For years, Texas has been the football Lucy yanks away from Democrats. Every cycle brings the same hopeful question, and every cycle ends the same way. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994. None has won a Senate seat since 1988, the year before Talarico was born. The streak is now more than three decades long.

So why does 2026 feel different? Because of who Republicans nominated. On 26 May, Attorney General Ken Paxton beat four-term incumbent John Cornyn in the GOP runoff, sealed by a late endorsement from President Trump. The primary became the most expensive in Senate history, with Republicans pouring in around $100 million.

Cornyn would have been the safer bet for his party. Senate Republicans knew it, which is why their campaign arm spent heavily trying to stop Paxton. They believed the seat was easier to defend with Cornyn at the top of the ticket. Now they’re stuck with the candidate they feared.

The irony is sharp. Cornyn, 74, spent decades building the Texas Republican Party, served as Senate GOP whip, and chaired the party’s national fundraising arm. He had the establishment, the money, and the experience. What he lacked was Trump’s full-throated support, and in today’s GOP that turned out to be the only currency that mattered. Loyalty beat seniority, and it wasn’t especially close.

Paxton is a fighter, and his supporters love him for it. But the baggage is real, and it’s extensive. He has faced criminal indictments. He has faced whistleblower allegations. The Republican-controlled Texas House even impeached him, though the Texas Senate later acquitted him. Last summer, his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on what she called biblical grounds.

To his base, those battles are proof he’s a fighter in the Trump mold. To general-election voters, they may read differently. That’s the gap Democrats are counting on. The closest parallel is Alabama in 2017, when Republican Roy Moore, dogged by sexual-misconduct allegations, lost a safe red seat to Democrat Doug Jones. Jones won by less than two points, the first Alabama Democrat elected to the Senate in 25 years, even after a late Trump endorsement of Moore.

Even Karl Rove, no friend of Texas Democrats, conceded the point. He said Cornyn would have won going away, while Paxton carries enough baggage to put the seat in play. When the architect of Bush-era Texas politics says the race is live, it’s worth taking seriously.

Here’s where the race gets interesting for anyone tracking veteran candidates. Texas is one of the most military-heavy states in the country, home to roughly 1.4 million veterans and a string of major installations. Yet neither Senate nominee served in uniform. Talarico is a teacher and seminarian. Paxton is a career politician and lawyer.

That leaves the national-security lane open. In most Texas races, Republicans claim it by default. This time, there’s no veteran on the ballot to plant a flag there, which gives Talarico an opening he wouldn’t have against a candidate with a service record. He can compete on military and veterans’ issues without facing the biography that usually shuts Democrats out.

It cuts the other way too, of course. Talarico can’t lean on a uniform he never wore. He’ll have to earn standing on defense and veterans’ policy the hard way, through positions and outreach rather than a DD-214. Still, against an opponent in the same boat, the playing field is level in a way it rarely is in Texas.

So how might he use the opening? The smart approach is to make veterans’ issues local and concrete. Texas hosts massive installations and hundreds of thousands of post-9/11 veterans, many of them dealing with the same VA strains showing up nationwide. A candidate who shows up for those voters, talks about their care, and treats them as constituents rather than props can compete for a bloc Republicans usually take for granted. He doesn’t need to out-hawk Paxton. He needs to out-care him.

A few figures frame the whole contest. Each is checkable, and each tells part of the story.

What these numbers don’t settle is the outcome. A tied poll in May is not a win in November, and Texas has broken Democratic hearts with polls like this before. Paxton also underperformed other statewide Republicans in early surveys, but underperforming and losing aren’t the same thing. The fundamentals still favor the GOP in a state Trump carried comfortably.

National Democrats see enough to invest, though. The party has signaled it will spend heavily, betting that a flawed opponent plus a credible nominee equals a real shot. Former President Obama met with Talarico in May to boost the campaign. That kind of attention doesn’t flow to a hopeless race.

Texas isn’t happening in a vacuum. Democrats nationally argue that 2026 could bring a blue wave, fueled by backlash to Trump administration policies on prices, the war in Iran, and more. In that climate, a normally safe red seat starts to look at least worth contesting. Furthermore, the party only needs to flip four seats to take the Senate, so every plausible target matters.

The path to this matchup helps too. Paxton didn’t win cleanly in March. He, Cornyn, and Representative Wesley Hunt split the first round three ways, and no one cleared 50%. That forced the May runoff, where Trump’s late endorsement finally pushed Paxton over the top. Hunt then backed him. So Paxton arrives as the nominee, but only after a bruising, expensive intraparty war that left scars.

Trump’s role looms over everything. He stayed neutral for months, then jumped in at the end, calling Paxton loyal while pointedly noting that Cornyn hadn’t always backed him. The endorsement decided the runoff. Whether it helps in November is a separate question, because what energizes a GOP primary electorate doesn’t always travel to the general.

For a site that tracks veteran Democrats, Texas is a useful test case in the negative. It shows what happens when neither party fields a veteran in a state where service runs deep. The credibility contest doesn’t disappear. Instead, it gets fought on other ground.

That’s worth remembering as the cycle develops. Veteran candidates give Democrats a built-in answer on national security, but they aren’t the only path. Talarico is trying to win a military state with faith, economic populism, and an opponent who can’t stop tripping over his own record. If it works, it won’t be because of a uniform. It’ll be because the other side nominated someone too damaged to hold a seat that should have been safe.

Will it actually work? Probably not, if history is the guide. The smart money still says Texas stays red. But “probably not” is a long way from “no chance,” and that distance is itself the story. We’ll know on 3 November.

What’s certain is that Democrats are treating this as a real race, not a symbolic one. The party has signaled heavy spending. Big names are showing up. And the national press is covering Texas as a genuine pickup target for the first time in years. None of that guarantees a win. It does mean the seat won’t be conceded.

For veteran candidates elsewhere, the lesson cuts a useful angle. Indeed, service is a powerful asset, but it isn’t the only road to authority on national security. Meanwhile, Talarico is testing whether faith, focus, and a flawed opponent can do some of the same work. If he comes close, expect other Democrats in tough states to study the playbook. However, if he doesn’t, the case for running veterans only gets stronger.