If Democrats were counting on Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) being a team player this cycle, they severely miscalculated. Sure, after she lost the Democrat Senate primary to state Rep. James Talarico (D-Texas) earlier this year, she endorsed him right away, but it’s basically been the cold shoulder ever since.
While Democrats nationwide are convinced Talarico represents their best chance to flip Texas, Crockett just threw cold water on their fantasy when she told a national reporter she has no idea if Talarico can win, and let slip the sign that he probably won’t.
Crockett sat down with NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur while she was in St. Louis, and he asked her a simple question: does she believe Talarico can flip Texas’ U.S. Senate seat this November? Her answer wasn’t the confident, party-line response Democrats wanted.
“I don’t know,” Crockett admitted.
That alone would have been enough to set off alarm bells inside a party desperate to project inevitability in Texas. But Crockett kept going, laying out exactly why she isn’t buying the hype. She said she doesn’t trust the polling that’s been floating around, because Texas polls have a long history of overstating Democrats’ chances right before Election Day. “I watch money,” she told Kapur.
“When I look at the money, if Republicans start spending money in Texas, then I’ll be convinced,” Crockett said. “But right now, national Republicans decided they wanted to dump money into North Carolina, as well as Georgia. That’s where they’re fighting, and national Democrats have not decided to dump money into Texas either.”
She went further, pointing to the two parties’ Senate campaign arms, which typically form joint fundraising partnerships with their endorsed candidates. “I look at: where does the NRSC stand? Where does DSCC stand? Right now, neither one are investing, which tells me that their internals are saying the same thing,” Crockett said. She added that she won’t commit to which races she’ll actually help with until roughly September or October.
Hellbound and Down 