The announcement by the congresswoman, a rising star in the party, came hours after another prominent candidate, Colin Allred, dropped out.
Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic firebrand from the Dallas area, said Monday she was running for Senator John Cornyn’s seat in Texas, shaking up the Democratic primary for what could be the party’s best chance in years to win statewide office.
Her entrance into the campaign, hours before the deadline for candidates to file, immediately upended the primary contest that had focused on two prominent and well-funded candidates: Colin Allred, a former Dallas congressman who ran for the U.S. Senate last year, and James Talarico, a state representative with a growing national profile in the party.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Allred said he was dropping out of the race and would instead seek to return to the House of Representatives. Mr. Talarico said in a statement that he welcomed Ms. Crockett to the primary, scheduled for March 3.
Ms. Crockett made her announcement to a room full of supporters in Dallas after showing a political ad featuring a still shot of her face and audio of President Trump insulting her repeatedly.
“What we need is for me to have a bigger voice,” she said at the start of her 40-minute speech. “We need to make sure that we are going to stop all the hell that is raining down on all of our people.”
Mr. Allred said his decision to drop out was in part out of concern among Democrats that, with three candidates in the race, a runoff was likely and could hobble the party’s chances in the general election. The Democratic winner would face Mr. Cornyn or one of his main Republican primary opponents, Attorney General Ken Paxton or Representative Wesley Hunt.
“I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our constitution by Donald Trump” and his Republican allies running for Senate, Mr. Allred said in a statement.
Republicans in Texas have not lost a statewide office in more than 30 years. But Democrats are hopeful that the 2026 midterms could provide an opportunity because of voters’ concerns about the cost of living and President Trump’s flagging approval ratings.
The Senate race has seemed particularly enticing to Democrats because of the prospect of a general election contest against Mr. Paxton, a hard-right conservative beloved by Republican primary voters but scarred by years of legal troubles.Republicans appeared similarly eager to run against Ms. Crockett. Mr. Paxton’s and Mr. Cornyn’s campaigns, as well as the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is backing Mr. Cornyn, issued statements describing her as extreme and out of touch.
“Jasmine Crockett does not represent the views of a majority of Texans,” Mr. Cornyn said in a statement. “She is radical, theatrical and ineffective.”
Mr. Allred, a civil rights lawyer and former N.F.L. linebacker, announced his run for Senate over the summer, seeking to capitalize on his statewide campaign against Senator Ted Cruz in 2024. He lost the race but outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the state that year.
Though Mr. Allred campaigned around the state, his calm demeanor and moderate brand of Democratic politics failed to create momentum as many in the party have been looking for an aggressive fighter.
Ms. Crockett, a former state representative who was first elected to the U.S. House in 2022, appeared to be betting that her brand of combative, progressive politics could win over Texas voters in large part by driving Democratic enthusiasm and turnout in the state’s major urban centers.
Ms. Crockett, 44, has frequently gained national attention for her no-holds-barred verbal tussles with Republicans, sparring over limits to diversity programs and Republican attempts to reshape the federal government, and creating moments that have been broadly shared on social media. Her presence in the Senate race is likely to fuel even more interest and campaign spending in what has been shaping up to be among the hardest fought and most expensive electoral contests of 2026.
So far, most of the attention has been on the Republican side. Mr. Paxton has put up a strong challenge to Mr. Cornyn in the Republican primary, forcing the senator to spend millions in a fight for survival. And the presence of a third major Republican candidate, Representative Hunt of the Houston area, raises the possibility of a runoff — which would extend the intraparty fighting until late May.
Democrats had been eager to avoid that same situation.
“Turning Texas blue is what I want to talk to y’all about today,” Ms. Crockett said in her speech. She said she would prove people wrong who say it can’t be done. “Y’all ain’t never tried it the J.C. way,” she said, referring to her initials.
Most public polls in the Democratic primary have not yet included Ms. Crockett, and those that have included her have shown mixed results. Surveys have found that she is well known among Democrats and has high approval ratings but also elicits strongly negative feelings among Republicans.
She would most likely run a different kind of campaign than Mr. Allred or Mr. Talarico, who were seeking to energize Democrats while also courting some disaffected Trump voters.
“She’s much more combative, and she’s much more polarizing,” said Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “Jasmine Crockett is the Democrat that Republicans would prefer to run against, just like Ken Paxton is the Republican the Democrats would prefer.”
Mr. Wilson added that Republican and Democratic primaries for Senate have so far not focused on issues so much as they have on political style. And Ms. Crockett would bring a very different style to the Democratic race.
Kardal Coleman, the chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, said the primary between Ms. Crockett and Mr. Talarico would bring new people out to vote because it now features two of the party’s best young communicators. “I’m excited,” he said.
For months, some prominent Texas Democrats in the state, including the former congressman Beto O’Rourke, had been working behind the scenes to try to avoid a crowded field in the high-profile Senate race and instead create a slate of strong candidates for different statewide offices, including the open seat for attorney general and the race for governor, where Greg Abbott is facing re-election in 2026.
That process accelerated in recent weeks as Ms. Crockett began seriously weighing a run for Senate and the deadline for declaring drew near.
Last week, Ms. Crockett talked by phone in separate calls with Mr. Talarico and Mr. Allred, according to the Talarico and Allred campaigns. During the calls, Ms. Crockett described internal campaign polling that she said showed her having the best chance of winning. She did not share the polling with either candidate.
“The data says that I can win,” she said in an appearance on MS NOW on the same day as the calls with the Democratic candidates. “I am very formidable.”
A spokesman for the Crockett campaign declined to provide copies of any internal poll results.
Mr. Talarico said his campaign was a movement “rooted in unity over division — so we welcome Congresswoman Crockett into this race.”
Mr. Allred said he would run to return to the U.S. House in the 33rd Congressional District — one of two districts in the Dallas area that still favor Democrats after the Republican redistricting over the summer.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 9, 2025, Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Fiery Texas Democrat Enters U.S. Senate Race As Allred Abandons Run. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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