TEXAS GOES BLUE: Is The Lone Star GOP Finished After James Talarico And Gina Hinojosa Victories?

0:02Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me once again is Dr. Merrill Matthews. He's the Texas State Chair at Our Republican Legacy. Dr. Matthews, thank you so much for joining me.

0:15Dr. Merrill Matthews: Thank you for having me back, Brittany. All eyes have been on Texas this entire election cycle. They certainly were on Tuesday night, And history was made. A Democrat has not won a statewide election in your state in over 30 years. But we saw State Representative James Tallarico beat the Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton by double digits to win the Senate seat. We also saw Gina Hinojosa beat the incumbent governor, Greg Abbott, by seven points to knock him out of the governor's office. To start off the conversation, what are your thoughts on the results? Well, this is a real repudiation for President Trump and MAGA Republicans, and few states have been more MAGA than Texas.

1:05Dr. Merrill Matthews: And so, as you're pointing out, Texas became, I think, something of a metaphor for the country as a whole, because when President Trump decided to endorse Ken Paxton, arguably the most morally and legally challenged attorney general in the country, over John Cornyn, who was one of the most respected, knowledgeable, and conservative senators in the Senate. It set a stage. And then so from the Democratic side, they nominated a person, James Tallarico, 37 years old, young, upbeat, positive, Presbyterian background. And so he came in into this race. and Democrats, I think, looked at this and said, we may have a chance to beat this, especially when Ken Paxton got the nomination.

1:59Dr. Merrill Matthews: I think Democrats looked at this and said, we may have a chance to win. And over the past several months, I've said, given this is Texas, you probably put the edge, give the edge to Ken Paxton. But don't be surprised if James Tallarico comes up and wins this thing. And what I think we saw from this, and this is why I think Trump's endorsement was just so foolish, because Democrats in the state, there's a lot of Democrats in the state who simply, I say Democrats, they probably would vote Democrat, but they oftentimes don't vote because why bother? It's going to be red, you know, Republicans are going to win.

2:36Dr. Merrill Matthews: And they saw something happening here and they came out and voted in large numbers. And over the past three or four weeks, I've said to people, you know, if they come out, I think a lot of Republicans would split their ticket, would vote for Tallarico, but Republicans otherwise. But I said, if you get a lot of Democrats coming out and they vote straight ticket, you could see a sweep in the things. I didn't think that was likely a couple of weeks ago. About a week ago, I thought this might happen. And we saw that happen. It went down the line. And so all the statewide offices, Ted Cruz is still a senator, so he's not there, but all the statewide offices went to Democrats.

3:17Dr. Merrill Matthews: And I think, this is what I think is sort of key from this. The country had been watching this race and seeing the excitement going in Texas. And I think in a sense, it brought excitement to other states. There would have been a blue sweep anyway, I think. But I think that probably exacerbated it and really accelerated the blue wave that we saw coming. I was just speaking about a Texas poll just last week, less than seven days ago. And it had James Tallarico up by just a few points, but still within the margin of error. They were neck and neck, Paxson and Tallarico. But we saw Abbott with some breathing room.

3:58I believe he had four-ish points in between him and Ina Hosa. Do you think Abbott was just an unintended consequence of how bad of a candidate Paxton was? Do you think if it was Cornyn on the ticket, it would be a different story for Abbott today? He'd be waking up with different news.

4:18Dr. Merrill Matthews: Absolutely. When John Cornyn lost that nomination, a lot of us said, this is going to be a problem here. And I believe that if John Cornyn had got the nomination, he would have won. Maybe not by the numbers that he would in the past, but he would have won. I think that would have carried over to Abbott and some of the other people. So I think you had a down-ballot drag from the Paxton-Tallerico race that ended up affecting all the way down. And this is and that's why I say if you had John Cornyn in there, I still think a lot of people would have said, you know, Cornyn's going to win. And it would have it would have muted some of the excitement that Democrats had.

5:00Dr. Merrill Matthews: But they were very excited. They came out. They voted straight ticket in many cases. There was a bigger margin between Paxton and Tallarico than there were. But when you look at all these other races, it's it's roughly the same. you know, some 51, 52 percent, 53 percent for the Democrat, 45 percent for the Republican. It was pretty much the same all the way down. So it was a I think that's why I say I think the the Paxton Tallarico race became something of a metaphor between here Paxton has all these corruption charges. Democrats are going against corruption. And I think there was just sort of these overtures that just went all the way down the ballot.

5:42Dr. Merrill Matthews: And so you've got Texas going to be, it's going to be a blue state now. And I have to say, Democrats have said for years, we think we can turn Texas blue. Texas got more conservative in its voting pattern. It took Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans to turn Texas blue. Whenever I talked about Texas, I always asked the person I was talking to, is Texas flippable? And I haven't gotten a resounding yes, 100%. I believe with my whole heart we can flip this. It was more of a muted enthusiasm if the person was a Democrat. Now we're seeing James Tallarigo win by 12 points. Do you think that Texas now is firmly blue?

6:26Do you think that Democrats just had a confluence of factors here that helped propel them to such a huge victory in your state? What does that look like? And how do you think Republicans could ever claw that back?

6:40Dr. Merrill Matthews: Texas is going to be blue for at least four years because the governor's seat is four years. And Tallarico will be in there for six years. So Texas will be blue for a while. And to your point, when people would say, you know, you have a growing Hispanic population, minority population, we think eventually we're going to be able to turn it blue. And you heard Democrats, oh, for the last four or five election cycles, they thought maybe this is the time we could do it. Democrats didn't do it. And as I pointed out, in 2024, our elections, the people we were electing in Texas were getting more conservative, not less so, up until this election and it completely flipped.

7:21And so it is, we heard this in even the rural parts of the state,

7:29Dr. Merrill Matthews: People were not satisfied with Trump's tariffs. They felt they were paying more for it. Gasoline in the economy was a big issue. But even here in Texas, the data centers, flop cameras, Governor Abbott was able to push through education choice, which he'd been trying to do for some time. That upset some rural Texans. So there were a number of factors, but I just think sort of the Paxton-Talerico race exacerbated some of these trends that might have happened anyway. In fact, I listened to Gina Hinojosa last night give her acceptance speech. I think she was shocked that she won. You got the sense she made a couple of statements in there that she wasn't really expecting to be there.

8:17Dr. Merrill Matthews: I think over the last week or so, they thought, we may be able to win this thing, and they ended up doing that. But I think this was something that was a shock for people all the way down ballot. I know nationally, a lot of people were shocked that she won. Were you? Over the last week, I had been saying, it looks like Tallarica is going to win. Don't be surprised if he has some coattails and brings Gina Hinojosa in there and perhaps the attorney general's office. I did not really expect Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, to be flipped, but that happened as well. So all these statewide offices went Democratic, and you cannot – I mean, that's just – it's just the power of the Democrats that had the momentum behind them and the ability to come out and beat Ken Paxton, he ended up beating everybody else as well.

9:15We have, as a nation, been watching Texas Senate races over and over again. And we see these Democrats who receive a national profile. I'm looking at you, Beto O 'Rourke. I'm looking at you, Colin Allred. And they run and they get millions and millions poured into those races and they end up losing. Obviously, this didn't happen this time with a state representative, James Tallarico, ultimately winning here, winning by so much. What do you think is the biggest factor here? What did Tallarico have that Beto O 'Rourke, that Colin Alvred did not hear? Was it that Ken Paxton was such a problematic candidate with the litany of personal and professional problems and problems that trailed him?

10:04Was it President Trump and a referendum on him? What exactly was that? Or was it Tallarico's message of perhaps being more moderate, saying, I'm not, this isn't a fight versus the left versus right. This is a fight versus top down, the corporate elite, the billionaire class against the ordinary everyday American.

10:24Dr. Merrill Matthews: I think it's all of the above, but let me hit on a couple of points on that. The local news here occasionally would have Ken Paxton and James Tallarico sort of next to each other in pictures as they're campaigning and so forth. And, Brittany, the difference was just stark. And I pointed out to my wife, I said, you know, James Tallarico is 37. John F. Kennedy was 37 when he went to the Senate. James Tallarico, if you look at his hair, it's kind of John F. Kennedy-ish. He's tall. He's thin. He's upbeat. He's positive. He's got a smile on his face. He's energized. And it just looked like, and I don't want to make too much of a comparison with John F.

11:05Dr. Merrill Matthews: Kennedy, but there are sort of some Kennedy-esque elements going on here. And when you put Tallarico next to Paxton, Paxton's eyes, I pointed out the other day, Even when he's giving speeches, his eyes were almost closed. He's very—Trump used to call Jeb Bush low-energy Jeb Bush. He looked very low-energy. He was never smiling. He was never upbeat. It just looked like the old guard versus the new generation that was coming up here. And it was just stark, those differences. So I think, number one, Democrats had a really good candidate on their side who represented them well. Republicans had a really bad candidate on their side, which represented them very poorly.

11:52Dr. Merrill Matthews: Going back to Ted Cruz in 2018, when Ted Cruz was running for re-election against Beto O 'Rourke, Ted Cruz won by 2.6 percentage points. Beto O 'Rourke had a lot of energy. He did a very good job from a Democratic standpoint, but he never led in the polls. And I've been watching the polls here for months. Tallarico for at least two months, perhaps three months, has been up in almost every poll, usually two to four points. Sometimes he'd get five. There was a couple of them where it was tied, a couple of them which gave Paxton one point. But it was it was just you could tell just by looking at the polls, this was not going to be good for Republicans.

12:31Ken Paxton, he conceded that it was a bad night for Republicans across the country. It's a bad night for Republicans, especially in the Lone Star State there. But what do you think the elections in Texas and those results, what do you think that means for the rest of the country? What's that ripple effect?

12:50Dr. Merrill Matthews: It's going to be an interesting question. I have heard from some people involved in this that some of the people, campaign leaders, posters, and so forth, have already been getting some inquiries from Republicans about the possibility of running for president. So you're going to have a president now. And I got to say, Donald Trump is not helping himself. He came out last night with a tweet saying that the reason Greg Abbott lost is because he abandoned his MAGA principles over the last six months and that if he kept those, he would have won. And I looked at this, Brittany, and I thought, are you completely tone deaf?

13:32Dr. Merrill Matthews: Do you not understand what happened here? Ken Paxton never abandoned his MAGA principles. The person running for attorney general, Mays Middleton, in his ads, he called himself MAGA Mays Middleton. That's how he named himself. The MAGA element here has gotten beaten both from tariffs, from gas prices, from Trump being all over the map on things that he's interested in, except for inflation and those kinds of things, sort of denying those. So it is a real problem for Republicans. And I think you're going to see a number of Republicans say it's time for us to begin to separate ourselves from Donald Trump.

14:13Dr. Merrill Matthews: Brittany, I would argue one of the biggest problems we've had over the past two years is Republicans who will simply not say, Mr. President, I disagree with you on those tariffs. Or Mr. President, I disagree with you on the war on Iran or the way you're prosecuting the war on Iran. It just they would not do it. They enabled him and they supported him. And I think you're going to see some who are going to begin to pull away now because Donald Trump is going to be a drag on anybody who's running for president as a Republican. I saw a lot of man on the street interviews from Texans talking about who they were supporting.

14:52And I've seen multiple people say I'm conservative, but and they were defending their vote for James Tallarico. But prices are too high. But Ken Paxton and his scandals are a bridge too far for me. But I don't agree with President Trump on X, Y, or Z. What do you think conservatives in Texas can learn from this moment?

15:16Dr. Merrill Matthews: I don't know if they're going to learn from this moment. We'll have to see. It was interesting. Donald Trump has come up and he blamed Fox News. He said, as I mentioned, Greg Abbott abandoned MAGA principles. And he sent out a tweet saying if he had been on the ballot, they would have won in a landslide. He is completely tone deaf to what is happening here. And it's not clear whether or not that's going to pull over his MAGA Republicans. But I did see a radio talk show host from Wisconsin who's very much a MAGA person send out. She took his tweet and put it up and said, the guy is just tone deaf.

15:55Dr. Merrill Matthews: That's optimistic for me because you're going to have to have Republicans get away from this and turn back to the basic Republican ideas of free markets, free trade, constitutional government, limited government, peace through strength. They need to regain those things that really worked well for them for so many years. And the MAGA Republicans just have abandoned virtually all of those principles. And I don't know if they're going to turn back and turn away from Donald Trump or if they're going to try to support him and say and follow what he says. It's I don't know where the Republican Party is going to go right now, just as I don't know where the Democratic Party is going to go.

16:37And I was having these or very similar conversations rather two years ago after the election there when Republicans had a full sweep and Democrats felt that they were or people criticized Democrats that it seemed like they were out in the wilderness a bit. Do you think Republicans right now, this is their out in the wilderness moment, Republicans in disarray? Do you agree with those characterizations?

17:04Dr. Merrill Matthews: I think it is. I think it is the case. And one of the things that we'll have to see happens is after the race, will Republicans get together and assess this thing and come out with an assessment of what happened in this election? You know, Democrats did that after the last election, and then they came up with their sort of assessment, and they refused to release it because they didn't want people to see what was happening there. And it's hard to know right now because Donald Trump still controls the Republican Party. He still has his tentacles on all aspects of the Republican Party. So can the Republican Party actually have a serious evaluation of what happened in this election?

17:48Dr. Merrill Matthews: And I don't know how this will play out. It may be that Republicans just have to pull away and say, we're going to look at this ourselves, because Donald Trump apparently is not going to concede that his policies and his personality and things that he has done has been the cause of this defeat. Well, there is certainly a lot to look out for between now and 2028 and the rest of President Trump's second term. And I hope that we can have many more conversations as we go through it. Dr. Merrill Matthews, thank you so much for coming back on. You're welcome back on anytime. Thank you, Brittany, for having me.

18:35Thank you.