James Talarico Defeats Ken Paxton, Flips Texas Senate Seat for Democrats

AUSTIN, Texas (Orbit Post) Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas U.S. Senate race on Tuesday, according to projections from Decision Desk HQ and NBC News. The win flips a Republican-held seat.

The Associated Press election results feed listed the Texas Senate race as called for Talarico. In its latest snapshot in the reporting, Talarico had 4,125,080 votes to 2,703,872 for Paxton, with about 66.8 percent of precincts reporting. Newsmax also called the race for Talarico, reporting that with 68 percent of the vote counted Talarico had 55.2 percent to 43.2 percent for Paxton, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 1.6 percent. USA Today live election coverage also reported the Talarico win, citing the Decision Desk HQ and NBC News projections.

A flip Texas Democrats had chased for decades

The win is the first Democratic Senate win in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen won reelection in 1988. Newsmax reported it is also the first Democratic statewide election win in Texas since 1994. A Democrat will now hold a Texas Senate seat that Republicans had kept through election after election, in a state that sits at the center of national politics because of its size.

The seat was vacated by Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary runoff to Paxton on May 26, 2026. Paxton, the Texas attorney general, carried the Republican nomination into the general election and lost it to a state lawmaker 11 years into a run of Republican statewide wins that Talarico has now broken. Careful wording matters here: Senate control itself had not been called in the reporting behind this story, and this article does not claim it.

Who Talarico is

Talarico, 37, is a Texas state representative and a former public school teacher. He went from the classroom and the state House to a United States Senate win in the second largest state in the country. His victory over the sitting state attorney general gives Texas Democrats their biggest statewide prize in more than three decades.

Paxton ran with strong backing from the top of his party. President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton in the Republican primary and campaigned for him in the general election, according to Newsmax. Texas voters picked the Democrat anyway, handing Paxton a statewide loss and Talarico a seat in Washington.

The result lands in Orbit Post's home state. Texas readers who followed a long night of midterm results got the state's headline race settled by projections from two national decision desks, with the AP feed listing the race as called and the count still running in the snapshot the wire published.