Talarico says 'power belongs to the people' as Democrats win big in Texas

In Texas, one of the key battleground states this evening, James Tallarico upset the odds by becoming the first Democrat to be elected senator for the state since 1988, and we can hear from him now. We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system. In this state, in this country, power belongs to the people. And we can go to Austin, Texas now, where France 24's Andres Espinal has been covering that election night. Hello again, Andres. James Tallarico was giving a fairly unifying speech. How did it go? Extremely well for his supporters of course in the in the building that you see behind me about an hour ago there were about there were hundreds and hundreds of people celebrating and screaming with him applauding We're starting the... with a lot of joy a lot of energy a lot of excitement for his campaign and for his for this A historic achievement, basically. Tararico said basically now that he has a mandate of the size of Texas and that Texas being such a big state can allow itself to dream big. And those dreams go through things like protecting public schools, taking the big capitals and big money out of politics so that uh the trillionaires as he said can no longer buy elections or try to buy elections and having universal health care for for everyone so that uh people can actually go and see a doctor when they need one here in this country and so that's going to be the basis of his political agenda once he goes to to washington as the senator for texas uh he uh was very clear in uh in what he wanted He wanted to say to people the movement that he had created During this campaign, bringing people together, Democrats, Independents and Republicans, all alike, And also talking about his Christian message, where based on two main principles, the love of God and the love of neighbor, because you cannot love God if you don't love your neighbor. And that's a message, you know, about the cruelty of the ICE raids that have happened in this state. Let's remember that Texas is the number one state for arrest by ICE. And the main message of Salarico tonight, Texas is not for sale. Texas belongs to the people. And with that message, he becomes the first senator for this state in the south of the United States since 1988. Now, there were in Texas, as in a number of other states, there were redistricting done mainly by Republicans, which were intended to favor the party in these elections, but they didn't go exactly as well as might have been expected. Well, yeah, let's keep in mind that at the moment we don't know the exact result of what that redistricting is going to be. But let's keep in mind what happened in the last year. In 2021, Donald Trump asked the legislature in Texas to redraw the district maps. Let's remember that Texas has 38 districts. And before tonight... Republicans controlled 25 of those seats. So basically what Donald Trump asked was that having those maps be redrawn mid-decade, which is highly unusual, and he wanted to take five more seats out of Texas to favor Republicans in the House of Representatives. And those redrawns were allowed and approved by the state legislature and later by the Supreme Court. Good morning, everyone. But the thing is that Those redrawn maps didn't take into account the fact that Latinos were going to vote highly against Donald Trump in this political cycle. Actually, they were drawn expecting that the support that Donald Trump had in the south of the state with Latinos and Hispanics were going to be maintained, and that apparently didn't happen. We will know for sure later tonight, but there were five districts that were targeted for that redistricting. We're talking about Texas 9, Texas 28, Texas 34, those two being the most important in the south. Texas 32 in the area of Dallas and Texas 35 here in the area of Austin. So at the moment what we know is that Texas, for example, Texas 34, The Democrat, Vicente Fernandez, has already defeated Eric Flores, the Republican. In Texas 28, the Democrat, Henry Cuellar, has already beat his rival, Tano Tijerina, the Republican. And there's also another district, Texas 15, where Monica de la Cruz, the Republican, has already lost against Bobby Pulido. So we will see later tonight what the final result is going to be. Probably this gerrymandering is going to end up being a dummy mandering for the Republicans.