MS NOW's special 'We The People' primary coverage of elections in Texas and North Carolina

We've got a little bit of breaking news out of Texas as we continue to watch the Democratic

U.S. Senate primary there.

As you see, this is what we've got right now, 45% of the vote in, James Tolerico leading

Jasmine Crockett right now, 53 to roughly 46%, but again, less than half the vote in.

And one of the things we've been watching closely all night since we first sat down at

this desk is the question of Dallas County.

Clarkson and Jasmine Crockett represents a district in Dallas.

And Dallas County has had problems with the administration of their election today.

We've been explaining that over the course of the night.

I'm going to go right now to Evan Smith, who's the host of Overheard with Evan Smith on

Austin PBS.

He's a veteran observer of Texas politics, he's got 30 years experience doing that.

And Evan, I'd like you to explain to us, again, what had happened earlier today in Dallas

County.

Why things have been chaotic there?

And now this new reporting about a judge's order about the extension of voting there.

Right.

So as we talked about earlier, Rachel, the Republican party in Dallas County decided they

did not want to have countywide elections.

They wanted to make people go to their assigned polling place locally.

And if the Republicans say you can't have countywide, then the Democrats can't have countywide.

So Democratic voters showed up thinking they were going to be able to vote at the places

around the county they voted.

And they returned away and there was a big push to try to extend voting in Dallas County

as a result of that to give those people an opportunity to vote after all.

A Dallas judge ordered the polls open until nine.

Well, Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court within the last couple

of hours to overturn the Dallas judges ruling.

And according to reporting from my former colleague, Eleanor Clibbinoff of the Texas Tribune,

the Texas Supreme Court has just temporarily blocked that judge's order to keep the polls

open until nine, ordering the county to separate out the votes from people who were not in

line at seven o'clock.

This throws a monkey wrench into the vote count in Dallas County, whether those votes are

going to count or not.

We have no idea what's going to happen.

It's a temporary ruling, but goodness, this is a mess, Rachel, it was already a mess.

It's more of a mess now.

This is a pause of the vote extension in Dallas County.

Are people being stopped from voting right now?

What I know is that the county is being told you have to take the votes that were cast

in the last two hours.

It's coming up upon that nine o'clock hour central here in Texas right now, you have to

take the votes that were cast by people who were not in line at seven o'clock, push them

to the side and the fate and the status of those those votes is now unknown.

And of course, if you're Jasmine Crockett, you're thinking this is terrible for you because

this is the county where you're going to hopefully roar back into contention in this

race.

And this is a, as you said, it was a Dallas judge who ordered the extension of voting in

Dallas County.

And then it was U.S. Senate candidate and sitting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxson,

who asked for an individual state Supreme Court judge to weigh in and essentially overturn

that that other judge is ruling.

Is the Supreme Court of Texas, if they would come in and temporarily block that Dallas

judges order and the Supreme Court came back and said, yes, we temporarily block it.

Is it, do we know is it multiple judges on the sexist Supreme Court or is it one judge

is ruling?

I mean, I would have to, I don't know whether it was one judge or multiple, but my sense

is that the court institutionally as opposed to one assigned justice individually, but that's

something we'll determine here in the course of the report.

Yeah, this is crazy stuff.

Yeah.

Keep talking to your sources and do what you can to help us understand this.

I think we'll be coming back to you.

I can tell you, for all the lawyers who are listening to you right now who are going

to understand what I'm about to tell you, this is from the Supreme Court of Texas orders

pronounced.

A stay is issued in the following petition for rid of men, Davis, in restate of Texas

from Dallas County.

The District Court's order granting emergency petition to extend voting hours issued

today in cause number, um, styled Cardell Coleman and his capacity is Dallas County Democratic

Party Chair versus Paul Adams and his official capacity as Dallas County elections administrator

and the 160 second District Court, Dallas County, Texas is state, meaning the earlier ruling

that was in place that extended Dallas County Voting voting, that order is state.

And then here's the money quote, voting should occur only as permitted by Texas election

code section 41-032, votes cast by voters who were not in line to vote at 7 p.m. local

time should be separated.

Note, the petition for rid of mandamus remains pending before this court.

Hmm.

Chris Hayes, what do you make of this?

Well, I mean, at one level, it's pretty insane to have a candidate who's on the ballot

being the litigant who gets to decide, I mean, you know, he's the state's attorney general

but getting to wait to weigh in, I, you know, I don't know if there's a particular valence

to those, uh, those votes at that hour for him.

I think it's mostly about the Democratic primary.

It also feels a little bit to me like if the calculation of the Republican establishment

is at crockets and easier candidate to beat, that this goes against that, but like he's

just doing it for love of the game, you know what I mean?

Like he's just super committed to making it hard for people to vote as just a deeply held

view.

You know what I mean?

Like making a hard to vote in Dallas.

Yes.

Right.

In a big purple slash red state, you take the cities that are very blue and you say those

places have terrible voting, look what a mess.

And so there's not like 3D chess here, it just seems like I don't like the fact that they

extended voting hours because there's confusion.

I want them to take that back.

But Chris, the three-dimensional chess is tonight isn't that important.

It's November.

So as soon as they're starting to cause chaos and it's just now, things are messy, things

are messy.

When they're disastrous in November, it's like, well, we saw this coming.

Yeah.

Yeah, no.

And that's an important thing to keep in mind, right?

I mean, also this idea that you're going to segregate out these ballots based on who's

online at 7 o'clock.

You can.

Yeah.

And I generally just want to take a step back because we can get the weeds here.

There is no reason to think that anyone that there's any illegitimate or fake votes in

the entire pool.

Yeah.

There's no reason to think any of that.

No voter did anything wrong.

No one did anything wrong.

There was confusion.

You should always default to what will allow the most amount of actual legitimate voters

to cast votes in an election again, whoever it is, whether that would benefit a Republican

candidate or a Democratic candidate or the candidate you want or the candidate you don't,

like just as a general principle.

Yeah.

And one of the things that's crazy about the world we live in, it is increasingly going

to be the case that there are going to be places in which lower voter turnout would

probably help Democrats and Republicans.

And it's still the case that as a matter of principle, you should,

intervene on behalf of the maximal amount of voters being able to do that.

But doesn't this even hurt voter turnout in the fact that if these people are standing

in line waiting to vote, at some point, a lot of them just say, forget about it.

Yeah.

I got to go home.

I got to feed my kids dinner.

I got to feed the cat.

At some point, people are like, it's not worth it.

They do, but that's, I would bet that's a smaller percentage of the people standing in

line.

Number one.

Number two, again, Republicans using the, the, the, the bony as part of their head right

now in, in looking at this are not understanding what they're doing.

They're setting up Texas to flip in November because they are systematically pissing off

the voters there at the end of the day.

There are, as we've already indicated tonight, there are voters who are moving out of the

Republican column to vote in the Democratic primary because they do not like what the Republicans

are doing.

There are more Republicans who are voting tonight in the Republican column who are looking

at this.

They're saying, well, why are you doing it?

First off, what does this have to do with the Republican primary, besides this impact

Ken Paxton, right?

There is no impact on Ken Paxton.

To your point, Chris, this is a maximum impact that they can bring to bear on what they want

to label as corruption.

To your point, it sets up the argument and the narrative that they want to put in place

is November across the country, when that confusion sets in, when voters are bemused

and don't know, and they show up at the wrong polling place, see, we told you there was

corruption.

Shut it down.

Well, in the narrative, let's be specific about it, right?

The narrative from Trump and the Republicans, from Trump in particular, from the Trump movement

is you can't trust votes that come from Democratic strongholds.

Yes.

So you can't trust votes from cities.

You can't trust votes from places that have lots of people of color.

So they're trying to make, I mean, it makes sense to fit the political narrative, to try

to make the Dallas votes, and I'm sure they hope the Houston votes, or any votes, any

other votes that fit that narrative seem as unknowable as possible, so as to create a

pretext for being able to exclude them from the totals from that state.

And if we go upstream causally, the whole reason we're here, right, is because the Dallas

County GOP refused to co-sign a memorandum of understanding to allow countywide voting

that had a demand for paper ballots, which again, like, has nothing to do with anything.

There's no reason to think that they're better, right?

That's a Donald Trump obsession.

That's an election denier obsession, like the whole, the whole causal chain that created

the confusion that led to the necessity of opening the election earlier was the Republican,

local Republican County party doing this.

And to that point, because it's really important to make that logistical point about what

went wrong here.

So now we've got this order from the Supreme Court of Texas that says, what's the remedy

here?

Well, we've paused the extension of the voting hours and votes cast by voters who were not

in line to vote at 7 p.m. local time should be separated.

But is that feasible to do at one big county voting location in Dallas County?

Probably not.

Is it feasible to do at every individual precinct voting location in Dallas County?

Because there is no central Dallas County voting location?

Absolutely not.

You're talking about all of those locations, all needing to do.

This arcane, if not impossible.

And what's important about what you just said is that I can assure you, I can assure you

that election officials were not standing outside.

Once they got the clearance to keep the polls open, right?

They knew where, like Jacob was there at that, at that point out, he was with the last

person who was identified in the line at the appointed hour.

They didn't do that at the original polling time because they got the clearance to extend

it.

You don't know who's on line.

It is Markham with a chalk line.

Thank you.

But that's why this voter is so boned.

But their goal isn't that which is noble.

Their goal is an endless morass of litigation.

So that goal isn't to actually know who the person was.

That was the last person online at 659.

You know, I want to know what I want to know.

I want to know what the Jasmine Crockett campaign thinks of what has just happened in Dallas

County.

Eugene Daniels has just spoken to the Jasmine Crockett campaign, Eugene, what are they

telling you?

You have talked to a couple of officials in there.

And there's, as you can imagine, an intense frustration with what just happened.

They felt like they were finally going to get some answers out of Dallas County.

They're talking to the lawyers and figuring out how to fight back was the language that

both of those folks used when we spoke.

What fight back looks like?

We're not sure.

We also talked to the Tala Rico campaign multiple folks over there.

And they are supportive of whatever ends up of voters voting, right?

They are not one person said to me.

It's late night.

So I feel like this is okay.

Paxton sucks.

That's bad.

All voters should be able to vote.

And I think we're going to hear from a lot of the Democrats in Texas, where you're going

to hear from Tala Rico and Jasmine Crockett is that this is the shenanigans that they

have been saying could happen in Texas.

They didn't think it was going to happen so early.

They thought it would happen as they got closer to November.

But these are the warnings that they've been given.

And on the first night of this big primary season that we're going to have, it's also possible

to tell signs for the shenanigans that might happen in other states and other elections

as we move forward.

Eugene, you said we're going to hear from Tala Rico and hear from Crockett on this matter.

Do you expect that we actually might see the candidates behind microphones and in front

of the cameras on this matter anytime soon?

I think that's probably more likely with Jasmine Crockett.

I think Tala Rico might kind of let it play out the team.

Someone told me the team is still trying to figure out what the best way to operate in

this is.

They haven't done this kind of and dealt with this kind of thing before.

I think it's more likely Jasmine Crockett gets our front because this will impact her.

We've been saying all night that Dallas is where her biggest numbers are going to come

from.

If she is going to win, she's going to have to over-perform in Dallas and so it is incumbent

upon her and her team to get our front and say what her team is saying to me right now

on back line.

Yeah.

And again, let's just bottom line this here that this is the chaos that was created in

Dallas County was created because the Dallas County Republican Party refused to do what

they have done in previous election years and what almost every other county in the

state has done, which is allow for everybody voting in that county to vote anywhere in

that county, which makes for very simple election administration compared to what they've

ended up with in Dallas County, which is that people need to vote in their individual

precincts.

Things that something that hadn't been done in previous elections in that county and

that people didn't know to expect it created a lot of confusion and that is what brought

about that judicial order that extended voting in Dallas.

Again, that extension has been paused after a request to the Texas Supreme Court from

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

This is still ongoing at this point.

Ali, can we go to you right now just in terms of talking about the stakes right now, what

we're seeing in terms of the statewide race in Texas?

Nicole, I talked about endless morass of litigation.

That could be Ken Paxton's tagline, right?

That's actually what he does.

In Texas, we got 48% of the vote.

The gap is staying about the same.

Telleriko has 53% to Jasmine Crocket's 45%.

And again, we're waiting to see what happens in the Jasmine Crocket stronghold of Dallas.

We, by the way, just have results in the first results from El Paso, 59% of the vote is

in.

And Telleriko is winning that 62 to 35 for Jasmine Crocket.

The lead in Houston in Harris County is shrinking for Harris.

It's 53 and a half to 45.

But take a look at this.

I want to just break out.

There's nothing here in Election Day vote.

This is all early vote.

It's 96% early and in person.

I'm now going through the state and I'm looking at places like that, Bear County, which

is San Antonio.

Take a look at that.

Same thing.

95%.

There's no early vote coming in in a lot of these places.

Not just Dallas.

Obviously, we know Williamson County doesn't have that.

We don't have, I'm sorry, we don't have Election Day vote in a lot of these places.

So this is a really big deal.

What's just happened in Dallas County?

An overwhelming number that we're, if we're looking at the whole state and 48%.

The rest is, is today vote.

And we, we're not counting that in a lot of places, including some of these highly

populated areas like Dallas.

So this is the, the problem we have.

I want to show you one other thing.

By the way, I want to go to the house primary, just outside of Houston.

I want to show you an interesting story is right here in Texas, two, 58% of the vote

in Dan Crenshaw is, is, Steve Toath is the, is, is,

is at 57% Dan Crenshaw, the incumbent is only at 39% again.

It's 58% of the vote.

It, we're not able to call this, but this is interesting to your point, Rachel, that

you made earlier, that tonight is proving to be a difficult night for a lot of incumbents.

Yeah, and it may be for yet more of them as we start to get more results in across

Texas and throughout every place that's facing primaries tonight.

Let me just ask the controller right now, do we have Jacob Soberoff available to us right

now?

All right, let's just go to Jacob right now.

Actually, right now at James Tallerico's election watch party, Jacob, what are you hearing

from the campaign?

What are you hearing from people who have turned out there to support Tallerico as the results

come in?

Rachel, they are feeling very, very good here at Tallerico headquarters and I predict in

about 30 seconds you're going to hear a massive cheer because they are watching us and it's

on a slight delay, but they have been glued to every minute of every update that is coming

in.

They were watching Ali Bell, she's reports just in the last couple of minutes.

What I will say is, though, the issues around what's happening in Dallas County and I have

asked the campaign for a comment about what they are going to do and what they are going

to do.

We haven't heard yet if the Tallerico campaign is going to respond, but I will also say

we have been watching very closely the results coming here out of Travis County as well,

here in the Austin area and as we've watched Ali do the reporting over the close of

the last several hours, when I met Doug Reco on the line at UT Austin earlier this evening,

the chairman of this Travis County Democratic Party, we didn't talk about this, I didn't

know about that the results were going to be delayed, but here's what he told me.

I checked in about these results being delayed, he said, yes, they are delayed, the absentee

results, the early voting results, excuse me, are delayed coming out of Travis County

because the Republican Party here asked for that in the primary election contract.

It isn't new, but it's the reason why the votes are delayed.

The trade-off is that they were able to negotiate county-wide vote centers like we have been

talking about all night and that's why what's happening here is not what's happening in Dallas

or Williamson County where you can only vote in the precincts, but the results are trickling

in here slower than they normally would because of an agreement between the Democratic and

Republican parties.

And what we'll say though, that everyone here at the Tallarigo headquarters is feeling

very optimistic this evening, we expected to speak or expected to speak, not long after

the Dallas County results were in, that has now been thrown into question because of the

status of the vote count and the Texas Supreme Court's decision, but all in all Rachel,

I can tell you that this is an enthusiastic crowd, a very eager crowd to see what's going

to happen and they're watching us on MSNOW here at Tallarigo headquarters.

James and Jacob, I'm a little bit worried that you're going to be mobbed in just a moment.

All it's going to be left is a little tough to fair in your glasses from the way that room

sounds right now.

I will tell you, I'll give you a reporting assignment right now.

If you can get us any further reaction from the Tallarigo campaign in terms of this dramatic

move from the Supreme Court of Texas, pausing the extension on the voting in Dallas County,

we do have some reaction from the Jasmine Crockett campaign that we got through our

friend Eugene Daniels.

If you can get anything from the Tallarigo side in terms of their reaction to what happened

with the Texas Supreme Court, we're all ears, we just love to hear it.

So good luck, my friend.

Thank you.

Rachel, forgive me, but I am just checking my phone to see if the campaign's as far as the

my latest.

Not yet.

So, as soon as I'm able to go try to sneak my way backstage, let me just give you a little

look at what we're looking at here.

Rachel, this is what they're looking at just so you know, I'm going to try to sneak back

here and see if I can find him.

If you ever can find someone from the campaign, let us know the reaction to what happened

in how to Dallas County.

We'll be back to you a little bit.

All right, Jacob, Jacob, thank you very much.

Well, we talked earlier in the night about how, whatever happens in the Republican side,

because there are three, it's likely to not be known tonight and to go to run out of

the run out.

You know, the benefits if the Democratic side is sort of tied up in litigation uncertainty,

whomever is interested in that person not having the night or the head start.

Yeah.

I also think that if you're Ken Paxson, I'm just going to go to the dark place here.

And the Republicans, what you want is for somebody to win the Democratic primary and for them

to continue to be divided.

It was quite a contentious primary.

Yeah.

It's these are two stars.

But it has been a contentious primary.

And if James Telleriko wins, he needs to pull in Jasmine Crockett supporters, a large

base of African American voters in Texas.

The Republicans would love nothing more.

In Dallas County.

In Dallas County.

The Republicans would love nothing more than for conspiracy to float out there that things

were stolen from her, that the vote didn't come across.

That's not what has happened here, but I think that there's a darkness here that could

be part of their theory.

But if the Democrats, I was just going to say, if the Democrats were really thinking strategically

right now and thinking about small D Democrats as well as capital D Democrats, Telleriko and

Crockett would respond together to what's happening in Dallas and go out and speak.

They would both go out.

Telleriko would go out and speak and show and they both would and do in a coordinated way.

They would act together.

They would act with the state Democratic Party chairman and they would make a unified

front on the subject.

But in defense of both of these candidates, that's really hard to do.

Both of them put it on the line, ran a really hard race to say, I need to do, I need

to put party before self, I need to focus on it.

That's hard to do because Ken Paxson to the dark point.

This is a test run.

This is a test run for how can he get voter suppression operations working like Democrats

tomorrow in Texas better get ready for voter suppression hijinks from now until November.

Not just that.

That's a warm duck.

Yeah.

Michael, I cut you off there.

No, no, no, no, I'm just going to say to the point to the staying in the dark place

for a moment.

Sorry.

No, but no, but it's a good place to be in this context because I think the important

narrative for the Democrats is not to get lost in the weeds of lawsuits and conspiracy

theories.

Tonight was stolen from us by the Republicans because the Republican attorney general running

in this race asked a judge to intervene and take away your vote.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That wasn't Jasmine.

That wasn't Telleriko.

That was Paxson.

And I think the narrative is there to both of your points to make it a little bit easier

for them to come together, right?

Which you're right.

It has been a fight.

Don't want to do that.

But the more important battle is the small D point that you made, Rachel, that they need

to focus on because tonight, the vote of a lot of voters is being stolen for them after

7 p.m.

Well, let's go to Dallas right now.

Let's bring in our own Rosa Flores, who is at a polling location in Dallas, Texas, Rosa.

I said we would be back with you.

I didn't know it would be in exactly these circumstances where we're watching so much

legal drama unfolding.

What's your understanding of what's happening in the response in Dallas County this far?

We're Rachel.

I just got off the phone with Dallas County.

And what they explained to me was that what this means is because the Texas Supreme Court

I have to interrupt you.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm very sorry.

We're going to come back to you to that point.

Jasmine Crockett has just taken the stage.

Let's go live to that.

If it comes in and I'm losing that, it's going to be, if we know, I don't want this thing

is going.

So, that's my news, is that we're not going to have election results tonight in my opinion.

Based upon what specifically is taking place in Dallas County.

Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do.

And so they specifically target it, Dallas County, and I think we all know why.

So, I want you to enjoy yourselves.

But I won't be back tonight because I have no idea of when we're going to get results

and I fully anticipate it won't be until tomorrow.

So, I love you all too.

Thank you so very much for being here.

Love you down.

I love you down, Dallas.

Jasmine Crockett speaking live in Dallas right now.

We got to that as soon as we realized she was up at the podium there.

But you heard the note of what she said.

She said they are not expecting to have results tonight.

She said, this is what Republicans like to do.

They specifically targeted Dallas County.

She asked her supporters to stay and enjoy themselves, but she did not expect

that there would be election results of any definitive sort tonight specifically

because of what's happening in Dallas.

Meanwhile, we're going to go back to Rosa Flores who is in Dallas County right after,

right after this from Ali Velschi because while Jasmine Crockett was saying

that we actually did get in a bunch of votes.

Well, a lot of votes.

We're now up to 59% in the state and the lead.

Telleriko's lead has narrowed.

It's now 51.8 to 46.9.

And a lot of that is because we finally have got some votes in from Dallas and a lot of them.

That vote just dumped 61%.

We went from zero all night to 61%.

Jasmine Crockett has got a lead there.

It's 60 to 38.

It's significant, but this is early vote.

This is not day of vote.

Obviously, the big issue right now is what that day of vote is going to be.

So we're sort of stuck in a lot of places at the 60-ish point.

There are some smaller counties that were easy to count and the numbers are much higher.

But generally speaking in major centers, we're in this area.

Look at Travis County, which is Austin.

This is 60%. This is Telleriko's home.

He's at 76 to Jasmine Crockett's 23.

Let's go to Houston, where Jasmine Crockett was expected to do very well with two-thirds of the vote in.

She's her lead is narrowing.

53.5 to 45 for Telleriko in Fort Bend, three-quarters of the vote.

77% of the vote is in 60 to 36.

So again, this really is anybody's game right now.

This is a jump ball.

It is unclear what's going on.

Clearly, Jasmine Crockett believes this will not conclude tonight as she just said.

And we may be believing the same thing.

I want to just quickly jump over to the Senate.

Contest of the GOP Senate contest.

Again, 43% is where John Corden, the incumbent, is at Ken Paxson, is trailing with 40%.

He's behind a lot of what just happened in Dallas County for reasons that are not clear.

Wesley Hunt is staying at 13%.

He's been at 13% all night.

I just want to go to Dallas County and show you this.

This is the Republican Senate contest in Dallas County.

Look how far behind Ken Paxson is.

He's involved in these shenanigans in Dallas County.

His vote and Wesley Hunt's vote do not add up to John Corden's vote in Dallas County.

I don't know whether that's relevant to why Ken Paxson went to court tonight.

To shut down the votes of those who were in line after 7 p.m.

But it is a place where Ken Paxson is not doing well.

All right, I want to go right back to Dallas County right now.

Rosa Flora is standing by Rosa.

I very, very rudely interrupted you while you were starting to tell us about your communications with Dallas County.

I only did that because we had that live feed to take from Jasmine Crockett.

Please start over again.

Tell us about your communications with the county.

What happened in those communications tonight?

Yeah, so how they explained it to me is because the Texas Supreme Court struck down the lower court ruling

which extended voting for the Democratic primary from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Central time.

All those ballots that were cast, Rachel, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Those will be, quote, separated and kept.

Now, the big question is, will they be counted?

And I can tell you from talking to voters who had gone to multiple polling places

trying to find the right polling place, one woman who was in tears earlier today

and a woman that I literally interviewed moments before the polls closed

because this Texas Supreme Court ruling came down, they were all worried about their vote counting

and they were all talking about how this was, quote, voter suppression

because they were really trying to vote and they just couldn't vote.

Like I said before, I'm a data girl, Rachel,

and just to give you a sense, as I mentioned earlier,

here at about 5.30 p.m. Central time, 388 people had voted at this polling place

and according to the election judge again of the Democratic party, about 350 had been turned away.

That just gives you a sense of how many people were out in Dallas County trying to figure out where to vote and trying to vote.

That's just remarkable, that's a remarkable snapshot of what was happening there at Rosa.

But just to be clear, what the county told you is that votes cast after a specific time are going to be kept.

But they didn't necessarily say they're going to be counted or it's not clear at this point

whether they will be counted, they'll just be somehow preserved and segregated

from the vote that came in earlier today.

You're absolutely right and I followed up with that Rachel because that was very curious about what that meant.

Does that mean that they keep them just for now?

And the individual from the spokesperson from the county didn't go into specifics

because of course that's a lot of legalism. She was like, I can't speak for the Democratic party

because this is a challenge that the Democratic party is putting forth.

But she did say that they will be kept.

But from talking to all of the voters today, I can tell you that what they were worried about was their vote counting,

especially because they had gone through, in essence, through all these hoops to try to vote,

trying to figure out, okay, wait, where do I vote?

Even the website crash, Rachel.

So people who were trying to figure out where can I vote, they couldn't even find out where to vote because the website crashed.

So there were just so many hurdles that these voters had to go through just to cast their ballot today.

Rosa Flores, for us in Dallas County, Texas.

Rosa, I know we will be back with you. Keep reporting.

Whatever we can learn about how this is going to be worked out, what's going to be the dispensation of those ballots,

how voters can, if they can be reassured about how this has been administered in Dallas County,

it's all really, really important. Thank you. We're grateful for you being there.

The last polls of the night have closed. North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas.

We are watching this sort of remarkable litigation play out in Texas in terms of votes counting and being cast.

We as yet may get full developments tonight in either side of the Texas Senate race,

either on the Republican side or on the Democratic side, it's just, it's all happening all at once.

We'll be right back. Stay with us.

Just coming up on 10 30 Eastern time as we are covering the first big primary night of the 2026 midterm elections.

Now, at this hour, at this moment, there are only two precincts in one county in Texas,

where vote officially is still coming in, where polls are still open.

It's two precincts in Williamson County, which is just north of Austin, Texas.

There has been litigation tonight, a ruling from an order, excuse me, a ruling from a judge in Dallas County,

ordering that in Dallas County, the vote had to stay open for longer,

because there had been mass confusion after the Republicans from Dallas County refused to allow,

to come to an agreement, to allow people to vote countywide in Dallas County.

Showing up, expecting to be able to vote in Dallas County and being told they needed to go to a specific precinct location they'd never had to go before.

Because of that confusion, there was a judge's order to extend voting in Dallas County.

Dallas County is huge, second largest county in the state.

The Attorney General of the State of Texas, Republican Ken Paxden, who is a candidate for the US Senate primary on the Republican side tonight.

He then went to the Texas Supreme Court and secured an order from the Texas Supreme Court to stop that extension of the voting in Dallas County,

which in logistical terms is a chaotic sort of thing to order, because people were voting, their votes were cast.

In Dallas County, they were toward essentially to segregate those votes, to separate those votes, and set them aside.

This is a temporary matter. The overall writ, the overall question is still before the Texas Supreme Court.

As far as we know, right now at this hour, Dallas is among other things an important stronghold for Texas Democratic Congressman Jasmine Crockett,

who was in a hot, hot battle with James Tolerico, a state representative in Texas, for the Democratic US Senate primary there.

That is where we stand right now.

Let me give you one other little wrinkle here.

This is something that Ali Velschi has been noticing.

We just got a little bit of specific reporting on it from Jacob Sobroff as to how this is playing out in Austin, specifically in Travis County.

But we're noticing that there's one big category of vote that really just doesn't seem to be factoring into the vote totals we are getting out of Texas almost across the board.

Ali, can you explain that to us?

Okay, so this is the total vote in right now is 60 percent.

Tolerico is at 51.8 and Jasmine Crockett is at 46.94.

Here's the thing. I can touch this and tell you where this vote comes from.

Of that vote, more than 50 percent in each case is from early in-person voting.

About 2 percent is early by mail voting. 2 percent is election day.

So we've got no election day count in most of these places.

So all across the state and show you no election day votes in El Paso, San Antonio, Bayer County, no election day votes.

Austin, we haven't even broken it out.

Corpus Christi, I've gone all through the state.

This is the only place I can find with any significant election day vote.

It's 18 percent of the vote with 71 percent counted.

So we just don't have election day votes anywhere.

And to your point about Dallas County, this business about sequestering votes.

This isn't sequestering military ballots or mail-in ballots.

Things that you can actually sequester because they're in a different bucket or a different bag.

Someone just decided, a judge decided that anybody who wasn't in line at seven o'clock doesn't get to vote.

But they didn't make any line.

They didn't sequester those votes.

So this has thrown the whole thing into disarray.

But across the state, we are just not seeing early vote day-off vote anywhere.

So when we're looking statewide at the fact that we've got 60 percent of the vote in,

we're talking about 30,000.

They're fewer than 30,000 election day votes having been counted so far and reported in Texas.

So this 40 percent that we're missing in most cases is today's vote.

So when you look at when you say the Associated Press is saying this is too early to call, they mean it.

It's really too early to call.

There's a good spread between Tolerico and Crockett.

But we're missing 40 percent of the vote right now.

And we're hoping that this all comes in fairly quickly.

We are still waiting on more stuff from Dallas.

We're waiting from Williamson County, which has reported zero votes at the moment.

Two precincts have are staying open till 11 p.m. Eastern there.

So we won't get that for a while.

That's north of Austin.

We're expecting Tolerico to do well there.

And El Paso County, we have now got 60 percent of 59 percent of the vote in.

And Tolerico is winning that 62 to 35.

But a lot of vote missing in Texas right now.

Okay.

Ali, thank you for breaking that down for us.

I have some own standards, Townsend.

And you have been all over this in terms of anticipating some of these problems in these specific counties.

What do you understand about the way this has played out over the course of the night?

And the reaction to what's happened with the Texas courts?

So I talked to a number of people on the ground from the Texas Democratic Party.

Because again, the parties are the administrators of the elections in a primary.

This does not apply for the general.

So in the general, the state is in charge of the election.

So if people think, are we going to have this particular issue come November?

No, could be a different issue, but not this one.

Lawrence and I were chatting in the green room.

And he said, does this also affect the Republicans?

I thought it was a very good question.

I asked the chair of the Texas Democratic Party.

And the chair said it is their understanding that the judge's order is specific to the Democratic primary.

Because again, they didn't do a joint primary.

So it is only the Democratic votes in Dallas County.

The particular law that is being cited, Texas Democrats were large.

If we look at the lawsuit, the lawsuit that was filed was filed by the Dallas County Democrats,

not the Texas Democratic Party.

I say that because there are people, there are factions within the Texas Democratic Party that say,

Texas law is very, very strict.

And it's very strict about when people can vote.

Texas law, a law from 1985, says that the voting in Texas is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

There has only been one time in our recent history since that law has, it's 40 years.

Law is older than me.

It's only been one time in our history in May of 2024 that an extension has been given.

And that was very specific in Dallas County.

A judge said there was a disaster because power was out in polling places in May of 2024.

And because the power was out in about 100 polling places, they needed to extend the voting in those polling places.

And that voting was extended for that very particular reason.

But tonight, what we are seeing to the conversation you all were having earlier,

is the first time that this 1985 law has been challenged directly in this way.

And yes, it is the Ken Paxton, who is a candidate on the ballot.

Again, this doesn't affect them. It's just about the Democrats.

They are weaponizing a law that has been on the books for 40 years to throw chaos into what is happening in the Democratic Party.

The last point I'll make is this.

There are a lot of votes out there.

No one is going to count their chickens before they hatch or their eggs, if you will.

We have not heard from the, I've reached out to people within the tolerable campaign.

They are not saying whether or not yet they are in the belief that Jasmine Crockett is, that we will not know tonight.

They are reserving their comments.

So if they have some comment, I'll come back.

I know Eugene is also talking to them.

But I think that we are in a place now where, come to tomorrow, there will be some people that will say,

Jasmine Crockett lost its race because of what Republicans did.

And then there will be some people that say, oh, I think she just lost its race because she didn't run a good campaign.

Either way, the narrative on this is now up in the air because of what the Republican in Texas decided to do to play in the race.

Now, as I said, that to me is the most important part of this.

I don't want to get lost in the weeds here, people.

I really don't.

This is an orchestrated, coordinated effort, period.

It has been from the very beginning.

I just want nobody to lose the law.

That is the point I want to make sure it is the law.

Right, it is the law.

But we've already seen now in Texas and across this country, how the law can be weaponized and used to full effect

when you want to move the needle in a certain direction if you want to stop something.

And so I just find it, why does Paxton care, whether or not Democrats given the confusion that was wrought in this situation, want to vote for an extra two hours, doesn't change his numbers, right?

Doesn't change what's happening on the Republican side.

So what do you care for?

It's not about what we're standing up for the law.

Well, you're reaching back 40 years plus to stand up for a law that no one's had to invoke before.

So I just think we need to understand what's going on here very much to what Stephanie was saying before and what a lot of us who have been in working in this space and hearing on the ground, that all of these things are story lines that are being created that will be used later on.

And we just need to understand how they're going to be used now.

So we recognize it when they're used later.

There is one other element of what's going on here is being reported out by the Dallas Morning News that some of the confusion, some of the chaos, some of voters being told to go the wrong place.

Maybe the faults or maybe attributable to the fact that Texas Republicans just changed all their congressional district boundaries.

Right before this election and they maybe didn't follow through on all the logistical work you need to do to make sure that people still get to vote in the right place after you've done that.

We're reporting on that coming up. We're going to take a quick break. We didn't expect it to be amazing in this exact way.

It was going to be amazing. I wasn't thinking this way. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to our coverage here on MS now of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms.

Thank you for joining out to be a super interesting one. Let's bring back our colleague Eugene Daniels who has some new reporting as we are following this developing story out of Texas. Eugene, what are you hearing?

The biggest question was what can happen next? What are the things on the table for the Cracker campaign as you're dealing with what the Texas Supreme Court said?

I talked to a 25 year veteran of election law in Texas who said the key is that every county has a ballot board. Each county has their own and the ballot board will meet the first meeting in Dallas is going to be on Monday.

Now that ballot board will kind of get together and they will in fact vote to accept the pre and post 7 p.m. vote.

So this is up to this ballot board because as we all know and I think Simone has stated a couple of times the elections are run by the parties in Texas.

And so when the polls closed at 7 o'clock, this person says that person was noted. If it was a guy in a black shirt and black jeans, that person was noted and when they voted that was made clear that that was the person who was online at 7 p.m.

Now it's easy to track. It's an electronic, they say, but the post 7 p.m. vote is the problem is the question.

So the Supreme Court, what they essentially said was keep this group in a pack over here and we'll look at it.

Now when the board meets on Monday, they may decide that it may not matter. They may see the amount of votes that happened after 7 p.m. and say there are not enough votes here to change the election.

And so this will happen on Monday. These are people who are Democrats, a lot of these and there won't be any Republican shenanigans allowed here.

It is going to be interesting to see how the shakes out Williamson County will also have the same thing. It's unclear when their next board meeting is.

But this is kind of how these things are going to actually shake out as we move forward. And as you said, amazing and chaotic to say the least.

Eugene, that's really helpful. The ballot boards in each county appreciate that. Eugene, and again, keep us surprised as you learn more.

And now you're continuing to work the phones and talk to your sources in Texas.

I mentioned before the break that the Dallas Morning News has some interesting reporting saying that some of the, I mean, you've got to sort of think about this as a couple different things that have happened in Dallas County.

Number one is people turned up to vote in Dallas County and we're told you're not allowed to vote here. You need to vote someplace else you weren't expecting to have to vote.

And that is suppressive, right? It's inconvenient enough and difficult enough and time consuming enough and confusing enough and off putting enough that that is suppressive of the vote itself.

Then you get this separate issue later on in the day when after that happened all day long, that was the cause for a Dallas judge saying, OK, let's keep things open a little longer in Dallas County.

And then that extension of the voting hours in Dallas County is what was overruled by the Texas Supreme Court, which has led to all this stuff about the, you know, voters before 7pm and voters after 7pm and all those things.

But that that vote from that that ruling from the Texas Supreme Court and the issue of how difficult and complicated and confusing it was for people to vote all day long in Dallas County.

There's a kind of two separate but related things. And on that first point about how difficult it was for people to vote in Dallas County, Dallas Morning News is reporting that this confusion about the Dallas County Republican Party saying, no, you're not allowed to vote countywide, you have to vote for your specific precinct.

And that being new for this election season and people not knowing that was going to happen and that being confusing, that was compounded because the Texas Secretary of States vote Texas.gov website.

Was not updated with Dallas, Dallas County's new precinct maps after they were changed in December after the state did this new redistricting.

The state redistricted in Texas at the insistence of Donald Trump. It was a late and out of time, sort of not the right time to do it redistricting.

One of the logistical consequences of that according to the Dallas Morning News is that the precinct maps weren't updated again at the Secretary of States website.

So what that means is that some voters in Dallas County who were searching for their doing the right thing, doing their research, looking it up, searching for their particular polling place on the state's websites.

Some voters in Dallas County checking the state's website were then given the wrong information about where to vote because their precinct map changed when they redistricted.

By Tuesday afternoon, the state website was directing voters to use the county election search tool instead because the state search tool was not working right because they had the wrong maps.

And of course, as we know, the Dallas County election search tool then crashed as everybody in the county, again the second most populous county in the state, tried to use that county tool in order to figure out where to go.

So you can understand why a judge might have ruled that maybe things should be kept open a little later to account for this sort of mistakes, particularly because some of these mistakes appear to have been on the part of the state of Texas.

But now the Texas state Supreme Court has stopped them from having extended those hours.

How aware was the Republican Party in Dallas County of this mismatch?

How aware were they when they said no, no, you have to go to your precinct? How aware were they that no one would be able to find their precinct?

Did they know that when they were forcing that choice?

And what can Democrats do right now at 1047 PM Eastern time at 947 in most of Texas?

What can Democrats both in the party machinery and party activists and party operatives and the two campaigns of James Tolerico and Jasmine Crockett do right now to mitigate the harm that has been done to the confidence of the people of Texas that it is worth going out and voting for a Democratic candidate because you like them.

And what can they do to try to mitigate the reputational harm to Texas elections that Republicans will try to develop out of this in order to problematize the overall Texas urban vote for every election from here on out most importantly the November general election.

And if this were a normal election with everybody we knew who their campaign manager was and their senior advisors the campaign managers at this point would be talking and they would develop a plan that would be approved by their respective candidates up until even right now there's confusion actually among Democratic party circles about who Jasmine Crockett's campaign manager actually is.

If I were in my former life if I was still a Democratic strategist I would I would advise that Tolerico and Crockett get on the phone and they speak directly.

I think also there's a there's a clear from behind the veil of ignorance which is to say not knowing what the outcome is here.

The principal position is that the Democratic party believes in as many people voting as possible in the principal position and all that's independent of the outcome is that all the most you be counted.

I think that doesn't matter what where the ship fall where they may people I don't even think that's a close call.

It also seems to me that the correct things just on first principles is that that be a shared consensus view from any candidate in the race and all those votes should be counted.

So it sounds also in this case I mean you know the history of election law about primaries is very fascinating and very weird because it is both basically a private club electing its leader and also a state function

and has a really interesting long record in front of the spring court.

In this case it sounds like that ballot board made zeal to McCall as opposed to the judge.

I don't know but it certainly seems like if it is the ballot board and there is consensus on this from the Democratic party that like that is the clear position.

I mean I think what they're failing at right now is there's a huge vacuum of information to state the obvious right.

So we're all trying to navigate what the ballot board is. Why are they meeting on Monday? Can that be moved up?

I think there's a couple things.

Tallerico should come out now before anyone calls a race. If there's even a race called and we don't know that it would be and say every vote should be counted.

Yeah.

That is something that's a value and it should be counted in Dallas County. It should be counted everywhere.

Then he can come back in. He could even give out a printed. It can be a written statement. It doesn't even have to be in person.

The local county Democratic officials should come out publicly on camera and say we are going to do everything possible to ensure every vote is counted.

We have lawyers. We're going to move this up and here's how this process works because right now what's happening online is the conspiracy theories are feeding.

And it's on the internet really.

But people do look at that.

And people tell their neighbors and it's like, oh, something was stolen here.

So I think there is more saying a little bit is better than saying nothing and there are a couple people who will be saying more right now in my view.

And to all the points because the parties are the ones who are basically running these primaries, which goes back to when I was chairman.

I advocated that we abolished primaries, but that's a whole nother conversation.

Because of stuff like this, because you have biased political actors setting the terms of engagement in and out right off and on.

And can at a whim decide you get to play or you don't get to play how you get to play.

But this is something this opens up a door for conversations downstream.

In this moment though, I think to both Simone's and Chris's point, I don't care who her campaign manager is.

I don't care who his campaign manager is.

This is a principle to principle conversation.

It is.

This is what both of them between the candidates, they get on the phone and go every vote to your point, which is core, a core tenant of what Democrats believe.

If you cast a ballot, damn it, it will get counted, right?

And so it doesn't matter if you were in line at 7 o'clock this morning or 7 p.m. this evening if it's extended.

And my sister, my cousin, your uncle shows up at 7.30, that vote gets counted.

That's the case they need to make to your point of avoiding the conspiracy nonsense, the two of them.

This has nothing to do with the outcome.

This has everything to do with every vote getting counted.

And so that's the conversation I'd like to see the two principles have, get off your high horses, stop being the candidate and be the next US senator in this moment.

Can I just say, I do think that if we just look at how this race has played out, there has, I think it has been a lot more contentious online that it has actually been for the voters.

That's right.

But I do think that between the two candidates, there is a mutual respect there.

But I do think that the Crockett campaign and the Congresswoman herself feels some type of way for lack of a better term about how some of these things have transpired.

I think it's notable that Congresswoman Crockett came out and she put her stake on the ground, put her cards on the table to essentially box the tolerable campaign in.

Now they are in a position where they need to respond or not respond.

Jasmine Crockett has spoken.

I think they should have talked together first and done something to avoid confusion for the voters because at the end of the day, this is about the voters, the people being able to cast their ballots in for it to count.

So we'll see.

I know they're all watching because people texted me.

Get it together.

We don't tell a job what we think should happen.

Let us out.

Call us. Come on TV.

I need to jump in here.

We do have a projection to make in the Texas Senate primary on the Republican side.

John Corning, the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator from Texas and Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, will both advance to a runoff election, which will be held on May 26th in Texas in order to simply pick which Republican candidate will represent the party on the U.S. Senate line of the ballot in November.

This is a remarkable situation for an incumbent U.S. Senator to be in.

As far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think Corning has ever lost by anything smaller than double digits.

He's never not won by double digits.

In Texas, he again, as Jen Psaki was noting earlier this evening, about a year ago was very close to being elected Senate Majority Leader in the United States Senate.

And now is paddling for his life in terms of this runoff.

And I think it's important to just remind people that he won this barely has a couple points ahead of Paxton by spending a boatload of money, a lot of money from outside groups.

He really battled to get that 43% to 40.4%.

And the difference now between them, and I saw somebody quoted saying that you love voters because they say things are like, that sticks with me.

Who said, you know, I like John Corning. He's not bad.

But Ken Paxton, like I'd walk across hot coals for that guy, right?

And if Ken Paxton has, I know he's corrupt. I know all of the things about him.

But if he has the fire and the belly of his supporters,

John Corning still has a huge problem.

And if you think that John Corning spent a lot to get here, just wait a minute.

I'm not going to spend in the next couple of weeks.

I mean, they're going to put Donald Trump in like a Truman show compartment so that he can't intervene in the race at all.

I mean, I'm telling you, because I mean, he again, he is dispositive here, right?

Like if he comes down either way, all of this is directed about dealing with the big guy.

Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Many more results to come. Stay with us.

We're coming up on 11 p.m. Eastern time on what it's turning out to be a really interesting first big primary night of the 2026 midterms.

This is a look at the status in the Texas Democratic US Senate primary.

This is too early to call for our partners at the Associated Press.

You see James Tolerico just over 50 percent.

Jasmine Crockett just under 50 percent.

50 percent is the magic number in terms of whether or not this is going to go to a race.

Excuse me to a runoff in which these two will have to face off again at the end of May.

If either of them gets over 50 percent, they will win outright and they will be the Democratic nominee for Senate in November.

On the Republican side, we do have a projection that in the Senate race, in Texas, the Republican race will go to a runoff.

That will be incumbent Republican US Senator John Cornyn in a runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I will just share this with you.

John Cornyn reacting to the news that he will be going to the runoff against Ken Paxton.

Cornyn said this, quote, Texas Republican primary voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures in office.

Quote, judgment day is coming for Ken Paxton.

Thank you all.

That's going to be a lot of fun.

Ali, so we've obviously been very focused on the Senate races, but let's talk about some of the house races that you've been watching as well.

This one is a gift for you.

In Texas 15, this is just moments ago called Bobby Palito is going to represent the Democrats in the election.

88 percent of the vote in Bobby Palito is a musician, a Grammy award-winning Tejano artist, and he has defeated Ada Quayar, which is an interesting race.

But to your point about Cornyn and struggling, incumbent struggling tonight, there are a lot of incumbent struggling.

I want to go to district 18 in Texas.

This is an interesting story.

There are two incumbents, two Democratic incumbents running against each other, Christian Metaphe and Al Green.

Christian Metaphe has been in Congress for about three weeks or something.

Al Green had his district redistricted, so even though Metaphe has just been there for a few weeks, it's more his district than it was.

Al Green's district, they're running against each other.

70 percent of the vote is in.

I do want to remind you, again, virtually none of the same day vote is in two, five, three percent.

But there's a difference of two and a half thousand votes, so it's not decided, but Metaphe is winning there.

Let's go to Dallas right there.

Texas 33.

This is an interesting story.

Colin Allred was the incumbent.

Julie Johnson is the incumbent.

They worked together.

This has not been a very friendly campaign.

Colin with 61 percent of the vote.

Colin Allred is winning there.

35.5 percent to 33.9 percent for Julie Johnson.

Remember Colin Allred stepped out to run for the Senate last time, and now he's back in.

Let's go to GOP primaries.

I want to go to, let's go to, I don't know where am I looking here.

Well, I was going to show you, here we go.

Let's go to Gonzalez.

District 23, you were talking about this earlier.

Tony Gonzalez, who beat his challenger, Brandon Herrera,

by about 400 points last time around, is now still ahead.

It's 58 percent of the vote in, and he's at 44 percent to 40 percent for Brandon Herrera.

Again, this was a super, super close race last time, and there's still 42 percent of the vote to come in.

But at the moment, Tony Gonzalez, despite all the scandals surrounding him, and it is a lot, is still ahead.

That is remarkable.

Chris, go ahead.

I just want to react to John Kornin's statement.

One of the things that's so sort of fascinating and sort of grimly comedic about watching these sort of battles in the Error Donald Trump is like,

Donald Trump is the President of the United States, so you're going to attack a Republican because what?

He was corrupt.

He self-deal, he stole from the public till.

He acted terribly in his private life with women.

Is that, does that work anymore?

I mean, there is this sense that maybe it does.

Maybe there's a different set of rules for Donald Trump, and you can still run a campaign against your opponent in a Republican primary in which you basically say,

this person is of such low character.

You should not vote for him, but that has been a tougher and tougher and tougher sell in the era of Donald Trump,

who basically occupies the status of anti-hero in the imagination of Republican primary voters.

And the more that you talk about him or in his character, the more they're like, that sounds great to me.

And let's just be, just to set the table in terms of what's going on with Paxton.

So Kornin has been running ads against Paxton in this primary, calling him a wife, cheater, and fraud.

He's noting that Paxton's wife filed for divorce from Paxton on, quote, biblical grounds,

which as we noted earlier was not about, you know, it was not about like the...

Eating shellfish.

The shellfish restrictions in Leviticus, exactly.

He then explicitly says in the ad, Paxton then has since started sleeping with a married mother of seven.

I mean, we're really getting into the nitty-gritty in terms of what's in these ads.

Paxton was overwhelmingly impeached by Texas Republicans in the state legislature.

They impeached him by overwhelming numbers in 2023.

That was him allegedly abusing his office in order to conceal an affair.

He's also been under federal investigation for bribery allegations.

DOJ only declined to prosecute those bribery allegations in early 2025.

He also was under state securities fraud investigation and had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle those claims with his alleged fraud victims.

And...

It's a two-and-a-half-point race tonight, right?

So, I mean, but...

Yeah, but it is.

There's 12 points, 13 points, that Wesley Hunt has as of right now.

And that's what this next stage is going to be about.

Yeah.

It's going to be about going after those.

And generally, the way it works with an incumbent like this, when you have a chance to vote against the incumbent,

you make your best pick in voting against the incumbent.

That Wesley Hunt vote easily could have gone to Paxton.

Paxton's a much bigger candidate.

They chose not to.

There's something about those voters that they don't want to go for.

The wife, cheater, and fraud, and Rachel, the most interesting thing about that ad against Paxton is that Cornyn didn't pay for.

All of the Republican members of the Senate paid for.

In their Republican...

It's so good.

So every single Republican who you can Paxton would like to join in the Senate has already paid to tell Texans that you are a wife cheater and fraud.

That's in their ad against you.

Well, to Chris' point, this is that term we used to hear about moral authority, which was big on the moral majority and the Christian right.

It's all been shredded and then there's something else beneath that, which is this anger at the Epstein class.

Part of that has been exposed to be bipartisan and you can look at some of that and there's been accountability efforts on that.

But a lot of it is Donald Trump from being someone who partied with Epstein and hung out with him and sent him a vulgar birthday card

to being a president whose DOJ fought against any transparency or accountability for the Epstein class.

And so it's beyond ironic, it's ridiculous that Donald Trump ever rode the wave of any of that.

And yet it does seem like there's some commuppence because there are people who are angry about that stuff and the wider elitism and the idea that these rules that have been subjected to everyone but the people making them is a powerful double standard argument.

And so it's like, if you should get a second chance because you had a marijuana offense in college and still be able to get a job, a lot of people say second chance.

These people would say, no, not if you're a regular worker or you're from a marginalized community and they would lecture and they would talk about welfare queens.

And then there's the same people that want to keep Howard Lutton, who lied about going to Epstein Island on Trump's cabinet.

So I don't know when it all gets sorted out, but it's a problem for them.

Okay, but the curious thing to me is like, which way that cuts in this race, right?

Because I think he, you know, the polling we have is people who are sort of self-identified as super conservative or the ones who are leaning for Paxton, people who identify as more moderate or early and for cornon.

I don't know which the way that sort of cuts and you ever know like how much do people create a separate set of rules for no Trump than anyone else?

The other question to me and Jen, I'd be curious here, your, your feedback on this, you know, Democratic voters got very into like strategic voting.

They're really who can win? Who is the most electable? Republican voters have really assured that, you know, that's why you had the Mark Robinson situation in North Carolina.

I do wonder if they start to think more strategically a little bit now.

It's not a year ago in the heavy days of Vibeshf, Donald Trump will rule for a thousand years.

There's a lot of like obvious and evident discontent around you everywhere you look. He's polling at 39%.

You do wonder whether in a Republican primary you can make an argument now that you couldn't make last year or in previous ones of like, this guy might actually lose if you elect him.

Well, but electability and the question is all in the eye of the beholder, right? So it's like some people in Texas may think Ken Paxson is much more exciting.

Totally.

That's a word?

Well, I mean, look, and there is clearly a group of 40% of people who voted in this primary, who felt that way or chose him over because the vote that would make the most sense is John Cornon.

He may not have won the leadership battle, but he is very high ranking in Washington. He's very powerful. He can make calls. He can return things to the people of Texas.

They didn't care about that.

And so I think, yes, the Epstein thing, but I actually think it's an anti-Washington, anti-creature of Washington.

Cornon is a very Washington character.

And it's interesting to me and you may be right about this group of voters and who he can get.

But he's doubling down on his closing ad strategy, essentially, with this statement.

Yes.

I mean, this is like, judgment day is coming for Ken Paxson.

Texas Republican primary voters will learn more about Ken's indefensible personal behavior and failures in office.

Because that message crushed it in the closing ads.

I mean, that's what he has right now.

So he's making a bet. He can pick up those people. Maybe he can. Maybe he can't. We'll see.

I just amused by the thinking here because in the midst of all of this about Ken Paxson and Trump,

you have, in a congressional district, one representative of Gonzales, who himself is a creature of Washington,

who himself has all kinds of dirty laundry that has been exposed and yet he's winning his seat.

Totally.

And so this is the Republican party. This is my party in this hour at this moment,

which is why it needs such an incredible political anima unlike any other scene.

It's quite a visual. Thank you for that.

Thank you very much.

A biblical one. A biblical one.

We're going to go to Rosa Flores, who is at this polling location in Dallas, Texas from which we joined her a little while ago.

Rosa, I understand you've been in communication with the Dallas County judge who was involved or who issued the initial ruling

that the polling places in Dallas County should be kept open. What can you tell us?

So I just talked to the election judge that's in charge of the Democratic primary of the polling place here, Rachel, where I am,

that I've been following all day long where there's been a lot of very frustrated voters trying to go to the right polling place,

trying to check where they needed to vote to make sure that their ballots were cast.

I have bad news, Rachel, because I just talked to him and he tells me that his understanding, and he told me like this,

Rosa, I am not, I'm not an attorney, but here's his understanding because the Texas Supreme Court struck down that lower court ruling.

He says that the provisional ballots that were cast between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. central time might not count is how we put it.

And I'm a data girl, so I asked him about the numbers for this particular precinct just as a slice of what is happening in Dallas County.

He said that today, 495 people voted here at this polling place. Over 400 voters were redirected to another polling place because they were at the wrong polling place.

Now, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., 18 provisional ballots were cast at this polling place.

Those are the ballots that he says those might not count again. His name is David Fisher.

He says, Rosa, I am not an attorney. Rachel, I spoke to one of those people who cast the provisional ballots.

It was a woman that had an injury on her foot. She had gold sneaker.

She had rhinestones on her crutches because she was so enthused about voting and determined to vote.

She said that she had gone to a different polling location earlier in the day, but she wanted to vote.

And I haven't talked to her yet. I'm hoping to call her here pretty soon to get a reaction to the fact that her vote might not count.

And that's exactly what she told me. Her fear was that because she was redirected throughout the day and because the website wasn't working, that her vote might not count.

I'm going to call her. I'm going to deliver the news to her that and get her reaction because her vote might actually not count Rachel.

And it may as yet be undecided. We may not know as this as litigation continues.

It may be that the provisional ballots are not counted now, but at some point in the litigation process, they may be counted.

And it seems like it's still contingent at this point, but regardless of how it's ultimately decided, the rigmarole and the run around that voters like her have had to deal with today in Dallas County is itself a scandal, regardless of whether or not.

Regardless, I think the ultimate dispensation of how those votes are handled. Rosa, thank you very much again.

And interrupt us. Let us know as you learn more. We're really interested in continuing to follow this throughout the course of the evening as the story continues to develop.

All right, we've got much more ahead here. We're going to check in on a couple of key house races. We were just talking about the Tony Gonzalez race.

We're also going to look at the Dan Crenshaw race. We're also going to look at a key race where there's an endangered incumbent in North Carolina.

Lots more to come, including further results in the Texas Democratic Senate primary state with us.

Welcome back to our special coverage here on MS now of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms.

We are still watching results come in in Texas in that very important Democratic U.S. Senate primary between Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and James Talleriko, the state representative there, continuing to watch that.

But we've also had eyes on a bunch of interesting house primaries. It's very unusual for an incumbent member of Congress to lose his or her seat in a contested primary.

But it does happen. And there's a number of house incumbents who are looking down that kind of a barrel tonight. Ali, what are you looking at?

There's three tonight and maybe more than that. Texas of 23, which is in the far west of Texas. This is the one in which Tony Gonzalez is the incumbent.

He is head marginally at the moment by a thousand votes at the moment, but it's 61% of the voting and anything can happen here.

Tony Gonzalez ran against Brendan Herrera, his challenger last time around. Herrera came within 400 votes of defeating Gonzalez.

And since then, Gonzalez has become sort of scandal prone and involved in a lot of nasty stuff. He's still leading in Texas 23.

So we're going to keep an eye on that. Want to go to Houston for a moment and take a look at this 62% of the vote in. Dan Crenshaw, the incumbent is pretty far behind.

He's 39 to Steve Toath's 57 and a half. Steve Toath feels that Dan Crenshaw doesn't represent the America first movement.

Crenshaw is a military veteran. That's how he lost his eye. He's a supporter, for instance, of Ukraine. Steve Toath thinks that's not an American priority.

Dan Crenshaw has often said that he'd like things to be a little bit more civil in Congress. So he's at the moment losing to Dan Crenshaw to Steve Toath.

Let's go to North Carolina in the Democratic primaries here. There's an interesting story here that Jen was talking about a little earlier.

We now have 94% of the vote in, but it's so close that it's not been called yet. This is NC4. Valerie Fouche, the incumbent is leading by 1,682 votes.

It's 49.4 to 48.3. Nita Alam is the challenger here. This one at night. And it's very rare that you have 94% of the vote in and you're not actually able to call a race.

So this one we're watching very closely. And that's a really interesting race. Again, one of those generational competitions.

Fouche is 69 years old. Alam is 32 years old. Alam has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Justice Democrats.

She's really good at social media. Democratic Party figures like David Hogg have campaigned for her.

Valerie Fouche, not a particularly controversial Democratic member of Congress, not a particularly conservative Democratic member of Congress, but facing some of those other sort of wins, really, in terms of the way that the Democratic Party is evolving.

Yeah, I mean, they're both for Medicare for all. They're pretty progressive on a range of things.

What's also very interesting about this race that I think a lot of Democrats are going to be talking about is there was an kind of an anti-APAC PAC that spends a lot of money on behalf of Nita Alam.

And what they accused the incumbent of is basically her ties to APAC. Now, she has not taken money from APAC since 2024.

She took some in 2024 and before that. But she has basically said, I'm not taking money from them and she hasn't.

But still, there's no question. I would say that that is a factor here in how close this race is.

And I think other Democrats are going to talk about that and it's going to be a factor.

So during my time off, I spoke to three big Democratic donors.

And we were talking, who's doing well? Who's not doing well? They didn't want to talk about any one's names.

All they wanted to talk about was Ken Paxton. And they said, tomorrow, Democrats need to wake up and realize this isn't about policy.

This isn't about platform. This is about the United States. We cannot depend on the fact that we have free and fair elections here.

And all three donors that I spoke to said, Democrats need to get their game on and bring the right weapons to this fight that we are now in for.

Like, it's not even about, is it James Telerico? Is it going to be Jasmine Rocket?

It's, do we have free and fair elections? And based on what we're seeing tonight, these three donors said, we don't feel that way.

And I said, well, that means somebody's asking you for a big, big check tomorrow. And they all said, yo, you know.

But it's amazing to me that like, no one had any interest in talking about any of these individual candidates.

And they are so thrown and bothered by what's happening tonight. You know, vis-a-vis contacts.

Which actually, I mean, as much as you're saying, it's not a politics thing, it's such a political opening for Democratic candidates and Democratic party people who can recognize that that's where the fuel is here.

Standing up for American small D democracy as a small D Democrat right now is the best thing you could probably do for your political prospects.

Yes, but I think the point they were trying to make is stop thinking small Democrats, stop being kind and nice and considerate.

This is the fight of your lifetime because it is about democracy.

Yeah.

Can I, just on this point, I was saying this during the break, but Greg Kazar, who's a progressive, he's chair of the Progressive Caucus.

He's a Texas Democrat, rising star young.

He tweeted, or X, or whatever we're calling it these days, basically saying, James Telerego, we have not called this race, is the future of the Democratic Party.

And Jasmine Crockett is fantastic and great and can't wait to see what she does, essentially. I'm paraphrasing.

But why I think this is interesting is because there's a recognition among leading Democrats who love Jasmine Crockett and love James Telerego that this is going to be a problem unless there is some type of unified front and kind of unified effort.

So that was quite telling to me. And I think it's part of breaking people out because they're looking at this and they're like, this seems chaotic.

They're messing with us. What are we doing with how they're messing with us?

We should also just note, I just want to say like just for the point of mathematical rigor here that like we just don't know a what the margin might end up being and what the margin of the votes that are in that window are.

And the reason I say that is not to say like, well, it's fine. It doesn't matter. It's not outcome alternative. No, it does matter on principle grounds.

But fundamentally, I think when you're thinking about like what the outcome of the election is, if the election is won by six or seven points or five points or four points, I mean, it does matter a tremendous amount in terms of what happens in the rest of the night and the rest of the vote counting.

This is so important. And this is for these democratic election officials, if they could share how many of these votes, I know we got some information from excellent reporting.

That was great reporting out there that would help provide at least some clarity and some information.

May I interject with something that may be a constructive addition to this conversation on the phone right now is Dallas County elections administrator, all Adams who can hopefully help through, help us through some of the details here. Mr. Adams, thank you very much for taking time to join us tonight.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

So first of all, can you tell us what your job is and what you are responsible for? So we understand your remit and what your day has been like this far.

So I'm the Dallas County elections administrator. So I oversee elections administration in all of Dallas County, Texas.

And today, Dallas County, Texas has had some trouble in its elections administration, which we've been following from here in New York looking at this from the outside and now seeing this grave consternation that it's causing particularly in democratic party circles worrying that something wrong has happened in in in Dallas County that might not only affect the outcome of this, these crucial Senate primaries.

That might signal that something has been sort of messed with in terms of people's ability to cast their votes and have them counted as they were cast.

What should we understand about what's happened today in Dallas County and the kind of chaos that has been reporting?

So I think what's important to know is that for the last handful of years, Dallas County voters have been used to voting at vote centers where they can go to any location in the county and cast their ballot.

They were able to do that for early vote, which we had all the way up until this past Friday.

And then because the political parties were not able to enter into a joint election here in Texas, if you if both political parties agreed to a joint election in the county, then there can be countywide voting.

So that would continue. That had previously been the case. There was not a joint primary this time so that forced us to go back to precinct based voting, which has not happened in Dallas County in quite some time.

I'd only back to 2018. So then voters who have been used to going to any location may be close to work, maybe close to school.

But now we're forced to go to precinct based voting, like I said, has not happened here in nearly a decade. And that created quite a bit of confusion on election day.

In terms of the legal process that has played out over the course of this afternoon and into this evening, we initially saw an order essentially that because of a lot of voters experience of the kind of confusion that you're describing and for the reasons that you're describing.

There was an order that polling places should be held open longer than they otherwise would be in Dallas County. And then that order was suspended effectively during the extended polling times by an order of the Texas Supreme Court.

First, let me ask you if I got all that right. If I said that correctly. And and if I did, can you tell us what that has meant in practical terms in your county?

So yeah, you got that right. You've been paying attention in terms of the practical matter, you know, practically when you're dealing with massive changes in election rules this quickly, which is not unheard of in elections.

But when it's happening and you're dealing with the thousands of workers that we have out in the field in order to properly shift them to make sure everybody is on the same page can be a monumental task.

And is kind of with lash of going from six o'clock to approximately six o'clock. All the poll workers expecting are we're going to close it seven to then shortly after that being notified.

No, we're going to stay open until nine because of the order, but it only applied to the Democrats because I mentioned this was a non joint primary.

So it didn't apply to the Republicans. So there's this message going out that the Republicans are still going to close it seven Democrats will stay open till nine.

And then this goes to the Texas Supreme Court that then stays the decision, which we got sometime about eight thirty.

And now message has to go then back out to the workers in the field to then accommodate that change that it happened because of the stay.

So a lot of complex pieces happening all within a very, very quick amount of time for all of our poll workers to be able to adjust to and have to then explain to the voters that are in line of what is going on.

And if I'm understanding you correctly, all those poll workers are in myriad different locations because this is precinct based voting. And so it's not like they're all in one place where they can all collectively get together physically in the same place and talk about how this is going to be done. Right. This is disparate locations.

That is correct. These are hundreds of locations throughout the county that were selected by the political parties. So some of them are same places where you have Democrats, Republicans, other ones where there weren't in this non joint primary when you go back to this precinct based voting.

It allowed them to the political parties to choose all these different locations. But we are we do have a communication tool to communicate with them.

But once again, depending on how busy they are, various things are going on, we need to make sure that they're paying attention to their messages and making sure that they're fulfilling each section of these requirements as they came down relatively quickly.

When the Supreme Court ordered that votes cast after 7 p.m., which was the initial closing time before was extended, that that votes cast after 7 p.m. should be essentially sequestered that they should be kept, but kept separate from the other votes that were cast over the course of the day.

Is that something that was technically feasible at all locations?

Technically feasible, yes, that they can sequester them. Any of the ballots that would be cast that's ordered by a court when a location has to stay open is going to vote by provisional ballot.

So you would cast a provisional ballot. You would make a notation that it is because of a court order to be to be held after or that was cast after 7 o'clock that you were not in line by 7 o'clock.

Those already have net evidence where they can be easily sequestered.

Okay, and is this still a live issue as I was reading the Supreme Court ruling? I'm not a lawyer and I'm not necessarily good at reading specific stuff like this, even when I'm pretending to be a lawyer, but it seemed to me that there was an indication that this is still a live issue, that this was essentially a stay that the Supreme Court had issued, but that this was a matter that was still going to be further under further consideration.

Is it still a live issue and is that how and when it will be decided whether those provisional ballots are in fact counted?

Yes, so at this point, the it is my expectation that this is a stay for the time being, there will be continued litigation potentially upon this and then we'll see what happens.

So I do not anticipate that this is the end of this particular situation. I anticipate that there will be further litigation about what has happened this evening.

Not just in Dallas County, but around the state of Texas, we have been noticing that election day votes haven't been tallied in at a pace that's keeping up with other forms of vote early vote in particular and mail vote.

When do you expect election day votes will be counted in Dallas County and those results reported?

I would imagine because of that initial stay that both back the processing time, I anticipate it may not be until well into the early morning hours that we will have final numbers.

At this point, we're still weeding on a handful of locations to report back.

This is a geographically large county, not just large in population, but large in geography.

So some of these places that had been open later, even when that court ruling, when the stay came down, if you had anybody in line that had been there at seven o'clock and was in line, they were still allowed to vote a regular ballot.

And we do know that there were a few locations in the county that had lines that had been that long.

So there were cases to where people were still voting up until relatively recently.

So we expect it's going to be a little while before those returns come in.

Dallas County elections administrator Paul Adams, I'm just going to ask you one last question before we let you go.

And I really appreciate you giving us this time tonight, helping us understand this was such clarity to our audience as we've been talking about this so long tonight.

There are going to be a lot of people who are having a lot of feelings about what has happened in Dallas County tonight.

We're already seeing people sort of theorizing and coming up with relatively elaborate speculation in terms of who done it and why this happened and who was behind it and whose fault it is.

And whether or not the election results from Dallas County and therefore from Texas should be trusted.

I just wanted to put that to you as Dallas County elections administrator and just ask what you would say to the voters of Dallas County and other people looking in on your county from outside around the state and around the country right now who are having those sorts of sort of dark feelings about what's happened here.

I would say two things. I would say that first, I think that's one of the reasons why I support countywide vote center to allow voters to vote at any location where they have had previously in the county.

I think it's convenient. I think it is helpful to the voters to vote that way.

The other thing I would say, you know, people are looking for, okay, well, who's behind what's going on.

As I mentioned previously, all of the election workers that are here in the county, you know, these are not people that have been brought in from someplace else.

These are your family, your friends, your neighbors, community members that step up and volunteer to put on this process.

And that, to me, is what helps ensure the integrity of our system is that we have people that are just from every walk of life that are stepping up serving basically as volunteers to make sure that our system of democracy works.

Well, Paul Adams, you expected to be approaching the end of what I know has been a very busy season on a very long day and very long night already.

I dare say that you are just at the beginning.

So good luck to you and your colleagues in Dallas County. And again, we really do appreciate your spending this time with us to help us understand what's happening there.

Good luck to you, sir.

Thank you.

All right. I should say that in Texas, we are seeing some counties starting to post their day of vote.

We're going to be checking in on one very big one next right after this break. Much more ahead. Stay with us.

Welcome back to our coverage of the first big primary night of the 2026 midterms. Here's a really interesting race.

This is not something that we would typically be talking about at the national level, but there is a state Senate race in North Carolina, where it is the state Senate Republican leader.

His name is Phil Berger, and he's been the most powerful Republican in North Carolina for like 15 years.

And he was facing a primary challenge this year tonight from a very popular, very mega local county, a local sheriff, a local elected sheriff.

And this state Senate leader in North Carolina then decided out of the goodness of his heart that he would definitely force through redistricting in North Carolina to to benefit the Republican party.

And then miraculously after doing so, got the president of the United States to endorse him in his state Senate race in North Carolina, rather than the mega sheriff who was this guy, the mega sheriff guy was like the head of sheriffs for Trump in 2016.

And he was Trump's North Carolina chairman in 2020, I think.

So it's been this incredibly interesting race where there's this very mega guy who's very like who's very like Trump's favorite kind of guy like where's a cowboy hat and all thing against this guy who did Trump a real solid and who is a very powerful North Carolina Republican figure.

And got the endorsement in exchange for and did get the endorsement from Trump as of right now in that race.

In that race, this is the North Carolina state Senate president proton Phil Berger. There's 99.09% of the precincts have reported at this point.

And the distance between them is 50.00% to 50.00%.

It is literally two votes between them out of 26,000 votes cast.

Phil Berger has 13,075 votes.

And the sheriff who's primarying him has 13,077 votes, which is just, I mean, hey, everybody, every vote counts.

So presumably that will be going to a recount or a runoff kind of interesting to you though because there's a little bit of this like there's the Trump endorsement.

And then it's like we really know who you support.

You know what I mean with like a private like you can get him.

Someone could put the phone in front of him and he can do the like his like, but like we know who Trump wants to win.

It's like there's only so much.

You can tell from the costume.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Allie, what do we got right now in terms of some of these things we've been watching with House races.

I'm also curious as to the whether the election day, same day vote is coming in in Texas Senate Democratic.

We are getting some of that, but since Stephanie's here, my old friend, I have a little pop quiz for you.

So I'm calling me old.

What do what what do the Texas Rangers, the Atlanta Braves, the Los Angeles Angels and the New York Times have in common?

New York Times.

New York Yankees.

Thank you very much.

I was about to say I was about to say baseball.

It baseball.

And a particular player.

A particular player.

Mark Tashira has played for all of those teams was 75% of the vote in in Texas 21, which is an interesting district because it's sort of

It was summer of Boston and a summer of San Antonio and a whole lot of Texas.

He's he has been called as the winner in that was 61% of the vote.

Mark Tashira endorsed by Greg Abbott and dors by Donald Trump.

And he will be the Republican candidate there in that district.

Nice Stephanie. You win.

Texas wide 68% of the vote is in.

Tolerico has 51 52% to Jasmine Croc.

It's 47%. Again, you can see the day of vote is still scant.

8 to 10% of the vote.

But let's go to Tolerico's backyard Austin, Texas.

72% of the vote is in there.

He's got 76% of the vote so far.

And you can see that of the day of vote he's performing at about 17% of the total vote is day of for him.

16% for Jasmine Croc.

And so the percentages are very similar around there going through the state.

You can still see Harris County Houston.

Virtually no election day vote there.

We already know that Dallas has no day of vote there.

Fort Worth. Again, very little.

So there's still a lot of day of vote to come in.

Bear County, which is San Antonio has very little corpus Christi.

Noises County 78% of the vote in.

You can see there we're seeing this in some Texas counties where it's more than a quarter.

Sometimes 30 or 40%.

But generally speaking, we're still missing a lot of day of vote here.

But at the moment, 68% of the state is in.

And as we are describing it, it's too early to call because there are just a lot of votes that we don't have there.

In order for Jasmine Croc and to pull ahead, by the way, we'd have to see her overperform in Dallas.

There are a lot of votes in Dallas.

That's where she is likely to do the best.

And she'd have to perform very well.

She'd have to overperform her mail-in and advance ballots on the day of voting.

But it's entirely possible that she did.

We just won't know.

And to be clear, the sort of breaking news that we just reported in conversation with the Dallas County Elections Administrator.

I asked him directly when he thinks the day of votes for Dallas County will be counted.

And he said he doesn't think until at least the early morning hours.

Right. So we're going to be looking at a long trail in terms of when those votes are coming in in Texas.

All right, we got still much more ahead tonight. The night is young.

We'll be right back. Stay after this.

One of the races that we've been watching is that a potentially interesting house race is Texas's 15th Congressional District.

Now, this is a race that really shouldn't be within Democrats grasp in normal times.

This is a district. I say that because Trump won this district by 18 points.

It's represented by a Republican named Monica De La Cruz.

This is a South Texas district.

But we do now have the results here.

And this is a candidate who Democrats think might have an unusual sort of shot at the top here.

Bobby Polito has been projected as the winner in Texas.

Texas is 15th Congressional District, which means that he will be the Democratic nominee for this seat in the fall.

He's a Latin Grammy winner, a very famous Tejano musician.

He's running as a moderate Democrat.

Again, this is a Trump plus 18 district. So it's interesting.

But Democrats sort of a pretty real high hopes on him. Jen.

Let's bring it up and submit a veteran observer of Texas politics with 30 years of experience.

And he's now with the Atlantic.

So I've mentioned this race a little bit earlier.

I think he's such an interesting candidate because he's not a traditional political candidate.

But you are an expert.

Tell us a little bit about this district and about why he could give Democrats a shot.

If you think that's the case.

It's a huge outcome for the Democrats.

He was a heavily recruited candidate.

He speaks to a number of people in rural, heavily Hispanic communities who might not traditionally vote.

Or they may have been the folks who voted for Trump and the Republicans last time after a long history of voting Democratic previously.

Does it agree that part of the Democrats' calculation here is winning back Hispanic voters they lost.

They think Bobby Polito is their secret weapon.

Again, rural, conservative, Hispanic voters respond to this guy because of his non-traditional background.

He's been able to have conversations with people who never would have talked to a Democratic candidate.

Might never have seen a Democratic candidate in this district.

Monica Delacruz, the incumbent is one of those people who the Republicans thought they'd be able to get reelected pretty easily.

If the Democrats just took a pass on this race, but they actually have a real candidate now as their standard bearer.

And this will be a real race in the fall.

And it could be the difference for Democrats as they try to get the majority back in the U.S. House.

This is one of those seats they could win.

They have to win. And in a Trump midterm, they may win.

I followed this race a little bit.

But I think it's interesting to, because this positions don't seem to be all aligned traditionally with progressive Democrats or Democrats from Washington.

He's been a little bit apolitical. But can you tell us a little bit more about his candidacy?

Because it's not like an anti-Trump and an anti-Trump year. It's a lot more complex than that.

He is not a culture war Democrat at all.

He's talking about the economy, kitchen table issues, affordability, he's talking about public education.

School vouchers passed in the last Texas legislative session.

So for the first time now, school vouchers are the law of Texas.

He has been campaigning against school vouchers for public education.

He's making his whole candidacy about economic opportunity. And again, the economy was one of the reasons that many of those conservative Hispanic voters in the last election switched from Democrat to Republican.

He is taking back that issue on behalf of the Democrats, on behalf of his campaign.

And so he is not running a traditional national Democratic Party playbook.

He is staying very close to home.

He's speaking to the things that matter to the district. And it's really, it begins and ends with the economy.

Are Republicans also nervous about this race?

Oh, I talked to Republican consultants who are completely worried that Toledo is going to be the nominee in this race.

Ada Quayar, who was an emergency room physician, by all accounts, a really good person and was a strong candidate in this race.

The one who finished in second, they thought they were going to run against her.

They were very worried about Toledo possibly winning this race. And he did he won handily.

And because of his name ID in these communities among people, again, who don't traditionally vote.

When he shows up in these rural counties, he draws enormous crowds. He did during the primary.

They're worried about Bobby Toledo.

Evan Smith, interesting race to watch. Thank you so much.

I got to say it's been great to have Evan here and Rosa and Jacob and everybody we talking to from Texas to have Eugene and Simone talking to their sources and Texas has been really fascinating.

So we continue to watch those Senate, Democratic Senate, Senate Democratic primary results come in from Texas.

I should also tell you that a state senator apparently just came out at Tallerico headquarters in Texas and told people who are still there waiting on results that they should not go home.

We don't know exactly what that means, but somebody just came out there and told people not to go home.

For us, we're not going home. Our coverage continues on MSNOW. Stay with us.