James Talarico, a 37-year-old Democratic state legislator and Presbyterian seminarian, defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race for a Texas Senate seat on Tuesday, while Gina Hinojosa, also a Democrat, unseated Gov. Greg Abbott.
The two are the first Democrats to win statewide office in Texas since 1994, Joseph Stepansky reported for Al Jazeera. Mr. Talarico is the first Democrat Texans have sent to the Senate since 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen won his last term, six months before Mr. Talarico was born, Catherina Gioino wrote in Fortune.
It wasn’t close. Mr. Talarico had 55.1 percent of the vote to Mr. Paxton’s 43 percent, according to NBC News’s results. The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday, and Mr. Paxton conceded that night. Ms. Hinojosa led Mr. Abbott 52.8 percent to 45.7 percent, according to a tally by MultiState.
Ms. Hinojosa, 52, is a lawyer and state lawmaker. She denied Mr. Abbott a fourth term and will be the first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995, and the first Latina to hold the job, when she is sworn in in January, CBS Texas reported.
The Senate race was among the most expensive of the year. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has moved the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX and X to Texas, spent more than $200 million to help Mr. Paxton, according to federal filings cited by Agence France-Presse in a report carried by Yahoo News. Time put the figure at $224 million. Most of it moved through the Senate Leadership Fund, the main Republican super PAC: Mr. Musk gave it $75 million on Sept. 9 and $83 million on Sept. 23, and each time the group shifted nearly the same amount into a new entity, Texas PAC, the next day, The Texas Tribune reported.
Ad spending in the race approached three-quarters of a billion dollars, Philip Elliott wrote in Time. Outside groups paid for $534 million of it, with Mr. Paxton holding a roughly 2-to-1 edge. Mr. Talarico leaned on his own campaign, which had raised $72 million by early September to Mr. Paxton’s $16.8 million. “This Senate seat doesn’t belong to Elon Musk,” he said on the trail.
President Trump endorsed Mr. Paxton over Senator John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent, before their May runoff, which Mr. Paxton won by nearly 28 points. Mr. Cornyn had warned that a Paxton nomination could cost Republicans $150 million to $200 million to hold the seat. Mr. Trump went to Texas four times in the final month to rally for Mr. Paxton, and gave Mr. Talarico the nickname “Talafreako,” which the Democrat’s campaign put on merchandise.
Mr. Paxton, 63, was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House in 2023 on bribery and corruption allegations and acquitted by the State Senate. He has denied wrongdoing. He never agreed to debate Mr. Talarico, who offered to let Fox News moderate, making it the first Texas Senate race since 2000 without a debate between the major-party nominees.
Early voting reached 40.5 percent of registered voters, a modern midterm record in Texas, and more than 7.7 million ballots were cast before Election Day, up from 5.1 million early votes in 2022. In partial returns, Mr. Talarico was winning Tarrant and Collin Counties, suburban counties Mr. Trump carried by 5 and 11 points in 2024, when he won the state by 13.7 points.
Both Democrats pushed for tighter rules on AI data centers, which residents blame for higher power bills, water use and strain on the grid. Mr. Abbott had courted the industry. “Texas is the epicenter of AI development,” he said at a 2025 news conference with Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, and he took more than $9 million from donors tied to data centers, Matthew Gault reported for 404 Media. The “pause” on new projects he announced as opinion turned didn’t stop state regulators from approving them, the outlet reported. Ms. Hinojosa, who sued to read Mr. Abbott’s emails with Mr. Musk, aired his words in her ads over and over.
Nationally, data center proposals were on the ballot in more than 40 races in 13 states, and voters rejected them in at least 38, according to 404 Media’s count.
At Ms. Hinojosa and Mr. Talarico’s watch party in Austin, thousands of supporters cried and hugged as results came in. “It’s a huge win for Texas, but it’s a giant win for the United States,” said Kathy Jackoway, an Austin resident in her 60s. “Everybody is suffering. Everybody is hurting, and Trump is busy building monuments to himself.”
Mr. Musk, quiet on X through most of Election Day, posted a little after 1 a.m.: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”