Rep. Jasmine Crockett won't say whether she'll support the man who beat her. The Texas Democrat told The Dallas Morning News she has "no idea" if she will actively back James Talarico's campaign for the U.S. Senate, the same seat she wanted. She isn't returning his calls. She isn't going to the party convention. And she's raising pointed doubts about whether Black voters will show up for Talarico at all.
For a party that needs every vote it can muster to compete in Texas, this is the opposite of unity. It is a public, slow-motion refusal to rally behind the nominee, and it comes from one of the most visible Democrats in the state.
Talarico, a state representative, won the Democratic primary in March, defeating Crockett by roughly seven points. The New York Post reported the margin at 52.8 percent to 45.9 percent with 92 percent of expected votes counted, a decisive result that required no runoff. Republicans had openly preferred Crockett as the nominee. Fox News host Sean Hannity said on air during primary night, "We're cheering for Jasmine Crockett," viewing her as the weaker general election candidate.
They had reason to think so. Crockett's tenure in Congress has been marked by a pattern of provocative public statements that energize one slice of the Democratic base while alienating everyone else. She injected race into the Karmelo Anthony verdict, drawing bipartisan criticism, and has courted controversy on multiple fronts.
Now, rather than stepping aside gracefully after a primary loss, Crockett appears to be salting the earth behind her.
Talarico called Crockett and left a voicemail floating the idea of her delivering the keynote address at the Texas Democratic Party state convention. Crockett's response, as Newsweek reported, was to ignore it entirely.
"I had a missed call that I've not returned, nor have I listened to the message from Talarico. It seemed like an afterthought invite. I can't say for sure, because I haven't listened to it."
Read that again. She dismissed the invitation as an afterthought while simultaneously admitting she hasn't even listened to it. Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder pushed back, telling Newsweek that Crockett "has certainly been invited to the convention and continues to have a standing invite." Scudder said the party reached out to Crockett's staff and that the invitation had been extended for months.
The convention is being held in Corpus Christi, according to Breitbart, and Crockett's refusal to attend, let alone speak, sends a clear signal to Democratic activists and donors watching the Texas race.
Asked whether she would actively support Talarico's campaign, Crockett told The Dallas Morning News: "I have no idea. I am more focused on down-ballot races in general." That's a remarkable statement from a member of Congress about her own party's Senate nominee in her own state.
Crockett didn't stop at personal pique. She raised a substantive concern, one that carries real weight in Texas Democratic politics, about whether Black voters will turn out for Talarico, who is not Black.
"I've not heard a bunch of kumbaya. People don't seem to be convinced at this point, but there's a lot of time between now and November."
There is something to this. Gordon Abner, an associate professor at the University of Texas, told Newsweek that Talarico "needs all the support he can get, especially from Black Democrats and Black Democratic women. They are the most consistent base of the party. Not having clear and strong support from Jasmine Crockett will absolutely hurt him."
Abner added that Talarico is "a new name" and that it would be "foolish to assume his name recognition is as strong among older Black voters as it might be among young Black voters." He cautioned that assumptions about turnout are "always dangerous" and that "polls can easily misjudge who will turn out," particularly in a midterm election year.
Crockett's concern about Black voter enthusiasm is not frivolous on its face. But there is a difference between raising a legitimate strategic worry and actively undermining the nominee who must solve it. By refusing to return Talarico's call, skipping the convention, and publicly broadcasting her lack of commitment, Crockett is making the very problem she identifies harder to fix.
Her own conduct after the primary loss has been anything but a model of party discipline. She previously questioned a jury verdict and dismissed a victim's family in a high-profile murder case, and her public statements have repeatedly drawn fire even from within Democratic circles.
Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, offered a blunt assessment to Newsweek. He called Crockett's comments "damning in their absence of praise or support" and said they "certainly do not help the party's cause in the general election."
"She has 'no idea' whether she'll support a fellow Democrat running against Ken Paxton? Really?"
Reeher went further, describing Crockett's remarks about the convention invitation as "petty and self-serving." He noted that every candidate in the Democratic primary had tried to argue they would be the stronger general election pick, so Crockett's apparent offense at Talarico's campaign making the same case struck him as inconsistent.
Reeher also framed the fracture as a potential preview of broader dysfunction. "This may be a preview of the party's dysfunctions to come in 2028, if it can't sort this kind of problem out," he said. That observation is worth lingering on. Democrats have spent years talking about turning Texas blue. They finally have a competitive Senate race, and one of their own most prominent elected officials is publicly declining to help.
The broader pattern of Democratic leadership struggles heading into the midterms makes Crockett's posture all the more damaging. This is not a party that can afford internal sabotage in a state it claims to be on the verge of flipping.
Two recent polls underscore the stakes. A Quantus Insights survey of 800 likely Texas voters, conducted June 3, 4, showed Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton leading Talarico 45 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent undecided and 4 percent backing another candidate. The margin of error was 3.5 points.
A Texas Pulse Poll conducted by ReconMR and the Texas A&M Bush School, surveying 807 likely voters from June 1, 4, found Talarico and Paxton tied at 46 percent each, with 3 percent supporting someone else. That poll carried a 4-point margin of error.
Either way, the race is close enough that marginal shifts in turnout, particularly among Black voters in Houston, Dallas, and other urban centers, could determine the outcome. Talarico appears to understand this. He recently secured the endorsement of the Texas Organizing Project, a progressive group that had previously backed Crockett.
In a statement accompanying that endorsement, Talarico said he wanted "to be direct: I do not win this race without working-class Black and Latino Texans. Full stop." He described the Texas Organizing Project's community relationships as "irreplaceable" and pledged to spend "every day between now and November proving that this campaign is fighting for a Texas for all."
That is the language of a candidate trying to build a coalition. Crockett's language, by contrast, is the language of someone who lost and hasn't gotten over it.
When Crockett conceded the primary in March, she struck a different tone. Just the News reported that she called for party unity, saying, "Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person."
Three months later, "bigger than any one person" has apparently given way to unreturned phone calls and public doubts about the nominee's viability. The gap between Crockett's concession rhetoric and her current conduct is wide enough to drive a campaign bus through.
Her campaign had initially hinted at possible legal challenges over voting irregularities in the primary, but no lawsuit materialized. She conceded. She called for unity. And now she's doing the opposite.
Crockett has built a national profile on bold claims about her own influence and sharp-elbowed commentary. But influence without discipline is just noise. And when that noise actively damages your own party's chances in a race you claim to care about, it stops being boldness and starts being self-indulgence.
The obvious beneficiary of all this is Ken Paxton. The Republican attorney general doesn't need to spend a dime highlighting Democratic divisions, Crockett is doing it for him, on the record, in the state's largest newspaper. Every day Talarico spends managing internal party drama is a day he isn't closing the gap with undecided voters or building turnout infrastructure.
Paxton, whatever his own political baggage, can sit back and watch Democrats fight each other. That's a luxury no frontrunner takes for granted, and Crockett is handing it to him free of charge.
Talarico won the primary fair and square. He won it by a margin that wasn't close. He reached out to his defeated opponent personally. He offered her the keynote slot at the state convention. She won't even listen to the voicemail.
Democrats keep saying Texas is ready to flip. Maybe it is. But you don't flip a state when your own team won't return each other's calls.
