When Durrell Douglas asked Black residents around Houston about the U.S. Senate race two months ago, there was little excitement for James Talarico, the Democratic nominee.
“There’s no pulse,” Mr. Douglas, a community organizer and podcaster, said at the time about Mr. Talarico’s campaign. “No energy.”
It was not entirely surprising: Black voters across Texas had overwhelmingly favored Mr. Talarico’s primary opponent, Jasmine Crockett, a Black congresswoman and prominent critic of Republicans. Many, like Mr. Douglas, who held a fund-raiser for Ms. Crockett, were disappointed when she lost.
But as summer turned to fall, those feelings appeared to fade.
In interviews with Black voters and political consultants in Texas, few expressed hesitation about supporting Mr. Talarico. Most were far more turned off by his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general. Some praised Mr. Talarico’s efforts to spend time in Black communities across Texas, speaking at churches and appearing on podcasts and radio shows with large Black audiences, like the Breakfast Club.
“I told somebody you were coming up here, and they said, ‘Oh his internals must show he’s down bad with Black people,’” one of the hosts of the Breakfast Club, Charlamagne Tha God, said to Mr. Talarico at the start of an hourlong conversation. “Is that the case?”
“Actually, it shows the opposite,” Mr. Talarico said. “But we have a lot more work to do.”
Recent public polls have shown Mr. Talarico with a commanding lead over Mr. Paxton among Black voters. Surveys indicate he has more Black voter support than past Democrats running for U.S. Senate at similar times in the campaign cycle. In June, when the tensions of the primary campaign were still fresh, Mr. Talarico was outpacing Beto O’Rourke, a white congressman who ran for Senate in 2018, and Colin Allred, a Black congressman who ran in 2024, according to polls by the University of Texas at Austin.
But to win statewide in Texas, something a Democrat has not done in decades, Mr. Talarico must do more than just win with Black voters, political consultants said; he needs them to turn out in large numbers. Failure to do so could make winning impossible.
The challenge is not unique to Mr. Talarico. In recent years, Democrats have watched with dismay as Black voters showed signs of drifting away from the party, either staying home or, in 2024, voting for President Trump.
“It’s a party problem, across the country,” said Jolanda Jones, a Black state representative from Houston who has said Mr. Talarico needs to do more to reach Black Texans. “Black people, especially low-propensity Black people, feel like it doesn’t matter who gets elected, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican, we’re going to get screwed either way.”
Texas has more Black voters than any other state — around 2.7 million, according to the Pew Research Center — with large communities in Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas and in East Texas. But this year, Democrats do not have a Black candidate in any statewide race.
“It’s not great,” said Cliff Walker, a veteran political consultant in Texas working with Mr. Talarico’s campaign. The Democratic Party had “some work to do to rebuild trust,” he said.
That challenge was compounded for Mr. Talarico because of the hard-fought primary that exposed divisions among Texas Democrats. During the contest, Mr. Allred, the Democratic nominee for Senate in 2024, attacked Mr. Talarico over comments Mr. Talarico was said to have made to a Black influencer.
Jonathan Hildner, a political consultant who worked on Ms. Crockett’s primary campaign and has long known Mr. Talarico, dismissed the idea that he had a problem with Black voters.
“He has gone on a listening tour with Black leaders across the state. I attended one in Dallas,” Mr. Hildner said. “He’s done everything that he can to try and repair that.”
On a recent morning in Houston, Mr. Douglas, the community organizer, repeated his efforts to talk to Black residents about the election in a city park. This time, he found far more people who were planning to support Mr. Talarico than he encountered two months earlier — even if some said they would do so reluctantly.
It was a sentiment that Mr. Douglas said he understood.
“I call him unsweet tea. I called him hospital food,” he said. “If I’m hungry, I’ll eat it.”
“His views are actually more conservative than Ms. Crockett’s,” Kathy Phipps, 54, who runs a nonprofit, said, stopping to talk while out for a walk. But, she added, “anything Democratic, at this point, we’ll take it.”
Not everyone was so reluctant to embrace Mr. Talarico.
“James Talarico to me is the new Caucasian Obama,” said Janice Prevost, a makeup artist who had supported Ms. Crockett. “I hope one day he runs for president.”
Ms. Crockett, who, after the primary, said she backed Mr. Talarico, has kept her distance from him in the Senate race. The two have not spoken recently, she said in a recent television interview. His campaign said they had “exchanged a few messages since the primary.” (Ms. Crockett did not respond to a request for comment.)
Rather than campaign with Mr. Talarico, Ms. Crockett has said she would support Democrats in local Texas races. In Houston, she has backed Letitia Plummer, a Black Muslim city councilwoman running to lead Harris County.
Ms. Crockett’s efforts to turn out Black voters for other candidates could also help Mr. Talarico, Democratic political consultants said. At the same time, Ms. Plummer, in an interview, said she had worked closely with Mr. Talarico and his campaign, because of how crucial the county would be to his success.
“There are a million Black folks in Harris County, and roughly 51 percent of those Black folks are women, and that is a bulwark of the Democratic Party,” Ms. Plummer said. “So he knows.”
In recent weeks, the Talarico campaign hired several Black-owned media firms and political consultants, including Mr. Walker and Delilah Agho-Otoghile, who recently advised Representative Christian Menefee on his successful run for a historically Black congressional district in Houston. The campaign has said it would spend $25 million to make sure his message reached more Black voters, and was also preparing a new field operation aimed at Black voter turnout.
“When it’s time to act to get stuff done for us, I believe that he’s going to do that,” Mr. Menefee said in an interview, explaining his support for Mr. Talarico. “James is a man of integrity.”
Mr. Talarico’s recent efforts, along with the campaign’s earlier outreach and social media videos, appeared to be reaching Black voters who said they spent little time thinking about politics.
“I live my life day to day, going to work, paying bills,” said Josef Williams, a water-meter installer who spoke on his front porch in southern Houston.
Mr. Williams said he knew little about the Senate race but had learned about Mr. Talarico on TikTok, where he heard about the candidate’s opposition to a state prohibition on the sale of certain consumable hemp products containing THC.
“He’s talking about, honestly, something that I believe in,” Mr. Williams said. “Why are they still banning this THC thing?”
His wife, Stephanie Williams, said the Senate race had been a topic of conversation among her family at a recent funeral, where she encouraged everyone to vote for Mr. Talarico.
“I love Jasmine Crockett,” Ms. Williams said. But for the general election, she would be voting for the Democrat, whoever it is. “I don’t care if it’s Donald Duck,” she said. “Because right now everything is out of control. I work at a grocery store, and I can’t even afford groceries.”
