Texas voters will choose in November between Democratic state representative James Talarico, a progressive former seminarian with a $27 million campaign war chest, and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Trump-aligned incumbent who has faced corruption charges and impeachment proceedings. Early polling shows Talarico with a lead, but his strength among the non-college-educated voters who make up the majority of the Texas electorate remains an open question.
Writing in The Guardian on June 1, Dustin Guastella — a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 — argued that Talarico won the opponent Democrats wanted but faces a steep challenge in winning over blue-collar voters. Guastella noted that Talarico’s fundraising accelerated immediately after Paxton secured the Republican nomination, adding to a war chest that already stood at roughly $27 million.
Guastella questioned whether early polls accurately reflect the likely electorate. A Public Policy Polling survey showing Talarico ahead by seven points included only 22% of voters without a college education, according to Guastella. A University of Texas poll showing Talarico up eight points sampled just 27% of respondents without a degree, he wrote. With more than 60% of Texas voters lacking a college degree, Guastella wrote, such surveys could be giving Democrats a misleading picture of the race.
In primary results, Talarico performed best with college-educated voters and poorly with those lacking college experience, Guastella wrote. While primary electorates differ from general-election voters, he argued the pattern raises questions about Talarico’s appeal in a state where working-class voters are the decisive demographic.
Guastella characterized Paxton as a candidate with his own vulnerabilities, citing the attorney general’s corruption charges, impeachment proceedings and a personal scandal. According to Guastella, Paxton’s economic platform centers on loosening cryptocurrency regulations to make the United States “the crypto capital of the world,” while his campaign materials have targeted former President Joe Biden rather than the current administration.
Guastella urged Talarico to adopt a more programmatic economic vision centered on raising worker wages rather than focusing primarily on reducing consumer costs. He pointed to Texas’s recent construction boom, driven largely by datacenter buildouts, as evidence that large-scale infrastructure investment can lift wages quickly. Public investments in energy generation, electrical grid upgrades and transportation infrastructure could have similar effects, Guastella wrote.