GOP’s TX Senate Primary Heads Into Overtime, Progressives Flex Muscle in NC

Listen To This Story

The midterm season kicked off with a bang on Tuesday as Democrats and Republicans in Texas and North Carolina picked their candidates in two of the fall’s highest-profile Senate races. And while the outcome in the Tar Heel State was never in doubt, the most expensive Senate primary in history will go another round in Texas.

At least for the GOP.

Democrats got their dream result in the Lone Star State when state Rep. James Talarico, who is expected to be more competitive in November, prevailed against Rep. Jasmine Crockett without having to go to a runoff while neither Sen. John Cornyn nor state Attorney General Ken Paxton got the required 50 percent on the Republican side.

As a result, Talarico can focus on healing any rifts from his primary, raising money, and campaigning for the general election while his eventual opponent will have to spend nearly three more months and tens of millions of dollars to secure their own spot.

And, because the matchup between Cornyn and Paxton has been extremely contentious so far, whoever emerges will be bruised and battered.

Republicans have to hope that it will be the senator, who gives them the best chance of retaining a vital seat. Their near-term goal will have to be to get Donald Trump to endorse Cornyn. Until now, the president has not picked a candidate in the race because he usually only backs Republicans who are expected to win so that he can claim that his endorsement made the difference.

Speaking of Trump, one overlooked aspect of primary season is what congressional Republicans will do who lose their seats to MAGA challengers or because of redistricting. Like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who was once viewed as a rising star in the GOP before the party turned into the president’s personal cult.

His congressional career came to a screeching halt Tuesday night when he got outflanked from the right in a redrawn district. Now Crenshaw is a lame duck, and if history is any indication, he (and others who go down in the primaries) may just rediscover his spine… and his conservative principles.

This certainly seems to be the case for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who has been a thorn in the administration’s side ever since he announced his retirement.

On Tuesday, for example, the senator tore into Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in an oversight hearing and threatened to torpedo the Senate’s work if she kept stonewalling his request for answers about ICE’s immigration crackdown in his state.

Tillis, who clearly enjoys being free from the MAGA yoke, also referred to the pardoned January 6 insurrectionists as “thugs” and hinted that anybody who doesn’t feel the same way isn’t really “pro-law enforcement.”

He even took the time to absolutely go off on Noem for killing her dog and a goat.

Tillis to Noem: "A 14 month old dog is basically a teenager in dog years. You decided to kill that dog because you hadn't invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about tough choices! … Those… pic.twitter.com/NxqajEZdQl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026

This version of Tillis is a dying breed in the Trump-dominated GOP and is a breath of fresh air.

It stands to reason that the White House can’t wait to see him leave and hopes that he will be replaced by Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who won his primary in North Carolina.

However, in what will be one of the best pick-up opportunities for the Democrats, he will first have to defeat former two-term Gov. Roy Cooper in the general election.

Elsewhere in North Carolina, a trio of Democratic state representatives paid the price for occasionally helping Republicans override the vetoes of Democratic governors.

All three of them lost to progressive challengers.

In the case of state Rep. Carla Cunningham, that is an understatement. The seven-term lawmaker crossed party lines last year to cast the deciding vote that allowed the GOP to override Gov. Josh Stein’s veto of an immigration bill.

On Tuesday, she got pummeled in her primary by a whopping 48 percent.

Almost lost in a night of big news was that yet another Democrat flipped a state House seat. This time, it was health care administrator Alex Holladay, who won a special election in Arkansas that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) had tried for eight months to delay before a court intervened.

And that really sums up where the country is right now: Democrats are winning elections while Republicans are trying to use every trick in the book to hold on to power.