Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Any minute now. We are expecting to hear a victory speech from the man who will be the Democratic nominee for Senate in the state of Texas. That would be state representative James Tala Rico. We'll be speaking at that venue there in Austin. Of course, we were covering this race extensively during last night's

special coverage. The associate press didn't call it until nearly 3 a.m. Eastern time, in part,

due to attempts from state Republicans, particularly Attorney General Ken Paxton, to disrupt and

prolonged the vote. Led to massive delays in tallying the results from the Dallas region,

which was the geographical base of Tala Rico's opponent, Jasmine Crockett.

Now Tala Rico is set to be on the ballot in November. To put it mildly, he's going to face an uphill battle.

Donald Trump won Texas by about 14 points in 2024. Republican Senator Ted Cruz beat his Democratic challenger from a congressman

Colin Allred by about 8.5 points. Still, if Democrats want any chance of retaking the Senate this

fall, the path likely goes through Texas. They have to spark, they have a spark of hope in the

lone star state tonight. You'll see, while Tolerico gets to start his general election campaign

in just a few moments from that podium, the Republicans are entering what could be a wildly expensive

and nasty runoff race. Incumbent center, John Cornyn, MAGA ally, who is occasionally mildly,

tepidly, hesitantly critical of Donald Trump, is facing off against the indicted, impeached,

almost comically scandal-ridden hard right state attorney general of Ken Paxton.

Last night, Paxton managed to get 40% of the vote in a three-way race.

He is a genuine threat to win in a Republican primary electorate.

And things are so dire and natural Republicans are so dead set

and intent on Paxton not being the candidate. That's their nightmare scenario. They think that would

really make it a race. That Donald Trump now has to intervene. That's something that he, by the way,

has pointedly refused to do thus far in the race. He could have months ago and basically

ended the thing. He now says he will

endorse a candidate soon in Texas and will call him the other candidate to drop out. You might guess

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