Thirty-year drought

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: A Senate showdown.

Today is the last day for Texas voters to choose their candidates for the November general election. Early voting began in February. And polls say the races are close.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: On the Republican side, a longtime incumbent faces a challenge from the state attorney general and a U.S. congressman. On the Democratic side, a moderate-branded state senator and a U.S. congresswoman are vying for the seat.

WORLD’s Todd Vician has more from Houston.

TODD VICIAN: Republican Senator John Cornyn is seeking a 5th term in Washington, and he’s running on a long track record.

CORNYN PRESSER: Like I said, complacency is our biggest threat.

He has millions of dollars in funding from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he's endorsed by law enforcement groups, and he votes with President Trump 99 percent of the time.

FEATHER: He doesn’t always vote with you, but he always does the right thing as far as he can make it work.

SuZanne Feather is a longtime Cornyn volunteer. She helped with setup at a Houston restaurant before the senior Texas senator spoke to about 50 supporters the first week of early voting.

CORNYN: Well the good news is that you’ve been around awhile you learn a few things…

FEATHER: He is the only politician that I have worked with that I have never been disappointed in.

But Cornyn faces the stiffest competition of his long political career from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Here he is during a campaign stop at a bar aptly named The Angry Elephant:

PAXTON: I’ve been acquitted, I’ve been redeemed, and I’m on my way to winning this race.

Paxton championed his no-holds barred attacks on progressive politics and federal overreach. That message resonates with Republicans like Tom Oliverson, a state representative who sits at the desk Paxton once occupied.

OLIVERSON: The status quo is not okay for me.

Oliverson introduced Paxton to supporters during early voting.

OLIVERSON: I want someone with more conservative values, and I want somebody who's going to be like Ted Cruz was when he first got in the Senate…

But Paxton’s career and personal life have been riddled with scandal. He narrowly survived impeachment proceedings over financial fraud allegations. And last year, his wife filed for divorce on biblical grounds. Paxton has said the allegations are political hit jobs. He had a slight lead in the polls heading into early voting.

PAXTON: I feel like we we have so many issues that we need to deal with from the deficit to China to better judges to actually representing Texas values on Second Amendment.

But the GOP worries he could lose a general election and a crucial seat in Washington. Here’s Senator Tim Scott, chair of the GOP’s Senate fundraising committee, on Fox and Friends.

SCOTT: If it's not John Cornyn, it is a guaranteed 100 plus million dollars spent and no guarantee that we hold Texas. It is that serious.

Cornyn also faces a primary challenge from U.S. Congressman Wesley Hunt. Hunt’s polling and fundraising trails behind the leaders, but he could block any of the candidates from getting 50% of the votes. If that happens, the top two will head to a runoff in May.

In the Democratic primary, state Representative James Talarico and U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett are both pitching themselves as the answer to combating the Trump administration.

JONES: The actual politics and policies proposed by both Crockett and Talarico are pretty similar.

Rice University political science fellow Mark Jones says Crockett is in the lead with non-white voters. But Talarico is enjoying a popularity surge. And their campaigns are completely different.

JONES: It’s more in terms of style and background and just overall vibes and likability.

Crockett is a former lawyer known in Washington for her quick comebacks and arguments with conservative House Republicans… like this one with then-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene last year.

CROCKETT: You're the one talking about–

GREENE: I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading…

CROCKETT: If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?

COMER: A what now?

Crockett has won longshot campaigns before, and she believes she can win this year’s race not by pitching to moderates, but by bringing out the blue progressives in a red state.

CROCKETT: If I allow someone to disrespect me, how is it that the people that I represent will believe that I will fight for them? [That's right.]

On Friday, former Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed Crockett.

Crockett’s competition James Talarico has won swing districts before too, and he’s on a mission to convert Republicans.

TALARICO: That word love is maybe the most important word in the English language. It's certainly the most important word in all of our lives. And yet we rarely hear it spoken in our politics.

The 36-year-old seminary student has put his ordination plans on hold to focus on politics first.

TALARICO: Politics is just another word for how we treat our neighbors. And we should treat each other a lot better than this.

In 2021, he claimed God is “nonbinary” while arguing against a law that would bar boys from playing in girls’ sports. Since then, he’s condemned Christian nationalism, argued that the Bible does not talk about abortion, and claimed conservatives manipulate Scripture for political gain.

Early voting turnout was unusually high, with Democrats leading the surge. Here’s Jones again with the polling:

JONES: No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. And so hope springs eternal, but Democrats this year are optimistic with Donald Trump in the White House and the potential to face a damaged or flawed Republican candidate, that this could be the year that they actually are able to win a statewide race and break that losing streak that's been hanging over them for now, 30 years.

A record $110 million has already been spent on each side for advertising alone.

If either race comes to a runoff, those will take place in May.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in Houston, Texas. Additional reporting and writing by Carolina Lumetta.

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