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Talarico Win Shows Democrats Can't 'Write Off Latinos Who Voted for Trump': Ex-Sanders Strategist
Democratic operative Chuck Rocha described Talarico as "a special candidate" who "ran the right kind of race at the right time."
Mar 04, 2026
James Talarico's victory in the Democratic US Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday shows why it would be a mistake to think Latino voters who jumped ship to support President Donald Trump in 2024 are a lost cause, according to Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.
Rocha, who worked on Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign and who is a senior adviser for Talarico's campaign, told the Wall Street Journal that the Democratic Senate hopeful won over Latino support in Texas by focusing on a populist economic message first and foremost, such as when he accused US billionaires of "stealing from the American people, stealing the wealth that we created."
"Latinos are an aspirational people, and they want to aspire," said Rocha. "And they are also religious people, and they're... for economic populism."
The Journal noted that Talarico easily bested his rival for the nomination, US Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), by roughly 27 percentage points in Texas counties whose populations are 60% or more Latino, including counties in the southern part of the state that were longtime Democratic strongholds that swung to Trump in 2024.
The lesson of the election for Democrats, Rocha told the Journal, is "don’t write off Latinos that voted for Donald Trump."
In a video posted on social media Wednesday, Rocha elaborated on how Talarico and his campaign secured the nomination, calling the Texas Democrat "a special candidate" who "ran the right kind of race at the right time."
The facts about how @TeamTalaricoHQ won last night pic.twitter.com/1IUd9VpPUh
— Chuck Rocha (@ChuckRocha) March 4, 2026
Beyond that, Rocha said, Talarico and his staff were simply relentless campaigners willing to seek votes wherever they could find them.
"He won because he showed up in communities," Rocha said. "He ran advertising in those communities. He had an amazing field team of 28,000 volunteers, over 600 community events in just eight weeks. They sent over 4 million peer-to-peer texts."
Rocha said that it was too soon to say whether Talarico's message meant that Latino voters were returning to Democrats more broadly, but added, "They will move back for James Talarico if you show up and give them a hopeful message."
Rocha's enthusiasm for Talarico was echoed by Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
"James Talarico is the future of the Democratic Party," Casar declared in a social media post. "He unites working people of all kinds to take on the billionaires who are making life unaffordable. He’s going to show Texas Republicans how powerful working people are when we stand together. On to victory in November."
Mark McKinnon, a one-time Texas political operative who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, said in an interview with Politico that Talarico's victory would be an unwelcome development for the Texas GOP, which will have to work harder to defeat him than other prospective Democratic nominees.
"A perfect storm is lining up for Texas Democrats," McKinnon said. "They have a nominee who can appeal to moderates and soft Republicans. Talarico could be Moses who leads the Lone Star Democrats out of the desert they’ve been in for 35 years."
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Outspoken Pro-Palestinian Pastor Wins Primary to Replace Crockett in House
A group that tracks pro-Israel lobbying said his victory "proves that the AIPAC era is over."
Mar 04, 2026
A pro-Palestine pastor has won the Democratic primary to fill the House seat in Texas that will be left behind by the pro-Israel Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who was a congregant at his church for years.
Frederick Haynes III, who has led the Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas for more than 40 years and was chosen by the late Rev. Jesse Jackson to lead his famed Rainbow PUSH coalition, won the primary for the seat now held by the two-term congresswoman with 72% of the vote.
Crockett announced in December that she would run for the US Senate rather than for reelection to her House seat.
Haynes—who campaigned on Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and hiking the minimum wage—was endorsed by Crockett (D-Texas), who lost the bitterly contested Senate primary to state Rep. James Talarico (D-50) on Tuesday.
But where Crockett has faced heat from the Democratic base over her statements and votes in support of Israel amid its genocide in Gaza and her backing by pro-Israel megadonors, Haynes's credibility was bolstered by his willingness to call out Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians when few other Democrats would.
On October 8, 2023, as Israel was just beginning what would become a two-year campaign to destroy Gaza in retaliation for Hamas' killing of around 1,200 Israelis the previous day, Haynes delivered a sermon questioning what was then a bipartisan consensus of unwavering military and diplomatic support for Israel.
“I recognize that we’ve got to be pro-Israel... or we get in trouble,” he said, echoing the views of a small number of progressive members of Congress at the time. “Well, I’m coming to get in trouble.”
Quoting former President Jimmy Carter, he said, "Israel is engaging in apartheid with Palestinians."
The Palestinians... don’t have the weaponry of Israel, the Palestinians don’t have the financial backing from the United States that Israel has. And so they throw their rocks and shoot their arrows, and Israel is able to bomb them and kill them. Watch in the news the disparity between Palestinians being killed and Israelis being killed. It is totally unfair. But this country is going to stand on the side of apartheid because that’s its track record.
It was a speech that would prove prescient, as Israel’s military campaign would result in the deaths of around 73,000 Palestinians in the coming years, according to official tallies from the Gaza Health Ministry, nearly 70% of whom were women and children, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office. Independent estimates suggest the actual death toll is much higher.
In that time, neither Democratic former President Joe Biden nor current Republican President Donald Trump cut off weapons sales despite a tremendous collapse of public support for Israel.
Haynes' run for Congress began mere months ago. After testifying against Republicans' efforts to racially gerrymander Texas in July, he waited right up until the federal filing deadline in December to announce a bid for Crockett's seat.
His campaign did not focus heavily on the Israel-Palestine conflict—instead emphasizing issues closer to home like the high cost of living, voting rights, and Trump's use of ICE to attack immigrant and minority communities.
But the virality of his past comments and his campaigning for the Biden administration to cut off weapons to Israel back in 2024 bolstered his image as a fighter for Palestinian rights, which earned him the endorsement of Justice Democrats and $72,000 in support from the American Priorities PAC, a newly formed group intended to support progressive candidates and counter the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
His victory on Tuesday comes as Palestinian rights have become vastly more salient among Democratic voters and the public at large. Less than a week ago, a Gallup poll showed that for the first time, a larger percentage of Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis.
While support for Israel was also not at the forefront of the Senate primary, both Talarico and Crockett avoided joining the bulk of the party base in calling the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza a "genocide." However, Talarico referred to the destruction of Gaza as a "moral and spiritual emergency" and condemned Israeli "war crimes."
Haynes's district is considered one of the safest in Texas for Democrats, and he is believed to be the overwhelming favorite to win the seat in November and head to Congress.
The group AIPAC Tracker, which monitors donations that politicians receive from the powerful group and the rest of the pro-Israel lobby, said that Haynes’ “big win” on Tuesday “proves that the AIPAC era is over.”
"Candidates like him all over the country," they said, "are speaking the truth rather than running away in fear."
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Family of Ruben Ray Martinez Demands Answers After Grand Jury Declines to Indict ICE Agent Who Killed Him
Lawyers for the family said it wasn't clear whether the grand jury had been shown footage of officers "dragging Ruben onto the ground and handcuffing him immediately after shooting him three times."
Feb 26, 2026
Attorneys for the family of Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old US citizen who was fatally shot by a Homeland Security Investigations agent last March in South Padre Island, Texas, called for state authorities to release the findings of their investigation into the killing after a grand jury on Wednesday declined to indict the officer who shot the young man.
The lawyers also said that it was not clear whether the grand jury had viewed a draft affidavit signed by the only other passenger in the car Martinez was driving when he was shot, which disputed the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) account of the incident, or footage of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent "dragging Ruben onto the ground and handcuffing him immediately after shooting him three times."
"We believe that it is essential now that the Texas Department of Public Safety publicly disclose the full findings of their investigation, so that Ruben’s family and the public can determine for themselves whether ICE’s story is accurate and why Ruben was killed that night,” said the attorneys with the law firms Thompson Stam and Hayes Law. “We have sought that information, and we will continue to do so... Today’s event changes nothing.”
Luis V. Saenz, the district attorney of Cameron County, said in a statement that the grand jury had declined to bring charges, while a spokesperson for DHS said the jury had “unanimously found no criminality.”
The decision was handed down days after the other passenger in Martinez's car, his friend Joshua Orta, was killed in an unrelated car crash after the vehicle he was driving reportedly left the road and struck a utility pole at high speed.
Orta had been planning to assist Martinez's mother, Rachel Reyes, in her legal fight and provided a written statement to her lawyers saying that when he and Martinez encountered Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents who were conducting immigration enforcement with local police on March 15, 2025, the officers gave Martinez conflicting orders.
Orta wrote that contrary to HSI's account, he and Martinez were approached by a police officer who told them to leave the area. Martinez tried turning the car and another officer approached them, slapped the hood of the vehicle, and "seemed to be trying to get in front of the car," according to his affidavit.
He wrote that Martinez's car was "only crawling" during the encounter, when an officer on the driver's side of the vehicle drew his weapon and fired without “giving any warning, commands, or opportunity to comply.”
Martinez “did not hit anyone," said Orta in the statement.
Reyes told the Associated Press last week that her son was shot three times.
Internal documents at HSI, an office within ICE, conflicted with Orta's account and said Martinez initially declined instructions to stop driving, then "accelerated forward" and struck an HSI agent “who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.”
Another supervisory HSI agent then fatally shot Martinez, according to the documents.
DHS also said in a statement that an agent fired “defensive shots to protect himself, his fellow agents, and the general public.”
Martinez's death was reported in local news outlets last March, but it was not until the watchdog group American Oversight filed a public records request and published federal documents that it was publicly known that a federal agent had killed the young man.
The family's lawyers told the Washington Post that they expect to soon be able to view footage of the shooting from body cameras worn by South Padre Island police, who have declined to publicly release video evidence of shooting due to the Texas Department of Public Safety's investigation. That probe will likely end due to the grand jury's decision.
“Ruben’s family is devastated,” the attorneys said in a statement. “They are proud Americans, strong supporters of law enforcement, and Trump voters. They believe there are honest and decent officers out there. They just want to be treated honestly and decently.”
American Oversight also said it had filed Freedom of Information Act requests for police footage and internal communications regarding the killing.
Reyes expressed hope in a statement Wednesday that "attention being raised now into Ruben’s death will help bring the justice we want for him and the answers we haven’t had.”
“Since Ruben’s death a year ago, all we have wanted is justice for him and we have struggled with the silence surrounding his killing,” she said. “Now, the country is in crisis and, terribly, heartbreakingly, other families are enduring what we have."
Martinez is one of at least four US citizens fatally shot by federal immigration agents since President Donald Trump began his anti-immigration crackdown soon after taking office in January 2025.
In a running tracker, the American Prospect has counted at least 27 people who have been killed by federal immigration agents under the second Trump administration, including in shootings, car crashes, and drownings. At least 46 people have died while in ICE custody, according to TAP.
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