictments. George P. Bush was running as the savior who would save the AG seat. And Paxton was fine. So it's tough to convince Republican voters. The people in D.C. who make these donations were pretty well convinced that Paxton would blow it to Tallarico. So they're going to do that today. We're not talking about any ideological differences. There really weren't any in the campaign. The entire argument against Hunt was that he was a showboat who never showed up for votes.

40:35Murtaza Hussain:It was not he voted wrong on something. It was just that. And Paxton just kind of he wasn't raising as much money, but he was kind of holding his powder because he knew he had this locked in. He had, I mean, this is similar to what he got, I think, in his AG primary because he had two challengers. I think he did a little bit better. But that's the story. It's just to the extent there is a big Republican establishment, this has been their thing for years. It's just we can't really make a positive argument for our guy's individual record. We can say that Trump loves him. So let's just wait this out and see if we can get Trump in the race.

41:09and the Hunt thing, the Hunt theory was, um, Cornyn's so weak that I can leapfrog in and I'd

41:15Murtaza Hussain:easily win. That's true. And if Republicans blow this at some point, they'll say, why did we invest so much, uh, when we could have just easily held the seat with Wesley Hunt, who would not have any, any problem, no scandals. That was kind of the premise of his campaign. I'm a family man. I'm a Christian. I'm a veteran. Look at this resume. It's, it's incredible. I'll just hold the seat. No problem. Um, you know, you dance with, with them that brung you and they knew Cornyn, and they wanted him back. It's almost depressing talking about these races. Literally no ideological difference. It is just, we know this guy, let's help him out.

41:44Murtaza Hussain:Screw this guy for opposing him.

41:46Dave Weigel:Now the Bannon wing will argue that that's not the case. They describe Cornyn as a rhino, a liberal. He voted for that gun bill. I mean, seriously.

41:59Emily Jashinsky:Well, some of it is vibes, right? That he's friendly with McConnell world and Thune world and that he'll throw Republicans under the bus if he has to at any point. Some of it's just like this guy's been around a long time.

42:09Dave Weigel:They also point out that he's probably not running for re-election. He's like 77 or something. He'd be 80 at the end of this term. So he would be beholden only to people who are going to pay for his retirement. Paxton was the first Republican AG to join Trump in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Paxton has gone after big tech all over the place. To the Supreme Court. He's more of the maggots hype.

42:31Murtaza Hussain:He'll file these lawsuits on social issues that no other Republican... Get to the head of the pack. I think him and Andrew Bailey and Missouri will do this. So that's an ideological... But if you are a religious conservative, he is the one fighting for you. And what's Cornyn done on that?

42:44Emily Jashinsky:Even though he's an adulterer. Well, it's always like who these...

42:49David Sirota:It's always like who these politicians think they owe. I understand why Bannon and MAGA wants Paxton and not Cornyn. Because it's not... I mean, you're right. Maybe you go down like bill by bill, issue by issue, it's pretty similar. But it's the perception of who they think they answer to. And I think the perception probably among the MAGA folks is John Cornyn doesn't think he answers to us. He answers to the oil. Yeah, he answers to the oil. Right. And Ken Paxson clearly does answer to us. Ken Paxson sees that his political formula is by aligning with us all the time. And that's what they want.

43:29Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. Well, last point that I was going to make. So runoff May 26, got a couple months for that now. But also what the thread between our first segment on Dems and Republicans, I think that's interesting is this is one of the first midterm cycles post 2024. It's the first midterm cycle post 2024. But it's also the independent media midterm cycle. Yeah. Right. Like, are we past the point of critical mass on independent media changing these narratives in a way that does really hurt incumbents and hurts establishment candidates where Anita Llam can make a race uncomfortable, where Dan Crenshaw can get trounced?

44:05Emily Jashinsky:And I mean, I don't know. I think that's that. And Tallarico can run ads on top versus bottom. I don't know.

44:11Dave Weigel:And it's up against huge money on the Republican side. If you count the uncounted like C4 and C3 money, I'm curious if you would think this correct. I've seen the like Paxton crowd and Paxton supporters saying it probably approaches 100 million. That if you factor mail and everything in that we don't know about yet. And they made it by the last minute.

44:31Murtaza Hussain:Yeah, yeah. They bought every point. Yeah.

44:32Dave Weigel:And then behind Paxton, four, five, six million. Like a lot of money, but nowhere near 100 million dollars. They're now looking at potentially if Trump can't figure out a way to like nuke this primary, another$100 or$2 million spent over. Is it two months or three months? Is it June? No, it's May.

44:51Emily Jashinsky:May 26th. So almost three months.

44:53Dave Weigel:March, April, May of Republicans like savagely attacking each other. so to spend a hundred million dollars and to have a guy who's been in office for decades and before that was attorney general of taxes like this they know who this guy is and still he gets 41.9 percent um is it crazy to think that uh if cornyn spends another hundred million dollars the next three months against Paxton, and Paxton beats him, that then he's wounded enough that it's actually a toss-up in Texas? Or should we not pay attention to Texas because we've been fooled so many times? It's like Florida. Right. Come on. No.

45:38Dave Weigel:And Tallarico then loses by eight or something.

45:40Murtaza Hussain:Well, and it would be unlike 2018 with Cruz. Cruz has his enemies in Texas, but better at raising money, has no scandal, whatever you think of him, does not have any personal scandals, family man. It would be a weaker candidate they had in 2018, a stronger Democrat. No, not impossible. It's just what's happened. It's that Latino vote shift. If that's what Ken Paxton's betting on, that the Rio Grande Valley is going to lock in the race for him. No, it would be a tougher race. I don't think they're full of it when they say that Paxton makes them spend money and Cornyn doesn't. It would be a, he's part of the establishment race, but it wouldn't be, he would, again, have the money.

46:19Murtaza Hussain:And I they're just Paxton has not has not cultivated the sort of people who can just keep dipping in. There are a lot of in Texas and Paxton was very successful in 2024 in getting rid of in primaries. Republicans who voted to impeach him in the state legislation. That's a smaller investment. That's two hundred thousand dollars. You can take a guy out. It's not if Tallarico becomes a phenom, as he already kind of is and spends 100. Does Paxton have 100 from the NRC? No. And you've seen turning point in groups that are still angry that there wasn't that money for Blake Masters in Arizona, but there was money to save Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.

46:53Murtaza Hussain:It would be a continuing sore point for why should grassroots people get to it. Now, Sat Leadership Fund is the opposite of grassroots. They don't care about that. But that is the sort of thing that Tallarica can talk about. D.C. wants this to happen. I have some donors in D.C. Sure, we all do. but this guy owes people and I don't. The elements of an argument there. And yeah, Pax is just, I do think it's underage. He's the guy. If a social conservative wants to sue abortion clinics or to investigate clinics that do gender medicine for minors, he will do it. But Texas Republicans have not sent one of those guys to the Senate.

47:38Murtaza Hussain:They've sent more talented politicians who have some appeal beyond the conservative base. This would be new for them. If they try Paxton.

47:44Dave Weigel:Now, everybody says Paxton is the more vulnerable candidate. The Paxton crowd, that his defenders, they say the opposite. I'm curious for your take if this is Cope or if there's anything real to this. Their argument is Cornyn has spent$100 million attacking our boy. We love Ken Paxton. We are so mad at how vicious you have been to our guy. That if Cornyn wins, F it. We're staying home. and that a chunk of Paxson voters won't even vote at all. I don't think I buy that. I think what I – the one grain of truth, I think,

48:22David Sirota:is that there's an argument that John Cornyn being the nominee makes it easier for Tallarico to be the anti-system candidate.

48:29Murtaza Hussain:Right.

48:31David Sirota:They're in Washington. And you can imagine Tallarico saying – Most of my life he's been there.

48:37Murtaza Hussain:Exactly. And Tallarico can do the whole, it's both parties in Washington.

48:45David Sirota:Like, it's Washington is the problem, whether Republican or Democrat. And Paxton makes that harder.

48:52Emily Jashinsky:Definitely.

48:52David Sirota:Right? Paxton, I think, then what Tallarico probably has to do is it's more of an anti-Trump campaign or an anti-base of the, like, sort of the extremist base of the, that's how it would be portrayed, of the Republican Party. More of a more percent.

49:07Murtaza Hussain:party yeah exactly they do want to run against paxton that's true yeah yeah right i but i but i

49:12David Sirota:do think that like cornyn being the the old establishment i guess which is kind of crazy but can be portrayed as like like country club republican news right like that's a whole different campaign that i'm not convinced is is like not effective like i think it can be next to a picture Biden.

49:32Dave Weigel:Exactly.

49:33David Sirota:Exactly.

49:34Emily Jashinsky:Oh, yeah. I did see Korn in a sleep on a plane recently with his mouth was open a little bit. So anyway. Vote him out. He was asleep on a plane. He was asleep on a plane, but it was almost like Biden-esque, right? Except he was on a flight, so he should be sleeping on a flight. God bless anyone who can sleep on a plane. All right. We'll have to leave it there, everyone. Dave and Dave, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. This was a lot of fun. We appreciate it. Go check out, obviously, Semaphore and Lever News. That's going to do it for us today, Ryan.

50:00Dave Weigel:Yeah. And so again, breakingpoints.com, we got that month free. Is it BP free 26? Yeah. BP free 26. Free the BP 26. Don't share that with anybody else. That's just for people who watch this segment.

50:12Emily Jashinsky:No, this is for everybody. Share it with a friend.

50:14Dave Weigel:Okay, share it with your friends, but not just not like people that you don't like.

50:18Emily Jashinsky:Do not share it with John Cornyn under any circumstances. He's not to have the code.

50:22Dave Weigel:He just burned$100 million. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it.

50:53James Talarico:We'll see you next time. dot com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Now medical advice eligibility required. See site for details.

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