As he weighed a bid for the U.S. Senate earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro found himself at an impasse with three other big-name Democrats who also wanted to run for the upper chamber.
At the time, Castro met over Zoom with the other then-prospective candidates — former U.S. Reps. Colin Allred and Beto O’Rourke and state Rep. James Talarico — to try to hash out their plans for 2026. Castro eventually offered to run for Texas attorney general if the others could divide up the remaining statewide offices, including governor and lieutenant governor, instead of running against each other for Senate. In the end, Castro said Friday, “we just couldn’t get there.”
“All of us initially were interested in the U.S. Senate race,” Castro, a seventh-term congressman from San Antonio, said on a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. “But, you know, it doesn’t really make sense to have four people running for the U.S. Senate, and then nobody’s running for anything else. So at one point, I told a few of those guys … hey, I’ll slot down to the AG race if you guys can figure out the rest.”
About a month after the May 31 Zoom meeting, which was first reported by The Dallas Morning News, Allred announced he was running for the Senate seat held by GOP Sen. John Cornyn. Talarico soon after joined the race, pitting the two Democrats against each other as the party remained without a high-profile candidate to take on Gov. Greg Abbott.
Castro said Friday he’s “not blaming them” for seizing what “could be a great opportunity in 2026,” whether the Democratic nominee ends up facing Cornyn or one of his GOP challengers, Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Still, Castro added, he saw the 2018 midterm as a cautionary tale, when O’Rourke ran for Senate and was “carrying the ticket” of other statewide Democrats, none of whom gained the same traction and fundraising support. O’Rourke lost to Sen. Ted Cruz by less than 3 percentage points, the closest a Texas Democrat has come to winning statewide in decades.
“Ideally, if you were gonna design the strongest possible chances of winning, you would design it so that you have strong candidates that are well-funded in each of those races,” Castro said. “That was my hope, that we would have a full slate, and we didn’t quite get there.”
Castro added that he would do “what I can” to support the Democrats who have announced statewide bids, including Austin state Reps. Gina Hinojosa and Vikki Goodwin, who are running for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively.
Asked if he had ruled out a statewide run, Castro said he hadn’t made a “final decision” and would announce his plans at some point before the Dec. 8 candidate filing deadline.
The San Antonio Democrat has toyed with statewide runs a number of times since he began representing Texas’ 20th Congressional District in 2013. He previously passed up Senate bids in 2018 and 2020.
Great Job Texas Tribune, Jasper Scherer & the Team @ KSAT San Antonio for sharing this story.
