Democratic response to Jasmine Crockett’s Senate candidacy says it all

WASHINGTON — There are many reasons to be skeptical about Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s chances in the U.S. Senate race in Texas. While Crockett’s television hits and podcast interviews delight liberals, he has only won in safe Democratic seats. His preferred strategy of focusing on increasing voter turnout has little track record of success. Republicans are openly enthusiastic about his decision.

But if Democratic elected officials share this skepticism, they are unwilling to say it out loud. They are also unwilling to fully endorse her campaign or back her against her primary opponent, state Rep. James Talarico.

“It is very possible that he could organize a good campaign,” said Sen. Rubén Gallego (D-Ariz.).

“She is an exceptional person and an important voice in her state,” added Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).

“I’m obviously focused on the House, not the Senate,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), declining to discuss the ambitions of one of the most prominent members of his caucus.

Uncertainty about the usefulness of Crockett’s candidacy extended even to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the members of the so-called “Fight Club” group of progressive senators pushing for a more aggressive approach to combating Donald Trump.

“There are some places where primaries are good, and there are places where they can be a headache,” Murphy told News themezone. “A primary can ultimately get a lot of new people to register and a lot of new people to get involved.”

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The hesitant salute to Crockett reflects the party’s uncertainty about how to navigate the anti-Trump, anti-establishment energy coursing through the party, which closely mirrors the GOP’s crisis in the first half of the 2010s. Democrats hope to mirror the incredibly strong midterm election results that Republicans had in those years.

But they hope to avoid the drawbacks the Republican Party experienced in those years: Primary voters repeatedly elected weak candidates who handed winnable elections to the opposition. The consensus among party operatives is that Crockett is the Democratic equivalent of Christine O’Donnell either Richard Mourdocka candidate whose fighting spirit energizes the party’s base but whose rhetoric (such as Crockett saying that conservatives are “intrinsically violent” or suggesting that Trump’s Latino supporters have a “slave mentality”) repels undecided voters.

“This feels like a Democratic tea party moment,” said Adam Carlson, founder of the Democratic polling firm Zenith Research. “Democratic primary voters are tired of having candidates dictated to them and are saying, ‘Stop telling us who’s electable. Let’s vote for whoever we like best.'”

The party leadership has long managed to closely manage the primaries. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), known as a fierce recruiter, was also adept at subtly and not-so-subtly discouraging candidates, helping the party avoid contentious primaries in Florida and Kansas in recent years.

And voters largely accepted the wishes of party leaders. In the first half of Trump’s term, victories by insurgent progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were the exception rather than the rule, and voters, especially in swing states and districts, backed moderate candidates seen as sure-fire options to win. That trend largely continued through the 2020, 2022 and 2024 elections.

Democrats in those elections often benefited from anti-Trump energy, and there were clear cases of the party choosing the wrong candidate. fewdistant and often limited to Lower-Stakes Races for the US House of Representatives. But some party operators fear they could be much more common in this cycle.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) indirectly compared Crockett to Aftyn Behn, the Tennessee state lawmaker whose liberal stances and controversial social media posts some Democrats blamed for squandering the party’s chance to gain a deep red House seat earlier this month.

“I know Texas is red, and I also know that you have to bring some people to the other side,” Fetterman told News themezone. “And now, what happened in Tennessee? You know, we had that total disaster on our side, and that could have been really, really competitive if it had been a more reasonable type of candidate.”

Crockett’s entry into the race apparently forced former Rep. Colin Allred, potentially a much stronger candidate, to challenge Rep. Julie Johnson for a safe Democratic House seat. Allred was 6 percentage points ahead of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the state when she challenged Sen. Ted Cruz last cycle.

Allred’s team described his decision, which leaves Talarico as Crockett’s only primary competition, as a selfless decision that would give the party’s nominee a 13-week lead in the general election by avoiding a runoff, which is almost certain in the GOP primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. (Texas requires a primary runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.)

But as the likelihood of Crockett running for the Senate became clear in recent weeks, Democrats in the state couldn’t find anyone willing to dissuade her. Senate Democrats still don’t see Texas, an ultra-expensive state that could only be competitive if Cornyn loses to the deeply conservative and ethically challenged Paxton, as an essential part of their path to the majority.

Even if they had, Crockett, to put it lightly, doesn’t seem like the type to be swayed by the pleas of party elders.

“It’s strange that people think I can win the races I won and I’m still here whether I want to or not.” he told CNN last week before officially announcing his decision. “But it’s okay. I’m very self-aware, right?”

With Allred out of the race, it’s now a showdown between Crockett and Talarico, widely seen as another rising star in the party and someone who has amassed a $5 million war chest since entering the race this summer, according to Federal Election Commission filings from October. (Crockett has approximately $4.6 million in his account.)

Crockett’s inelectability, in the eyes of most Democratic operatives, comes down to both his insistence on turning out base Democratic voters at the expense of persuasion and his tendency to actively insult Trump voters.

“There are simply not enough Democrats to win using a base-heavy strategy in Texas,” Carlson said.

The other concern Democrats have about Crockett is, as one strategist put it, her “strong self-image.” His campaign announcement included no mention of policies or voter concerns; It was a video of herself with audio of Trump insulting her. At the beginning of his inaugural address, Crockett said he was running because “what we need is for me to have a bigger voice.”

Crockett’s campaign did not respond to an email requesting comment. During an appearance on CNN Monday night, Crockett went further than before in suggesting he would reach out to some Trump voters.

“We’re going to be able to get people who potentially voted for Trump even though I’m obviously one of his most vocal opponents because, at the end of the day, they vote for whoever they think is fighting for them,” he told host Laura Coates.

But he reiterated that his top priority would be to turn out otherwise apathetic voters, a strategy even many other progressives have distanced themselves from. “Our goal is to make sure that we can engage people that historically haven’t been talked to because there are a lot of people that are ignored, specifically in the state of Texas,” he said. “Listen, the state of Texas is 61% people of color. We have a lot of good people we can talk to.”

A Democrat who works for a House campaign in Texas’ heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley, an area that has leaned sharply Republican over the past decade, noted that Crockett’s announcement video included no mention of the high cost of living, a message the party has used to win back Latino voters in other elections this year.

“It’s just not the message these voters are looking for,” said the agent, who requested anonymity to speak candidly because his candidate is neutral in the Senate primary. “People here are worried about a bloodbath in the negative vote.”

While Crockett has a name-tag advantage and starts in the lead, Democrats watching the race say he also has exceptionally high unfavorable ratings, even among members of his own party. Talarico allies hope that a closer look at Crockett’s record, including his past support for Israel, his ties to the cryptocurrency industry and his acceptance of money from the corporate political action committee, rather than just his television appearances, will convince the party’s voters. Talarico gives them the best chance to win at the state level in Texas for the first time in 30 years.

“We are building a movement in Texas, fueled by unprecedented grassroots fundraising and 10,000 volunteers who are working to defeat the billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians who have taken over our state,” Talarico said in a statement after Crockett’s entry into the race. “Our movement is rooted in unity over division, which is why we welcome Congresswoman Crockett to this race.”