Photo: Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images

One of the truly ancient debates in U.S. political circles is whether candidates in highly competitive partisan elections can best win by persuading swing voters or mobilizing base voters. There’s no absolute identity between ideology and strategy, but speaking generally, right- or left-wing ideologues tend to adopt base mobilization strategies that don’t require any accommodation of the other party’s views. Republican or Democratic “moderates” generally hew to the “median voter theory” that winning over a swing voter is especially effective because it adds a vote to one’s own column while denying a vote to the opposing candidate. So they value crossover voting as much as turnout advantages.

Hardly anyone would deny that in the Trump era, Republicans have gone over almost completely to the base-mobilization strategy. To the extent MAGA candidates try to persuade swing voters, it’s mostly via vicious attacks on the opposition as extremists, encouraging a lesser-of-two-evils voting or even non-voting by moderates. But among Democrats, the base-versus-swing debate rages on, and we may be about to see a laboratory test of the two approaches in a red-hot Texas Senate contest.

Thanks to an unusually poor landscape and a current three-seat deficit, Democratic hopes of gaining control of the Senate in 2026 depend heavily on winning an upset or two in red states. And Texas looks promising thanks to an intensely cannibalistic three-way Republican primary involving two MAGA challengers to Republican incumbent John Cornyn.

Two early Democratic Senate candidates embodied (in somewhat different ways) the swing-voter strategy. There was 2024 Senate nominee and former House member Colin Allred, a bit of a classic moderate Democrat. And then there was state senator James Talarico, who gained fame for his battle against the Trump-engineered congressional gerrymander in Texas earlier this year. Talarico actually has a fairly progressive issue profile and is from the progressive hotbed of Austin. But he has gained national notoriety for being conspicuously religious (he’s actually attending a seminary aside from his political gigs) and for reaching out to Trump voters (e.g., via a successful foray onto Joe Rogan’s podcast). Last week, Allred abruptly dropped out of the Senate race, and now Talarico is facing a primary contest with the all-time-champion advocate of base mobilization, Representative Jasmine Crockett.

Crockett is far better known than any other second-term House member, mostly because she has a jeweler’s eye for viral moments and dominates them regularly. In May 2024, she became the acknowledged master of the clapback during a high-profile exchange of personal insults with the most famous third-term House member, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and has subsequently drawn the attention of Donald Trump, as Crockett reminded us in an entirely characteristic video launching her Senate bid:

Crockett’s vibes-based approach to politics has made her a fundraising magnet and a pop-culture celebrity, but the question is whether that will make her potentially competitive in a statewide race in Texas as compared to Talarico. And it’s not just a matter of issue positioning. Crockett is popular among progressives but has made combativeness rather than progressive policy commitments her signature in a brief career in legislative office. She very clearly believes all the heat she can bring to a tough general election will not just mobilize Texas’s Democratic base but expand it. She has apparently sought the counsel of Georgia’s Stacey Abrams, who pursued a base-mobilization strategy in two unsuccessful but exciting bids for governor of Georgia. And as you might expect from even a moment’s exposure, she is very sure of herself, as HuffPost reports:

Early on in her kickoff speech, Crockett said she was running because “what we need is for me to have a bigger voice …”

She reiterated her top priority would be turning out otherwise apathetic voters, a strategy even many other progressives have backed away from. “Our goal is to make sure that we can engage people that historically have not been talked to because there are so many people that get ignored, specifically in the state of Texas,” she said. “Listen, the state of Texas is 61 percent people of color. We have a lot of good folk that we can talk to.”

The idea that there is a “hidden majority” among non-voters that a loud-and-proud partisan can identify and turn out at the polls is a staple of base-mobilization advocates in both parties, though they rarely take into account that such tactics help the opposition mobilize its base as well. There is certainly enough ammunition in Crockett’s brief political history to energize Texas Republicans, particularly her reference to the wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels” (she subsequently claimed this was a reference to his aggressive transportation measures to get rid of migrants, not to his disability). Asked how she might reach out to Trump voters in a state that he carried by over 13 percent in 2024, Crockett offered an interesting theory in a CNN interview: “We are going to be able to get people that potentially have voted for Trump even though I, obviously, am one of his loudest opponents, because at the end of the day, they vote for who they believe is fighting for them.”

It’s hardly unusual for progressive Democrats (or for that matter, MAGA Republicans) to argue that disengaged voters prefer “fighters,” but Crockett appears to be suggesting that the content of one’s message — as opposed to its tone or vibe — doesn’t much matter at all.

You get the sense listening to Texas Democrats that Crockett is very likely to beat Talarico for the party’s Senate nomination and can mount a well-financed, much-watched genera-election campaign. But the idea she’s going to win that general election by turning up the volume to 11 isn’t widely accepted. She has been in exactly three general elections in her Dallas base, none of which were remotely competitive. And it’s not just about the Senate race, given Texas’s role in determining control of the House. And as the Texas Tribune reports, Republicans love the idea of facing Crockett and pinning her to House Democrats they’re hoping to unseat in the midterms.

Candidates arguing about Crockett won’t be able to focus as much on Trump’s broken promises and poor record. And Jasmine Crockett will never be the sort of politician who deflects attention. Like her or not, she’ll be the big issue in the Democratic primary.

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