Jasmine Crockett spent the summer calling her Senate primary loss a racist race.
Now she is publicly questioning whether black voters have any reason to show up for the man who beat her.
A fellow Democrat just said what Crockett is really doing to the Texas Senate race.
Crockett Lost the 2026 Texas Senate Primary and Has Refused to Campaign for the Nominee
James Talarico beat Jasmine Crockett in the Texas Democrat Senate primary on March 3 – 52.4% to 46.2%.
Crockett endorsed him the day after.
Then the cooperation ended.
She skipped the Texas Democratic State Convention and told The Dallas Morning News she would not be hitting the campaign trail for Talarico.
"People keep trying to say, 'Well, Jasmine has to go and hold his hand,'" Crockett said. "No, I don't."
Her stated focus was on down-ballot Democrat candidates she personally selected – a strategy she said would generate black voter turnout without requiring her to campaign for Talarico.
In July, appearing at the Essence Festival in New Orleans, she called the primary she lost to Talarico a racist race.
There was no voter suppression to point to – only a 52-to-46 margin and a campaign that Texas Democrat state Rep. Jolanda Jones said ran without a ground game.
"This L is on her," Jones said.
Crockett Is Hurting Black Voter Turnout and Could Cost Democrats the 2026 Texas Senate Race
With November approaching and the Texas Senate race rated a toss-up by Decision Desk HQ, Crockett has moved from silence to open interference.
"I personally don't feel like the excitement necessarily exists within the black community right now," Crockett said in a recent interview. "I don't feel like they're excited, right?"
Patrick Gaspard of the Center for American Progress took to social media to question whose side Crockett was actually on, calling the situation a self-inflicted wound on the party.
He said treating black voters as a bloc that would only turn out for black candidates was an insult to those voters, and said Crockett was squandering whatever political capital she had left.
Gaspard is no Republican.
When committed Democrats start asking who she is working for, the answer is not James Talarico.
Talarico currently leads Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton 47% to 45% in polling – a margin thin enough that black voter turnout is not optional, it is the race.
Democrats have not won a Texas Senate seat since 1988.
Talarico has pledged $25 million specifically for black voter outreach, and one Democrat strategist warned that waiting until Labor Day to reach those communities means "you're playing to lose."
One Democrat strategist put another number on the table: 34% of black men in Texas voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
With Elon Musk pledging nearly $200 million to back Republican candidates in competitive Senate races – Texas listed among the top targets – Talarico has no margin for a campaign running against him from inside his own party.
Crockett has no one to blame but herself for losing the primary and has been pouting ever since.
She lost a race she was favored to win, with no campaign manager and no ground game, to a candidate who out-raised her by more than two to one.
Democrats have spent thirty years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to turn Texas blue, waiting for the election where everything finally breaks their way.
This November could be their best chance in decades.
A lame-duck congresswoman going on national television to tell black voters their party's nominee does not excite them – before the biggest Texas Senate opportunity since 1988 – is not airing a grievance.
She is setting thirty years of work on fire because she lost a primary.
Democrats cannot afford to lose a single point of black voter turnout in Texas this November.
Jasmine Crockett just handed Ken Paxton a clip he can run in October.
Sources:
- Amy Furr, "Watch — Jasmine Crockett: Black Community in Texas Not 'Excited' About Democrat James Talarico," Breitbart, August 24, 2026.
- Hanna Panreck, "Jasmine Crockett Blasts Her Texas Democratic Primary Loss as 'Racist Race,'" Fox News, July 9, 2026.
- Hanna Panreck, "Jasmine Crockett Faces Criticism From Black Democrats After Losing Texas Senate Primary Race," Fox News, March 5, 2026.
- "Dems Worry James Talarico Lacks Support From Black Voters to Win Texas Senate Race," Daily Caller, August 23, 2026.
- "Dems Worry James Talarico Lacks Support From Black Voters to Win Texas Senate Race," Daily Signal, August 23, 2026.
