Just as important as fielding a strong candidate in any political race is being fortunate enough to face off against an eminently beatable opponent. Donald Trump ran against a trio of remarkably weak candidates in Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Barack Obama got to face John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom did exactly nothing to excite the Republican base. But with all those men and women having left the stage, both parties are looking for fresh faces to smear in hopes of making the opposing party look weak, extreme, or hopefully both. And Republicans believe they have found the ideal person to fit the bill: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).
In Search of the Perfect Opponent
Donald Trump has been the Democrats’ obvious boogeyman for more than a decade. But with midterms approaching and Trump no longer able to seek another term in office, they must now find others they believe can exemplify everything that is wrong with the GOP. Republicans, on the other hand, don’t face the same problem, with many of them believing New York City’s mayor-elect and self-proclaimed socialist, Zohran Mamdani, was something of a gift from above. But Mamdani is ultimately a local politician, even if his location is the nation’s largest city. So, in looking to nationalize their argument that the Democrats as a whole have become a party controlled by radical “lunatics,” as Trump calls them, they will “turn up the volume,” as Mamdani put it, on the most far-left candidates in races for federal office.
In Texas, where Republican Sen. John Cornyn faces a tough primary fight against the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP has evidently succeeded in luring the outspoken first-term left-wing Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett into the race, much to the chagrin of Democrats seeking to moderate their toxic brand. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) cleverly put out a poll in July with Crockett’s name included and showed her as the leading Democrat in a hypothetical matchup. “When we saw the results, we were like, ‘OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,’” a source familiar with the process told NOTUS. Other polls began to include Crockett and show that she was surging in the primary. The NRSC then worked to amplify those polls, taking credit for helping “orchestrate the pile on of these polling numbers to really drive that news cycle and that narrative that Jasmine Crockett was surging in Texas,” a source told NOTUS.
Why Is Jasmine Crockett So Toxic?
When the mid-decade redistricting in Texas, designed to add five GOP congressional seats, ultimately passed muster with the Supreme Court, Crockett’s hold on her House seat became tenuous at best. Perhaps inspired by the polls originally pushed by the NRSC, she thus decided to run for the Senate. This after she had referred to wheelchair-bound Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels,” inciting a humiliating firestorm for Democrats who were still trying to recover from a disastrous election cycle. Among other outrageous statements evidently designed to fire up the Dems’ dispirited base, Crockett has called conservatives “inherently violent” and suggested that Hispanics who support Trump have a “slave mentality.” These declarations alone make it almost too easy for the eventual Republican nominee to depict her as a hateful, far-left extremist sure to turn off swing voters. One anonymous Democratic Party operative in Texas put it bluntly: “People here are worried about a down-ballot bloodbath.”
Crockett’s Senate candidacy comes in the wake of a race for an open House seat in Tennessee, where progressive Aftyn Behn was beaten following the release of her previous remarks about hating the very city in which she was running, Nashville. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) indirectly compared Crockett to Behn, saying to HuffPost: “What happened in Tennessee? You know, we had that total train wreck on our side, and that could have been actually really, truly competitive if it was like a more reasonable kind of a candidate.”
In that same vein, Texas Democrats had seemed content with the man who was previously considered a heavy favorite to face off in the Senate race against the Republican. Rep. Colin Allred, viewed as a much stronger candidate than Crockett, ran six percentage points ahead of former Vice President Kamala Harris in the state when he challenged Sen. Ted Cruz in 2024. But once Crockett jumped into the fray, Allred dropped his Senate bid in favor of seeking a safe House seat.
Democrats are, to say the least, not pleased. But as usual, they’re afraid to offend a woman of color. “Party officials are deeply skeptical of Crockett's chances in Texas — and afraid to say that out loud,” explains HuffPost. This thinly disguised sentiment has not stopped Crockett from massaging her own generously sized ego, as evidenced by her statement that “what we need is for me to have a bigger voice.” But even with Allred out of the race, Crockett must still defeat another primary opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, in what promises to be a bloody intra-party fight.
The importance of the candidacies of Crockett, Mamdani, and Behn is that they will likely inspire other dyed-in-the-wool progressives to run in federal elections. This is the last thing Democratic Party leaders desire in the wake of four years of left-wing governance that cost them control of the White House and Congress. But rank-and-file Democrats fed up with the party establishment seem willing or even anxious to roll the dice on candidates who are anything but moderate. And Republicans are cheering them on.
