WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, appears to be inching closer to a U.S. Senate bid, scheduling a “special announcement” for Monday.
Crockett, a second-term representative with a large national social media following, has teased a Senate run for weeks, saying publicly that she was exploring the possibility via polling and that she believed she could do what no Texas Democrat has done in over 30 years — win statewide — by expanding the electorate.
“I am closer to yes than I am no,” she said in an interview with MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, on Sunday.
In one of the clearest signs that she’s leaning towards yes, Crockett told The Dallas Morning News she called both of her prospective primary opponents, former Rep. Colin Allred and state Rep. James Talarico, to discuss the results of polling she had commissioned. The Talarico campaign said he called Crockett over the weekend, but that no polling data was shared; the Crockett campaign said the congresswoman offered to share internal polling but that Talarico didn’t request to see it.
Crockett’s entry into the race would scramble what had been a two-man primary to this point, increasing the likelihood that the March 3 primary goes to a runoff. Many Democrats were hoping that their primary could be wrapped up by early March, given that the Republican primary between Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt is likely going to a runoff. Such a scenario would have given the winning Democrat time to raise and spend money in a general election scenario while Republicans continued to fight each other.
Democrats had been trying to both avoid a glut of candidates running for the same office and attempting to organize a slate — Allred, Talarico, Rep. Joaquin Castro and 2018 candidate Beto O’Rourke held a Zoom meeting over the summer, to discuss dividing up the marquee statewide offices between them. But with all interested in U.S. Senate, an attractive race given there is a competitive Republican primary, no agreement was ever reached, and Allred launched his campaign shortly after.
With little time left until the Dec. 8 filing deadline, Crockett also said on MS NOW she wanted to organize a slate of Democrats with different electoral strengths.
“We also need to make sure we have, what I consider to be, a strong slate — people that can also raise money, people that also have different groups of people that are attracted to them,” Crockett said, adding that she is the leading candidate among Black and brown voters.
“Instead of relying on one person to kind of carry the load, what type of ticket [can we run?]” she said on MS NOW. “So I’ve actually been talking to other candidates, potential candidates, as well, trying to recruit them.”
Democratic state legislators are already running for the other statewide positions, and getting candidates to shift gears before Monday’s filing deadline would be challenging.
Matt Angle, a Democratic operative and founder of the Lone Star Project, said the upside for Democrats is that the candidate that emerges from the primary will have been well-tested. But he lamented that they were not able to work out a slate where the strongest Democrats could run together instead of against each other.
“Assuming that Congresswoman Crockett gets in, it means next fall, two of our best communicators are going to be on the sidelines, not seeking office,” Angle said. “That’s frustrating.
“This is a year in which I think there’s more opportunities, Republicans are more vulnerable in Texas than they’ve been in a while,” Angle continued. “And so you hate that we’ve got our best candidates running against each other.”
Public polling of the race indicates that Crockett would be a formidable primary candidate, but may struggle, as Democrats in Texas have for decades, in a general election. A University of Houston Hobby School poll from late September, which included O’Rourke in a potential primary, found Crockett leading the field at 31% and beating both Allred and Talarico in head-to-head matchups. In general election matchups against each of the three Republican candidates, the poll found Crockett losing, though her position against Attorney General Ken Paxton was within the margin of error.
A public polling memo from Change Research, conducted in late November, found similar warning signs for Crockett. She had both the highest favorability rating among all candidates, at 33%, but also the highest percentage of voters who found her unfavorable, among the Democratic candidates. And the poll found that 49% of voters said they would definitely not vote for her, higher than Allred’s or Talarico’s share.
But Crockett has said she believes she can turn out unlikely voters and that her data shows she can win.
“I am very formidable, regardless of what people may want to put out into the atmosphere,” she said on MS Now. “The numbers are the numbers.”
