🚨 JUST IN: Jasmine Crockett pushes ahead with a defiant Senate bid that proves she’s unmoved by public judgment ⚡.NH

Dallas-area Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett announced her run for U.S. Senate earlier this week with a fiery speech excoriating President Donald Trump and incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Her opponent in the Democratic primary is state Representative James Talarico, a pastor-in-training who built his campaign around reaching out to Republicans and independent voters by appearing on right-wing media programs such as The Joe Rogan Experience. Crockett, on the other hand, is counting on energizing the Democratic base through her viral attacks on Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. 

If she wins the Democratic nomination, Crockett will face either Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton, or Houston-area Congressman Wesley Hunt. No matter who secures the Republican nomination, Crockett will be a long shot candidate. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1994—the longest losing streak by any major state party in the country. Texas Monthly spoke to Crockett by phone on Wednesday morning. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Texas Monthly: Why are you the candidate to break the Texas Democrats’ three-decade losing streak in statewide elections? 

Jasmine Crockett: I plan to run differently. Democrats keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result. People think that if you sound like a Republican, you’ll get Republicans to cross over and vote for you. It hasn’t happened. We’ve not won those elections. But I can tell you that people voted for [New York Mayor-elect Zohran] Mamdani and voted for Trump. People voted for [U.S. Congresswoman] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and voted for Trump. People voted for Barack Obama and voted for Trump. None of those people ever bent the knee to Donald Trump, yet they were able to win over the same people. 

TM: If it’s not about their policies, what is attracting people to those candidates?

Crockett: I personally believe it’s about who they trust. It’s about rapport. There are people who have been watching Trump their entire lives. They watched him on The Apprentice, they watched him sell steaks, watched him have a university. They’ve seen his buildings, his casinos. Similarly, there are people who watch me work and are paying attention. I’ve had people come up to me everywhere and say, “My such and such, who doesn’t pay attention to politics, talks about you and knows who you are.” 

TM: The New York Times has reported that you’ve had phone calls with Colin Allred and state Representative James Talarico in which you said that internal polling shows you having the best chance of beating the Republican nominee. Can you share those internal polls?

Crockett: I could. I’m not going to. I don’t want to give Republicans anything to talk about that. I know that Senator Cornyn has been trying to raise money on my back. So I am not going to share that out at this moment. 

TM: If you’re the strongest Democratic candidate, why do Republicans seem so eager to run against you?

Crockett: That is absolutely them trying to pump-fake. There’s some fake article [about that]. They’re like, “Oh, the National Republican Senatorial Committee drafted her because that’s who they want for the general election.” And I was like, “So you kept [that plan] under wraps until after I entered the primary, then you let it out before I make it out of the primary. Why wouldn’t you wait if you want me for the general?” That doesn’t quite make sense. They are only talking about me, and I think that’s telling.

TM: Hispanic Texans have been moving in the Republican direction in recent elections. You told Vanity Fair that Hispanic voters who support Trump have a “slave mentality.” How are you going to get them to vote for you with that kind of rhetoric?

Crockett: Donald Trump said he grabbed people by the p—y and that he could get elected even after killing somebody. I have found that real people are not dissuaded by the fact that I have laid some things out. 

TM: In the same interview, you said that Joe Biden will go down as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history, and that Kamala Harris was a “perfect candidate.” Has anything that has happened since then changed your mind?

Crockett: Nope. I think right now people are appreciating what it is that Joe Biden did. A lot of the stuff wasn’t front-page news. He increased health care subsidies. He kept the government open, rather than shutting it down. I was in the belly of the beast, so I knew firsthand what was going on.

TM: One of Biden’s first acts in office was to repeal a lot of Trump’s executive orders aimed at closing the border. That resulted in a surge of immigration, which many analysts believe was a major reason Biden lost the 2024 election. When it comes to immigration, is there anything that you would have done differently than Biden?

Crockett: Joe Biden believes in the systems. He believes in the House and the Senate passing actual legislation. He worked in a collaborative way on legislation related to the border. I think it was right to work through the systems instead of just tearing the systems down. 

I know Biden doesn’t believe that we needed to do immigration in the form of executive orders. I’m not sure what analysis you’re talking about, but there was a flood [of immigrants] and we were overloaded. But our immigration system has been slow and behind and overloaded for some time. 

TM: You’re best known to people outside your district for the many viral videos of you criticizing Republican legislators and interrogating Trump officials. Are those videos just about showboating?

Crockett: A showboat is just for show. This campaign is about talking about substance. Anyone who is only looking at TikTok or Instagram may not get the full version of all that I do.

TM: In your announcement speech, you said that you live rent-free in Trump’s head, which is probably true. But given how much you talk about Trump, is it fair to say that he also lives rent-free in your head? 

Crockett: Not at all. I can tell you who lives rent-free in my head: the people of Texas’s Thirtieth Congressional District. I have always made clear that I know how I got to Congress and who it is that I serve. I get phone calls from people who are scared about whether or not they’re going to have Social Security. At my campaign launch, there was a mother who came up to me, a woman I’ve known for years, and I was asking about her son. She said her son really wanted to go into the military, but that there was no way she could let her child go into the military with this administration. I can’t imagine how many other mothers there are out there who feel that way. 

TM: Would you rather run against John Cornyn or Ken Paxton? 

Crockett: It doesn’t matter who it is. I’m gonna win.