WASHINGTON — A former Republican strategist publicly broke with his party Friday, telling CNN that Democrats have a real shot at winning a U.S. Senate seat in Texas for the first time in more than 30 years. Joseph Moreno, who also served as a national security prosecutor for the Justice Department and worked as a staffer on the FBI's 9/11 Review Commission, said flatly: "I hate to say it — this might be the year."
The race pits Democrat James Talarico against Republican Ken Paxton. A new poll shows Talarico with a four-point lead over Paxton — a margin that would have been unthinkable in Texas a decade ago. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, a streak that has held through eight presidential cycles.
Paxton is a damaged figure in Texas Republican politics. He served as state attorney general for more than a decade and was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 on charges including bribery and abuse of office before the Republican-controlled state Senate acquitted him later that year. That acquittal did not erase the proceedings from voters' memories, and Paxton enters the Senate race carrying that record.
Talarico is a state legislator who built a following in the Austin area. He positioned himself as a generational candidate running against an opponent defined by legal controversy rather than against Texas's deep-red default. Democrats in the state have spent years recruiting candidates who can compete in suburban districts that shifted during the Trump years, and Talarico fits that profile.
Moreno's comments carry weight precisely because of his background. He is not a Democratic operative trying to talk up a long-shot race. He described himself as embarrassed by the state of the Republican Party's position in Texas and said the party faces serious trouble in what has long been its most reliable large-state stronghold. His willingness to say so publicly on national television reflects unease inside GOP circles that goes beyond one strategist's opinion.
The structural shift in Texas has been building for years. Suburban voters around Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio moved toward Democrats in 2018 and again in 2020. Beto O'Rourke lost his Senate race against Ted Cruz in 2018 by fewer than three points. Donald Trump carried the state in both 2016 and 2020 but by shrinking margins. In 2024, Trump won Texas again, but Democrats continued to make inroads in the collar counties around major cities.
A four-point polling lead in August means little on its own — Texas is a large, expensive state to contest, and Democrats have been burned before by polls that suggested Texas was turning. The question is whether Talarico can raise the money needed to run a statewide air campaign in a state where major media markets in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio each require separate, costly television buys.
Paxton retains the Republican base in rural Texas, which remains overwhelmingly conservative. His acquittal in the state Senate gave him an argument to his core supporters that the impeachment was a political attack. He will enter the general election with the party apparatus behind him and name recognition built over a decade in statewide office.
What makes Moreno's warning notable is its specificity. He did not say Texas is trending Democratic in the abstract. He said this race, this year, with this candidate matchup, is the one that breaks the streak. The four-point Talarico lead in polling — however early — gives that warning a concrete basis rather than a vague prediction about long-term demographics.
The Senate map in 2026 already favors Republicans nationally. Democrats are defending seats in several competitive states, and the party has limited resources to spread across a map that does not naturally favor them. A serious play in Texas would require the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to commit real money to a state it has largely written off. Whether the DSCC treats the Talarico polling as a reason to invest or a reason to wait for harder evidence will determine how competitive the race becomes by October.
