James Talarico won his contentious race for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas against Ken Paxton on Tuesday, becoming the first Democrat to end a three-decade statewide drought, The Associated Press reported.
Talarico, 37, a Presbyterian seminarian, ran on a platform that sought to redefine the traditional divides in America as not “left versus right” but rather “top versus bottom,” according to The New York Times.
The former middle school teacher will become Texas’ first Democratic senator since 1993, the AP reported.
Voter backlash against the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration and the political charisma of Talarico helped Democrats finally secure a hard-fought win after past election failures, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Paxton, the Texas attorney general, was endorsed in the primary by Trump over longtime Sen. John Cornyn. Cornyn supporters predicted that backing Paxton would force the GOP to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to support a flawed candidate, according to the newspaper.
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Talarico will become the Senate’s youngest member and replace Cornyn, 74, the AP reported.
“We’ve had a difficult night tonight across the country, but it’s not over,” Paxton told supporters.
An eighth-generation Texan, Talarico campaigned on his deep ties to Texas, the Times reported. He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2018, but his district was redrawn by Republicans. He eventually switched to a safer seat that now includes the state capital of Austin, according to the newspaper.
Talarico became the first Democrat to win a Senate seat since Lloyd Bentsen was reelected in 1988, the Times reported. That was a year before Talarico was born, according to the AP.