Let me start with a disclaimer: I do not for one second believe this rumor to be true. It’s not that the strategy would be bad; it’s that it’s too good for the GOP to pull off. Think Todd Akin, only in California or Massachusetts.
Unless Claire McCaskill has switched sides and now does strategy for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), color me skeptical about this report from NOTUS. Deeply skeptical:
The National Republican Senatorial Committee put out a poll in July with Crockett’s name included, which showed her as the leading Democrat in a hypothetical matchup.
“When we saw the results, we were like, ‘OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,’” a source familiar with the process told NOTUS.
The fact that Crockett was included in the poll was no accident.
In June news broke that Texas Democrats Colin Allred, James Talarico, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro met to discuss the 2026 election. Operatives at the NRSC realized that Crockett — whose political stock had been rising — wasn’t included in that meeting and also hadn’t been included in any credible poll. So they decided to change that.
Following the NRSC’s polls, other surveys began to include Crockett and showed similar results: She was surging in the primary.
According to their sources at the NRSC, the manipulation didn’t end there. The NRSC then started “seeding” the poll results into “progressive spaces,” which not only raised Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s profile but also apparently convinced Crockett herself that she could win the election. That snowballed into this week, when a candidate that might have competed well enough to make Republicans nervous after their own bruising primary – Colin Allred – decided to withdraw in Crockett’s favor.
Or so these NRSC sources claim.
Is this true? Is it even possible? Well, McCaskill certainly proved it possible in 2012, but this situation is a little different. Akin was less of a national figure at the time than Crockett is now, which means that Crockett’s radical nature is already well known. (Akin’s issue was more a lack of preparation for the big step up to the scrutiny a Senate race produces.) Crockett had already become a popular leading figure among progressive activists. Perhaps the NRSC kicked a stone or two to start an avalanche, but some of the rocks had been shifting for the last couple of years.
Also, the panic suggested by NOTUS and other media outlets over the upcoming GOP primary fight may be overblown. Without a doubt, John Cornyn faces the fight of his life against Ken Paxton, a MAGA favorite. RCP has aggregated three polls in this race, and all three show a dead heat between the two, with former House Republican Wesley Hunt suddenly getting a significant amount of support, too. However, the primary will take place in March, which leaves the Texas GOP plenty of time to heal up any divisions that will open up over the next three months before the voting starts in the general election.
Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by 14 points last November. Ted Cruz beat Allred by nine points in 2022. The Senate race will not be a special election; Texans will be prepared to turn out and will still be decisively Republican, not suddenly blue. This isn’t a case where a purple state could produce surprises, and the Lone Star State certainly isn’t the Big Apple, even if Crockett seems confused by the difference:
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, pointed to Mamdani-Trump voters, AOC-Trump voters and Obama-Trump voters when confronted Tuesday on her difficult path to victory in the Texas Senate race.
MS NOW host Chris Hayes asked Crockett about people who question her ability to win the “8 to 10% of Republican voters necessary to win this race,” who cited the voters who supported both President Donald Trump and Democrats like Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former President Barack Obama.
Crocket, who launched her Texas Senate bid on Monday, disagreed with the notion that she needs to win over a percentage of Republican voters and said she hoped to energize her base in a way Democratic candidates have failed to do in the past.
“I don’t think anyone who is super in love with Trump would ever vote for me or any other Democrat. That is just the reality. I think what it is, is who is going to talk to people and make them understand that they will fight for them. That is why you have Mamdani-Trump voters. That is why you have AOC-Trump voters. That is why you had Obama-Trump voters,” she told Hayes.
Er … AOC-Trump voters? Ocasio-Cortez won her NY-14 seat last year by 69.2/30.8. Kamala Harris won that district by a 65/33 split. If there were any AOC-Trump votes, you could probably cast those on your fingers and toes. The slight difference in percentage may be largely accounted for by voters who declined to mark their ballots in one election or the other. Even if one assumes that the difference is entirely attributable to voters who chose both AOC and Trump, though, that would be voters in a very, very radical-Left district. The notable point about those votes wouldn’t be MAGAs who voted for AOC, but Democrats who couldn’t stomach Harris.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong about the NRSC, and that they have truly learned to play McCaskill’s game at Machiavellian levels. I’m more inclined to think they got lucky that Democrats decided to get stupid. Frankly, I’ll take either one.
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