Texas redistricting fight provides Democratic Senate contenders with a megaphone

The Texas redistricting fight has provided the Democrats eyeing the state’s Senate race with an elevated platform ahead of a potentially crowded primary clash.

State Rep. James Talarico, who has been considering a bid for the seat held by GOP Sen. John Cornyn, is in the middle of the debate as one of the Democrats who are holed up in Illinois to deny Republicans the chance to move forward with a plan to net their party up to five more House seats in Washington.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who hasn’t ruled out a Senate run, has played a central role in helping to financially support the Democratic lawmakers who have fled Texas. That has led to clashes with state Attorney General Ken Paxton — who is challenging Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary — in court.

And the top Democrat who’s officially in the Senate race, former Rep. Colin Allred, has put his opposition to the GOP’s plan to redraw Texas’ congressional maps at the forefront of his message on the campaign trail.

While the Democratic Senate primary in Texas still remains in flux, the GOP contest has already turned ugly. Democrats are hopeful that the energy around the redistricting fight, as well as fallout from the Cornyn-Paxton battle, could help them put the Senate race in the traditionally red state on the map.

Matt Angle, a longtime Democratic strategist in Texas who runs the Lone Star Project, told NBC News that the redistricting battle has fired up the party’s “activist” base in the state.

“This mid-decade redistricting has really touched off a little bit of a fire that wouldn’t have been there otherwise,” he said.

“It plays to all three of these guys’ strengths — Beto is a really good cheerleader, for lack of a better word, in terms of getting people fired up. Talarico is a fresh face and he’s interesting, and Colin also shows a resoluteness and a competence that really plays to his strength.”

While O’Rourke and Talarico haven’t jumped into the race, their political operations have massively increased their digital spending on Meta platforms in recent days. O’Rourke — who previously ran for Senate and governor in Texas, as well as for president — has spent $380,000 since the state House Democrats announced their quorum break on Aug. 3, including $98,000 last Wednesday alone, mainly through his group Powered by People.

There have only been five days within the past six years where O’Rourke has spent more than that $98,000 on Meta platforms dating back to mid-2019 — all were during the summer and fall of 2022, during his campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott.

Talarico had never spent more than $1,500 in one day on Meta platforms before last month. Half of the $400,000 he’s spent on Meta platforms this year came after the quorum break announcement, including pouring $78,000 into ads on Aug. 6.

For his part, Allred has spent far less on Meta, and has been traveling the state as the only major candidate currently seeking the Democratic Senate nomination.

O’Rourke, who has become one of the more visible Democrats in the state after three high-profile bids for office, has been blanketing the airwaves for weeks, blasting the Texas redistricting plan and calling on national Democrats to “match fire with fire.” He’s also been raising funds for the Democratic lawmakers in the hopes of offsetting the steep financial penalties and other costs they’re facing.

Those actions have drawn the fury of Republicans across the state, leading Paxton to successfully petition a court to halt O’Rourke’s ability to raise funds for the state Democrats.

“This guy thinks, Donald Trump, that he is absolutely unstoppable, he really believes he’s the king that these knee-benders tell him that he is. And so he comes to our state to grab even more power in the form of these five congressional districts,” O’Rourke said at a rally over the weekend in Fort Worth, one many he’s held in recent days in Texas and around the country.

“We’re going to fight these motherf—–s for as long as it takes, with everything we got. We’re never giving in, we’re never giving up, and we’re never bending the knee,” he said.

Holing up in Illinois as the quorum break hits its second week, Talarico has been publicly singled out by Paxton and Abbott. Paxton filed a lawsuit aimed at booting Talarico and a dozen other state legislators from office, while Abbott’s office posted a “wanted” poster of Talarico on its social media channels.

Talarico, who had already made waves this summer with a high-profile appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast and other national interviews, has become a constant presence on television and done a slew of other media appearances since the quorum break began.

Last week, Talarico reposted an aide’s message on X that clipped a photo of a news story about the Democrat that rounded up the number of interviews he’s done.

Evoking Texas politicians over the years — like former President Lyndon B. Johnson, Gov. Ann Richards and Rep. Barbara Jordan, as well as more recent examples such as O’Rourke — Talarico said last week during an interview on The Ringer’s “Higher Learning” podcast that Democrats in the state know how to be bold.

“If you know anything about Texas history, we don’t surrender easily, we don’t go down without a fight. Everyone knows the Alamo, that is part of our DNA as Texans, it’s fighting for what we believe in, for standing up for what we believe is right regardless of the consequences,” he said.

Later, Talarico took a swipe at Paxton and said that while he’s looking at the Senate race, he has been more focused on the redistricting fight and will decide “once we get past this quorum break and hopefully beat these corrupt maps.”

Still, taking the Senate plunge would be a major step for Talarico, who has never had to build out a statewide fundraising or organizing operation before.

While O’Rourke and Talarico have been playing more active roles in the redistricting battle, Allred has focused heavily on the issue after officially launching his Senate campaign in July.

As a former lawyer who worked on voting rights cases and a former congressman who initially defeated a Republican incumbent on his way to office, Allred has grounded much of his pitch on his own expertise. He has blasted Republicans for their comments that the redistricting plan is solely about accumulating more power in Washington and testifying against the plan in front of the state House.

Evoking the late civil rights advocate and former Democratic Rep. John Lewis’ advocacy for voting rights, Allred told the state House’s special redistricting committee that he believed Lewis would be “horrified” by the GOP efforts.

“I think he would say to us: We are better than this. And I think he would say: If you do this, then we have to mobilize in a way we’ve never seen before,” Allred said.

As Allred continues his run and Democrats wait to see what O’Rourke and Talarico decide, Angle lamented that his party may only get the chance to vote for one of these candidates in the general election.

“We’re not used to Texas having this many good [Democratic] candidates ready to roll,” the strategist said. “That’s why I sure wish we could spread them out across a few races.”