Texas primaries simmer as Trump trip looms with days to go

So far, President Donald Trump has sat out a couple of key primaries in Texas — set to be held just days after he visits this week — even as the state’s congressional races for both parties have been popping with other endorsements.

On Tuesday, hours before Trump’s State of the Union address, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, endorsed against his fellow congressional Republican, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, instead backing primary challenger Steve Toth in the race for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District.

The Toth-Crenshaw race is one of just two in the state in which the president has not weighed in as of Wednesday. The other is the pricey Republican Senate primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, lightning rod state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Trump is set to speak on the economy Friday in Corpus Christi in his first trip following his State of the Union. Early voting is well underway already in the Texas primaries, set for March 3. They will determine which candidates from a swath of newly gerrymandered House districts and the race for the Senate will compete in November’s midterm elections.

The results could determine which party takes control of Congress in November, and whether Trump is able to push through the handful of legislative goals he mentioned in his Tuesday night speech.

Trump has not invited any of the Senate candidates to his Corpus Christi speech and, when pressed by reporters last week about why he has declined to endorse, he said he likes “all three” of them. It’s possible the president is withholding his support for the likely event of a runoff.

In the House contest, Crenshaw is the only Republican incumbent in the state who has not received Trump’s backing. Crenshaw, who has held the seat since 2019, has been attacked by MAGA conservatives as a “RINO,” an acronym that stands for “Republican in name only.”

Toth, on the other hand, has faced criticism from Crenshaw over his legislative record in the state House.  

In the Democratic Senate race, moderate state Rep. James Talarico picked up the backing this week of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which praised his “economic populism” and called its support an attempt to reframe the liberal vs. centrist rhetoric around the race.

Talarico has run on affordability and common ground against Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who has focused on her legislative accomplishments in Congress and launched attack ads casting Talarico as too centrist for the seat.

The race presents a chance for Democrats to flip a Texas Senate seat for the first time since 1994, a feat that would amount to a major crack in the state’s red wall and a referendum on Trump in a state he carried in 2024.

Early voting turnout for both the Democratic and Republican primary races has shattered the state’s midterm election records: As of Monday, 665,664 votes were cast in-person and by mail in the Democratic primary, compared to 593,692 cast in the Republican primary, according to unofficial data from the Texas secretary of state, first reported by The Texas Tribune.