How Jasmine Crockett could ruin Democrats’ plan to win back the Senate

As the Democrats pin their hopes on winning back the Senate in the 2026 midterms this November – and clawing power from a dominating Donald Trump and Republican party – one the party’s best long-shot routes comes from flipping a long-held GOP Senate seat in Texas.

But a Democratic candidate running for that seat, current House Representative Jasmine Crockett, has sparked serious concerns among some colleagues about her ability to win, based on past remarks she has made about Latinos and immigrants. Roughly 40 percent of the state of Texas, which shares a border with Mexico, is Hispanic.

Crockett – a two-term Democratic congresswoman from the Dallas area who has become a favorite for her attacks against Republicans– came under fire after conservatives on social media unearthed a video of her saying that immigrants do the jobs that plenty of Americans, including Black Americans, will not do.

“The fact is ain’t none of y’all trying to go and farm right now,” she told the Grace Baptist Church in Connecticut in 2025. “You’re not, you’re not. We’re done picking cotton. We are. You can’t pay us enough to find a plantation.”

Crockett’s remarks added to a growing list that have made some fellow Democrats nervous including last year when she called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “Governor Hot Wheels.”

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Chuck Rocha, who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, said that the average Latino voter are aware of the race and it’s not the best idea to “talk down” to voters she needs.

“So messaging to that electorate to win the primary, those people are more tuned into the Jasmine Crockett statements because they’re more active on social media,” Rocha, who said he had spoken to fellow Democratic James Talarico’s campaign, told The Independent.

Talarico is running against Crockett for the Democratic nomination.

“They’re more tuned into the news, and they’re highly involved. I probably see this harming her more in the primary than the general, even though it’s detrimental because there’s more Latinos that would vote in the general.

But Crockett told The Independent in December she had not received criticism from Hispanics in Texas.

“I actually haven’t, I’m gonna be perfectly honest,” she said, drawing comparison with the language used by lawmakers on the other side of the aisle, and noting her own legislative record in helping minorities from all groups.

“But when you think about some of the language that Republicans have used, when you look at Trump calling whole communities of people, criminals and rapists, and saying that certain people are from s***hole countries, yet his numbers did just fine, I get to point to my record,” she said.

“I get to point to the fact that I’ve traveled this country and I am standing side by side with my brown brothers and sisters in this fight.”

Since being voted into Congress in 2023, Crockett has earned plaudits from many Democratic small donors and activists and developed nationwide recognition for her aggressive approach toward Republicans. She garnered national attention in 2024 when during a hearing with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Greene made fun of her “fake eyelashes,” to which Crockett asked if “talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad-built butch body” would be considered a personal attack.

That led her to a prime speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention.

Yet she has also faced backlash. Republicans and the press criticized her when she incorrectly said that the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had donated money to Republicans such as senators John McCain, Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin in the past. In fact, it had been a neurosurgeon from Long Island with the same name who had given the money to Republicans.

One Hispanic Democratic member of Congress from Texas expressed concern about her past comments.

“I think we should worry about everything,” the lawmaker told The Independent. “Any comment that could in anyway be perceived impactful to a campaign on either side should be taken seriously.”

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In the later months of 2025, the National Republican Senatorial Committee put out polls showing Crockett leading in the race for the Senate seat from Texas. Republicans did so hoping she would run for the seat since they believe that her caustic rhetoric and liberal voting record would make her unelectable.

Crockett would also have to see off Texas state representative Talarico – who hails from Austin who has preached a populist message that earned him praise from even from popular podcaster Joe Rogan – in a Democratic primary ahead of the midterms.

Democrats are betting that a Republican civil war will give them an opening to flip the Senate seat. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) embodies the old-school Bush Republicans of yore as a silver-haired, square-jawed former attorney general first elected to the Senate in 2002. But despite his conservatism, the MAGA base has criticized him for being insufficiently supportive of Trump during his first presidency, the 2024 election and overall.

A longtime dealmaker, he also brokered a bipartisan gun control bill after the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde killed 19 children and 2 adults, which earned sharp criticism from conservatives who believed the bill violated the Second Amendment.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has staged a primary challenge against Cornyn. A hard-right favorite of the MAGA right, Paxton attempted to nullify the results of states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

But he was also impeached by the Texas legislature on bribery charges, though ultimately acquitted. His wife also announced last year that she would divorce him “on biblical grounds” after reports of his alleged affair with a lobbyist.

In addition, two-term Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt, a West Point graduate and former helicopter pilot, announced a longshot bid. last year.

Trump has so far stayed out of the race and not endorsed any candidate. But Republicans fear a candidate such as Paxton could cost them the race.

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While Texas has been red for decades, many majority-Hispanic counties remained reliably Democratic for the better part of a century, almost exclusively electing Democrats to Congress. When Trump won Texas in 2016, he won it by only single digits, thanks in large part to majority-Hispanic counties voting for Hillary Clinton.

But in the 2024 election, Trump shocked many when he flipped much of the ancestrally Democratic and majority Hispanic parts of the Rio Grande Valley, despite his pledges for mass deportations, and continuing to dub Mexicans – as well as migrants from other Latin American countries–coming to the U.S. as criminals, drug dealers and rapists.

“You can’t win the primary or the general election without persuading a s*** ton of Hispanic Democrats and Hispanic independents to vote for you,” Rocha said.

Then in 2025, Hispanics swung back hard toward Democrats across the country, in all election races, angered by Trump’s policy of mass deportations and the increased cost of living. Democrats flipped back parts of New Jersey that voted for Trump in 2024 and in December, the heavily Hispanic Miami elected a Democrat as mayor for the first time in 28 years.

“The goal there is to get Latinos to turn out some of which voted for Donald Trump because he was the only one talking about affordability back in the day, but now the prices of things have not come down,” Rocha said. “And on top of that, ICE agents are shooting people in the streets, and they’re locking up grandmothers and looking at schools, picking up kids, parents who haven’t done anything illegal. Except cross the border to try to live the American dream.”