In a critical 2026 battle for control of the U.S. Senate, The Associated Press early Wednesday declared James Talarico the winner of the Democratic primary in Texas, while incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will spend weeks to come competing in a runoff election.

The AP called Talarico as the victor over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett at 2:37 a.m. in a closely watched race that offered candidates with contrasting styles and was seen as an indicator of Democrats’ approach to the midterms. 

As of later Wednesday morning, Talarico led Crockett, 53% to 45.7%, with 91% of the votes counted. But Crockett raised questions Tuesday night about vote tabulation in her home base of Dallas County, blaming Republicans for targeting the county with a rules change about where voters could cast ballots.

On the Republican side, Cornyn had eked out a single percentage-point lead over Paxton in the GOP primary as of Wednesday morning, with the AP reporting he had 41.9% of the vote and Paxton had 40.8%, with 93% of the votes counted.

With U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt pulling in about 13.5% of the vote in the Republican primary, neither Cornyn nor Paxton earned the more-than 50% needed to avoid a runoff, set for May 26. President Donald Trump has so far not made an endorsement, which both candidates would treasure.

No Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen

Whoever emerges as the Republican nominee will be considered the favorite in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the late Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Democrats would likely need to win the race to have any chance of taking control of the Senate, which is now dominated by Republicans with 53 seats and would require Democrats to net four new seats nationwide.

But a Paxton-Talarico matchup would likely provide Democrats with their best chance to win over independents. 

Paxton has drawn comparisons to Trump for his unapologetic conservative streak on cultural issues — and a propensity for controversy. A favorite of hard-right Texas Republicans, Paxton was attacked relentlessly in the primary for scandals related to bribery and infidelity.

Those controversies could turn off the moderate voters Talarico courted in the Democratic primary more than the base-driven Crockett.

Democrats in Washington praised the outcome. “James Talarico spent his time in the State House fighting for working families and standing against the corrupt special interests making life unaffordable for Texans. That record is exactly what this moment calls for — and what neither Ken Paxton nor John Cornyn can offer,” said Lauren French, a spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, the campaign arm for Senate Democrats, in a statement.

‘Judgment Day is coming’

The GOP primary pitted an establishment figure in Cornyn against a MAGA favorite in Paxton and has been bitterly fought.

The runoff appeared likely to be just as heated, with Cornyn making a direct appeal to electability, saying Paxton would likely drag down House races, and blasting the attorney general as an unworthy standard-bearer.

“I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” he said. “If he’s nominated, there’s a high risk that Paxton would lose this Senate seat, taking five congressional seats down with him … Ken Paxton as the nominee would be a dead weight at the top of the ticket.”

Cornyn previewed a no-holds-barred approach to the last 12 weeks of the race.

“Texas Republican primary voters will hear more about my record of delivering conservative victories in the United States Senate and learn more about Ken’s indefensible personal behavior and failures in office,” he said. “Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.”

‘Change won’

Paxton counterattacked in his own speech Tuesday night, criticizing Cornyn as insufficiently loyal to Trump and assailing him for sponsoring a gun safety law after a 2022 school shooting that killed 19 in Uvalde, Texas.

Paxton noted that most GOP primary voters cast ballots against the incumbent, despite the record spending Cornyn and allied groups poured into the race.

“Nearly 60% of Texas voters who have known Cornyn for over 40 years, after hearing $100 million worth of ads, chose to vote against the incumbent,” he said. “That’s historic.”

“Tonight, change was on the ballot and change won,” he said. “Texans want new leadership. They want someone with a proven record of fighting and winning for them, and that’s exactly what I’m going to deliver.” 

House races in Texas deliver some surprises

State legislators in Texas redrew their U.S. House maps last year, a rare mid-decade redistricting that scrambled some incumbents’ districts.

One casualty appears to be Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a four-term incumbent Republican from the Houston area.

Crenshaw is a reliable conservative who nonetheless has at times gotten on the wrong side of Trump. Crenshaw was the only Texas U.S. House Republican incumbent whom Trump did not endorse.

Beleaguered Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales is headed to a runoff against challenger Brandon Herrera, The Associated Press said early Wednesday. Sordid details of Gonzales’ affair with a married staffer, who later died by suicide, surfaced and dogged his campaign in the race’s closing weeks.

The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday morning its members had voted to create an investigative subcommittee to look into allegations that Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

The members of that subcommittee will be announced once they are chosen. 

The Ethics Committee, a 10-member panel made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, wrote in the press release announcing its investigation into Gonzales that the creation of a subcommittee “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”

A Democratic incumbent-against-incumbent race in the Houston area also appeared runoff-bound, with Rep. Christian Menefee leading Rep. Al Green 45.9% to 44.4% with 87% of the votes counted by early Wednesday. The state’s redistricting threw the two House members into the same district.

North Carolina, Arkansas 

The Tuesday primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas marked the first elections of the midterm year. 

In the North Carolina race to replace Sen. Thom Tillis, who is retiring, Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper and former state GOP Chair Michael Whatley easily earned their party’s nominations.

The race, seen as one of very few considered a true tossup, like Texas will be crucial to which party controls the Senate next year.

In a closely watched U.S. House race, incumbent Democrat Valerie Foushee narrowly led challenger Nida Allam by a single percentage point, 49.22% to 48.21%.

In Arkansas, Sen. Tom Cotton easily won his primary and will be heavily favored to beat Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation farmer who won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report. 

President Donald Trump promoted his second-term record in a wide-ranging speech at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas on Friday, building on themes from his State of the Union address earlier in the week.

But he did not issue a highly anticipated endorsement just days before a heated U.S. Senate primary that’s pitted incumbent John Cornyn against two challengers, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Before the event, Trump told reporters he had “pretty much” decided on who he would endorse in the midterm election contest, but wouldn’t do so Friday, according to a White House pool report.

While leaving the White House en route to Texas earlier in the day, Trump also suggested he might direct a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, saying the Cuban American community would appreciate such action.

“We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years,” he told reporters. “They’re in big trouble, and we could very well (do) something good, I think, very positive for the people that were expelled or worse, from Cuba that live here.”

Tensions are high between the United States and Cuba. The Cuban government said Thursday its border patrol killed four Cuban expatriates living in the United States who sought to infiltrate the country in a speedboat.

Little discussion of energy policy

The Texas speech was advertised as an address on energy, and Trump spoke in front of signs reading “American Energy Dominance” and against a backdrop of oil tankers. 

But he hardly mentioned the issue apart from short sections at the start and end of his remarks in which he claimed credit for lowering gas prices. 

Instead, the president jumped from topic to topic, defending his administration’s controversial record on immigration enforcement and a military operation in Venezuela while attacking Democrats as out of touch and ramping up calls for election administration changes he said would keep the party from winning future elections. 

Among them are the House-passed SAVE America Act, which would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. While it has little chance of Senate passage, Trump has continued to advocate for it.

He claimed, without evidence, that Democrats can only win elections by cheating. If Congress makes changes to national elections laws, the party would be shut out, he said.

“They will never win because their policy is no good,” he said. “They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everyone. They want open borders so that the world’s criminals can pour into our country, which we’ve done a good job. I’ll tell you what: ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has done such a great job.”

Midterm stakes

Trump joked early in the appearance that he was advised to not make political statements.

But several of his digressions were focused on elections this year and beyond.

After exulting, in sometimes exaggerated language, his record through one year of unified GOP control, he said it was crucial for Republicans to maintain their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. 

Noting that Democratic members did not stand and applaud at several points of his State of the Union address, a point that Republicans have seized upon repeatedly as a campaign issue in the days since the speech, Trump said the Democrats were “crazy.”

“They’re crazy,” he said. “We got to win midterms. We brought this country back. We don’t want to lose the midterms. We got to win the midterms.”

Election forecasters project the most likely outcome of November’s midterms is for Democrats to gain control of the House while Republicans keep the Senate. Very few seats are seen as toss-ups.

Trump also teased a potential third presidential term, which would violate the Constitution’s prohibition of more than two terms. He said he was entitled to another term because an election was “stolen” from him, a reference to the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden and ever since has claimed, without evidence, wrongly decided.

“Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more?” he asked the crowd. “Well, we’re entitled to it because they cheated like hell in the second.”

Texas Senate GOP battle

In the Senate contest, Trump shouted out Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt, without indicating which he might favor.

Election Day is Tuesday, though with three major candidates, it is likely headed for a May runoff between Cornyn and Paxton.

Trump wore a version of his signature red hat with the phrase “Gulf of America” across the front instead of the usual “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico early in his second term. Corpus Christi’s port is on the gulf.

Venezuela 

At the open and close of the roughly hourlong speech, Trump promoted his energy policy and criticized Biden for regulations that Trump said slowed energy production. 

By boosting production and bringing in oil from Venezuela after deposing leftist President Nicolás Maduro in January, Trump said he has brought down the price of gas and consumer products across the board.

Biden and congressional Democrats “waged a radical-left war on American oil and natural gas like you’ve never seen before,” he said. “They were killing our country…. All of that changed my first day back in office.”

The latest government statistics, though, show that energy costs in January were about the same as they were when Trump took office, dropping only .1%, while inflation in the economy as a whole stubbornly continues at about 2.4%.

U.S. involvement in Venezuela, following Maduro’s capture, would also help spur the energy sector, Trump said. 

The new government, led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has been receptive to selling crude oil to the United States, where it will be refined, Trump said Friday. The arrangement would benefit both countries, he said.