Everyone Knows Jasmine Crockett. Could That Be a Good Thing?

Last Monday just hours before the candidate filing deadline Dallas Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett made it official The high-profile political flamethrower is running for the U S Senate The move was not a surprising one but it did conclusively bring resolution to the weeks of her very residents consideration of whether to get into the race which had previously featured both ex-Congressman Colin Allred and state Representative James Talarico Crockett s impending announcement prompted Allred to drop out setting up a head-to-head contest with Talarico a much-hyped political figure in his own right who s built a large social media following around his personal religiosity and rhetorical skill Crockett rose to political fame in Washington D C as a fiery MAGA foil after succeeding longtime Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson in representing the historically Black th Congressional District but Crockett got her start by winning a state House seat back in A former inhabitants defender she s a polarizing figure beloved by various in the national Democratic rank-and-file as a brash fighter and derisively mocked by Trump and his faithful She wasn t widely seen as a possible statewide candidate in Texas which has been uninterruptedly red since the s until her name started popping up in polling atop every other Dem in the state It was then that she started really considering the development Her decision to get in the Democratic race to face off against either incumbent Senator John Cornyn or one of his challengers who include Attorney General Ken Paxton has sparked backlash among both armchair analysts and Dem apparatchiks who think she s uniquely positioned to lose the state in disastrous fashion potentially risking any down-ballot upside from a predicted blue wave Crockett meanwhile says that she ll be uniquely capable of rallying the party s base and mobilizing millions of non-voters to come out for her The Texas Observer spoke to her last week about her decision to run the Democratic Party s struggling brand and her prospective GOP opponents TO You had been publicly contemplating whether or not to jump into the Senate race for a couple months Why did you ultimately decide to run So as we were analyzing trends and you know one of the things that I ve spoken about publicly was the fact that we requested to determine whether or not we felt like there was a candidate that could extend the electorate We know that Texas has one of the lowest voter turnouts in the entire country And so trying to figure out if there was a candidate that could get various of those people that are just not engaging to get more engaged I felt like was gonna be our best path to making sure that we could flip the seat And we were able to see particular trends and evaluate specific things and believe that that could happen What issues do you plan to make the centerpiece of your campaign I think affordability end of the day We ve not raised the minimum wage in quite specific time yet costs keep going up So I think that we will use images of what s certainly happening So for instance when we had the shutdown we saw images of people lined up at food banks trying to get food a great number of of them working folk And so we have a concern in this country where we re giving as a multitude of tax breaks as we can find permanent tax breaks to go to the top and therefore limiting the amount of money that s coming into our federal administration to the extent that we say Well now we can t afford to do Medicaid and Medicare But at the same time that we are putting more money into the top one percent of pockets we also are footing the bill for the fact that they are not paying their workers a livable wage I think that that is what you do is you connect the dots of the entire ecosystem You talk about how this is an ineffective way to go about using our tax dollars You talk about the fact that while you may not be on SNAP benefits everyone s cost of food is going to go up You talk about the fact that they re pulling this money away from those that are just trying to eat and that also impacts our farmers as we re seeing record bankruptcies with farmers and ranchers I think there s invariably been this kind of like Oh well that s a rural difficulty or oh that s an urban concern instead of connecting it all together because a lot of our struggles are the same no matter where you live Frankly I think I think people supposedly who don t know me allegedly may not know how connected I am to rural Texas You were a citizens defender for a multitude of years in Texarkana and Bowie County right Yeah So I understand the struggle I understand what it means and how scary it is when they re talking about say shutting down one of the chicken plants and how that impacts the entire financial system Do you think it s a valid critique of the Democratic Party kind of writ large that they ve lost touch with everyday working people in their messaging and their priorities I don t think the priorities I mean I can go through a gazillion bills that we ve got for working class folk right I do think that we ve not been able to keep up with the communication standards so to speak I think that as far as our ability to reach people and as far as our ability to speak kind of plainly I think that because we re not reaching them where they are because we are behind the eight ball and because when we do end up in those spaces multiple people are still speaking as if they are on CNN or MSNow or whatever they sound like they re on cable news versus the more relaxed atmosphere that it is to be on social media or on a podcast So I think we ve got work to do but I don t think it has anything to do with our policies When you think about labor protections you can only associate that with the Democrats Even though I was really stunned when the vice president Kamala Harris was not getting specific of the union backing That really stunned me And I don t know if that is a trend that we will start to see or if things will shift back That s an fascinating thing that I m watching for Democratic statewide candidates in Texas have been losing and for the majority part by large margins Is there a key thing that you can point to about why Democrats have continuously been losing and what you specifically plan to do differently There s a lot of things I can point to Texas is a large state land mass-wise as well as population And so I think that people underestimate how big we are but also we ve been under-invested in People have not deduced in Texas And so the investments have not rolled in to make sure that we are organized We constantly have amazing candidates but I do think that we start with candidates that are not known enough and therefore they struggle to get known enough to win When you think about the fact that this balloting is taking place in months or so this is a lot of territory to cover in that amount of time And so I think that people underestimate just how much time it takes to genuinely break through And while historically we ve had amazing fundraising candidates it takes a lot of money It s a -million-dollar raise I think that one of the things that put me into a different position is that I started with a name ID that was high To be polling as high or higher than people who had already made those investments had potentially run statewide once or twice that spoke volumes to me because to me that meant that I was at a floor and not at a ceiling And having only represented one thirty-eighth of the state and never made investments in a statewide referendum to me that meant that I had a lot of room to grow And so I think that we just start off and we re already on second or third base You ve achieved this high name ID in part from your ability to spar and go toe-to-toe with Trump and his MAGA allies in Washington Several have announced that that might work well in Congress and on cable TV but not to win a statewide race in Texas Do you think that s something that can in fact be an asset I absolutely do think it s an asset And again we can continue to try things like we have historically and I think it may lead to the same product You know what we do know is that sadly enough there are plenty of people that have described the Democratic brand as weak And what we have exposed is that bulk people want someone that they believe will be strong on what it is that they believe And even when and if they disagree with them they can respect them because they don t feel like they re gonna waffle I think that ultimately it comes down to whether or not people believe that they are getting an authentic and real person People don t want a robot They want somebody that they believe is just as frustrated as they are and is going to call out what is wrong Crockett at the Democratic National Convention Shutterstock The first step in the campaign is obviously the Democratic primary You re running against your former Texas House colleague James Talarico What would you say is the argument for Democratic primary voters to vote for you Number one this comes down to experience You mentioned that we were on the state House level together and we were I ve done that But obviously by the time we get through the Senate race I will have had about four years on the federal level I ve already built relationships on the House side built relationships on the Senate side and I ve obviously already filed federal act And so this allows us to kind of continue to pound the pavement When it comes down to it I think that we should be looking at who it is that can expand the electorate so we can win We have spent a lot of time doing the philosophy lessons of who it is that we believe can win and we keep losing versus being willing to do something different If we want to see something different then we have to do something different And I can offer that difference Is there a Republican opponent you would rather run against Ken Paxton or John Cornyn I don t know I ll tell you that they are gonna have a long race Knowing that they are going to be going until May runoffs I have no idea But I hope whoever comes out victorious has been severely weakened and is in their the bulk weakened state This interview has been edited for length and clarity The post Everyone Knows Jasmine Crockett Could That Be a Good Thing appeared first on The Texas Observer