It’s Wednesday, October 21. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Is Mamdani less radical than we thought? Did Elizabeth Holmes get a raw deal? Will violent West Bank settlers upend Israeli politics? And much more.
But first: Texas choosin’.
With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, Republicans from Alaska to Kansas to South Carolina are worried about a thorough shellacking from voters enraged by high prices, the war with Iran, and the stink of corruption that surrounds the Trump administration. But if a blue wave becomes a blue tsunami—one that costs Republicans not just the House but the Senate and numerous governorships—it might very well be summed up in one word: Texas.
Yes, Texas, the state that gave us the Bushes and hasn’t voted Democratic in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter rode the lingering anger over Watergate to the White House. Texas, where a Democrat hasn’t won statewide since 1994. The Texas that became effectively synonymous with conservatism for a generation, the spiritual home of the American right, the rock-ribbed heart of the GOP.
Now a fresh-faced state legislator named James Talarico appears to be within spitting distance of breaking Republicans’ winning streak in the Lone Star State. If he succeeds, he will be the first Democratic U.S. senator elected there since 1988. Part of that has to do with his raw political talent and deft maneuvering on the campaign trail. But a Talarico victory will also be the story of how Texas Republicans did seemingly everything in their power to lose, starting with choosing Ken Paxton, the state’s scandal-plagued attorney general, to be their Senate candidate.
Of course, Democrats have convinced themselves they could win Texas plenty of times only to come up short—remember Beto O’Rourke? So Audrey Fahlberg went there to see whether this really is the year the GOP’s Alamo finally falls. It’s a dispatch worth reading in full, because if the Republicans can’t hold on to Texas on November 3, we could be looking at one of the most consequential and transformative midterms in American history.
—Will Rahn
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