Trump critic Jasmine Crockett poised for Senate run in deep-red Texas

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, the progressive firebrand and frequent foil of President Donald Trump, is expected to launch a U.S. Senate campaign on Monday, which is the deadline for candidates to file for the state's March 3 primary.

Hours before Crockett — a rising star Democrat with a large social media imprint who represents a Dallas area district — was to hold an event announcing her decision, one of the two Democrats already running for the Senate abandoned his bid.

Former Rep. Colin Allred, who was making his second straight bid for the Senate in right-leaning Texas, announced he was ending his campaign and instead would launch a congressional campaign as he seeks to return to the House. But Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, remains in the Senate primary, setting up a likely face-off between two surging contenders with formidable fundraising. 

If Crockett launches a Senate campaign as expected, it would further rock a high-profile and heavily contested race, which, on the Republican side, includes Sen. John Cornyn and GOP primary rivals Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. House Rep. Wesley Hunt. The contest in Texas is one of the most closely watched Senate showdowns as Democrats try to win back the chamber's majority in next year's midterms.

EX-NFL STAR ABANDONS SENATE BID AS JASMINE CROCKETT NEARS MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT

Crockett told CNN this weekend that she's made out two cashier checks, one if she jumps into the Senate campaign and one to submit if she files for re-election in the House.

And her down-to-the-wire announcement is scheduled for 90 minutes before the final deadline to submit one of the checks.

Crockett has teased a possible Senate run for weeks, telling MS NOW on Sunday that "I am closer to yes than I am to no." And she has said she's commissioned polling to make her case for a Senate run in Texas, where no Democrat has won a statewide election in over three decades.

In another sign that she's expected to launch a Senate run, Crockett told the Dallas Morning News that she called both Allred and Talarico to discuss her polling.

BIG WIN FOR TRUMP, GOP, AS SUPREME COURT GREENLIGHTS NEW CONGRESSIONAL MAP IN TEXAS

Monday's filing deadline comes just a few days after the Supreme Court upheld a new congressional map passed by the GOP-dominated Texas legislature and signed into law by longtime Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that creates five more right-leaning House districts in the Lone Star State.

And one of the Texas Democrats whose district had been dramatically altered, Rep. Marc Veasey, had reportedly been discussing with Crockett a plan where he would file for her current House seat shortly after she files to run for the Senate.

Allred, who was making a second straight Senate bid after losing to conservative firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz by roughly 9 points last year, said in a statement that he didn't want to contribute to anything that would splinter Democrats' hopes of flipping the GOP-held Senate seat in next year's elections.

"In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn, or Hunt," Allred wrote.

By dropping out of the race, Allred will likely allow Democrats to avoid a costly and messy primary runoff in the spring, giving the party more time to consolidate around their nominee and raise much-needed campaign cash.

Meanwhile, with Cornyn, Paxton, and Hunt all taking aim at each other in a combustible primary, the GOP nomination may be headed towards a runoff, which would be triggered if no candidate tops 50% in the primary.

CROCKET SPENDS EYE-POPPING AMOUNT OF CAMPAIGN CASH ON THIS

The 44-year-old Crockett, who is Black, is a former state representative and civil rights lawyer. She won her seat in 2022 after longtime Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who was retiring, hand-picked her as his successor in Congress.

Crockett, who won re-election last year, has become one of the most well-known Democratic politicians in the country the past couple of years, thanks to her viral jabs at Republicans and her verbal sparing on social media with Trump, who has repeatedly questioned her intelligence. And she's grabbed plenty of headlines during her time on the House Oversight Committee.

While her expected Senate run will likely excite many Democrats, thanks to her energy and her proven fundraising ability, her frequent push-back against GOP politicians may energize Republicans.

Among her biggest blunders — calling Abbott, who is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, "Gov. Hot Wheels."

Crockett has also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions while accusing aspects of the Republican Party of fascism.

She notably ran for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee earlier this year following the death of its previous top Democrat, the late Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., but dropped out of the race after failing to win the recommendation of leadership within her party.

But the Dallas-area Democrat has won favor with some party leaders, like ex-Vice President Kamala Harris, who revealed in her memoir "107 Days" that she mentored Crockett as part of her covert "Stars Project" while in office.

Crockett spoke at the Democratic National Convention last year when Harris was named the party's presidential candidate, a notable slot for someone who was then a first-term House lawmaker.

She had also been facing some tough decisions in her House race after the new GOP-led Texas congressional map appeared to draw her home out of her current district.

Crockett's expected entry into the Senate race will shift the spotlight off of the GOP primary, where Cornyn, the longtime incumbent who hails from the party's establishment wing, has cut into the one-time large lead by Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, with Hunt in third.

The concern among Republicans is that Paxton, who has been battered over the past decade by a slew of scandals and legal problems and who is now dealing with a messy divorce, would put the seat in play if he won the GOP nomination.

But a Crockett candidacy would likely change the political equation.

While her aggressive push-back against Trump and the GOP would play well with the left, it could deflate her chances of winning next November among Texas' general election electorate.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, this past summer paid for a Democratic primary poll in Texas which showed Crockett the frontrunner by double digits. The publicly released survey was apparently done to encourage Crockett to enter the race, with the GOP assuming she would be more beatable than Allred or Talarico.