U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico both pitched themselves as fighters Saturday during their first, and perhaps only, debate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, with Crockett framing herself as a “street fighter” and Talarico leaning into his record battling GOP proposals in the Texas House.

The two Democrats debated for an hour at the Texas AFL-CIO’s political convention in Georgetown ahead of the March 3 election. Early voting begins Feb. 17, just over three weeks out from Saturday.

Crockett, D-Dallas, and Talarico, D-Austin, are competing for their party’s nomination to take on the eventual Republican nominee in November, when Democrats hope that backlash to the Trump administration — and a GOP nominee damaged from a bruising primary battle — will help lift the party to its first statewide victory in over three decades. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent, is fighting to defend his seat in a bitter primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston. 

Crockett has pitched her candidacy, defined by her reputation as a political brawler, as the one best positioned to expand the electorate, with a focus on juicing Democratic turnout and motivating low-propensity voters to show up at the polls. Talarico, meanwhile, has emphasized his Christian faith and a top-versus-bottom brand of economic populism, betting those tenets can win over disaffected Republican and independent voters while also engaging the Democratic base.

During the debate, Crockett emphasized her ability to tap into the “rawness of this moment” by taking the fight to Republicans outside Capitol Hill, such as in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. She said this made her best positioned to motivate turnout and win in November.

“I am not just sitting in D.C.,” she said. “I am getting out into the streets. And right now, to be perfectly honest, if we’re going to win and keep our country, we’re going to need somebody who can file bills but also knows how to be a street fighter.”

Talarico, meanwhile, highlighted his experience as a middle school teacher and his record fighting “tooth and nail” in the Texas House, where he frequently went viral over clips of his exchanges with Republicans on proposals including private school vouchers and a mandate to display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

“The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior,” he said. “I have gone toe to toe with the billionaires who are trying to dismantle public education in this state.”

The two candidates aligned on most policy issues that came up Saturday, including raising taxes on billionaires, repealing President Donald Trump’s tariffs, banning the sale of offensive weapons to Israel and using congressional authority to check the Trump administration’s foreign policy in Venezuela, Greenland and Iran.

Talarico was more forceful on whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement needed to be abolished in the wake of its extensive deportation efforts in the first year of the Trump administration and the agency’s contentious operations in Minneapolis, which has led to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens and fierce backlash from Minnesotans.

“It’s time to tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that actually is going to focus on public safety,” Talarico said, adding that ICE agents that abuse their power needed to be unmasked and prosecuted, and that recent increases in funding for ICE should be redirected back to communities.

Crockett, who voted against a spending bill this week that included funding for the Department of Homeland Security, also condemned ICE’s operations, saying, “We absolutely have to clean house, whatever that looks like.”

Cornyn took to social media to bash the Democrats’ responses on ICE, saying Texas “can’t afford their radical policies.”

“The Texas Senate Democrat debate is showing just how unhinged and wrong for Texas their ideas are,” he said.

The two also varied on whether to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, with Crockett throwing her support behind the idea and Talarico saying only that he was “open” to it, while adding that he supported instituting term limits and a binding ethics code for justices.

Talarico also embraced the wholesale elimination of the Senate filibuster as a way to pass federal protections for workers and other “bold pieces of legislation,” while Crockett said she would support limited exceptions to the filibuster to pass measures on “fundamental issues,” such as voting rights — as some Senate Democrats tried and failed to do in 2022.

Talarico, who is running on fighting the political influence of billionaires, defended the political donations he has received from Texas Sands PAC, a group backed by casino magnate and GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, who has given to numerous state legislative campaigns in her bid to legalize casinos in Texas. Talarico, who has sworn off corporate PAC money, said he accepted the contributions because he aligns with Adelson on her signature issue, due to the tax revenue it would bring in. 

“I don’t know Miriam Adelson — sounds like she and I disagree on almost every issue, but we do agree on legalizing gambling in Texas,” Talarico said, adding that he wants to ban corporate PACs, super PACs and congressional stock trading. 

When asked about corporate donations she has received from companies including Lockheed Martin and Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Crockett took a passing shot at Talarico, saying her contributions came from employees, not “from an individual, especially someone who is believing that Trump should have a third term.” Adelson has encouraged Trump to run again in 2028, a move prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

Crockett took another mild swing at Talarico earlier in the debate while underlining her bona fides as a fighter.

“James and I served in the state House together. He’s actually been elected longer than I have been elected,” Crockett said. “Yet he’s not as known right now, because I have engaged in these fights. I have been right there on the front lines where people could see me.”

Talarico was first elected to the Texas House in 2018, two years before Crockett. She served a single term in Austin before jumping to Congress in 2023.

Polling has consistently shown Talarico lagging behind Crockett in name recognition, with Crockett known almost universally among Democratic voters for her breakout viral moments clashing with Republican colleagues in Congress and assailing Trump, who has further elevated Crockett by bashing her on social media.

Talarico has also risen in the Democratic Party by capturing attention on ideologically mixed online platforms, including Joe Rogan’s podcast last summer, and through a skyrocketing presence on social media.

During the debate, Talarico made it a point to avoid attacking Crockett, saying they were “focused on the same goal, which is winning in November.”

“Congresswoman Crockett and I agree on a whole lot more than we disagree on,” he said. “That unity is a threat to the billionaires who want to pit us all against each other and who right now are running this country.”

Both candidates agreed that Trump and members of his administration had committed impeachable offenses, while emphasizing they would consider evidence gathered in a formal impeachment inquiry before deciding whether to vote for a conviction in the Senate. Asked what could prompt a renewed effort to impeach Trump, Crockett cited the president’s tariffs and Talarico highlighted Trump’s personal enrichment while in office.

Paxton responded on social media with a post accusing the Democrats of “blindly committing themselves to impeaching President Trump for no reason.”

“They stand for nothing but seizing power, weaponizing the system to take down our President and imposing their radical agenda on Texas,” he said.

The most recent public polling, conducted by Emerson College, showed Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and former middle school teacher, leading Crockett by 9 percentage points in the primary, with his margin largely driven by support among white and Latino voters. Soon after the Emerson poll’s release, Crockett published an internal survey that put her up 13 points.

Talarico has sought to grow his support among Latino voters, buying air time for a Spanish-language TV ad that played this week in nearly a dozen of the state’s largest media markets. Last month, Talarico rallied with Tejano music star and congressional candidate Bobby Pulido during a stop in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley, where the two Democrats endorsed each other.

Crockett, meanwhile, has faced criticism for year-old comments she made to Vanity Fair saying that some Latino Texans’ anti-immigrant attitudes were “almost like a slave mentality,” and over a remark last year in which she suggested the country needed migrants because “we’re done picking cotton.”

Asked about her comments by The Texas Tribune at a campaign event this month, Crockett said, “there was never an intent to actually offend somebody.”

“Before I was elected, and through all of my elections, I have always stood with all people,” she said.

Crockett, who is in her second term in Congress after previously serving in the Texas House and as a public defender in East Texas, maintains overwhelming support among Black voters, a central voting bloc in the Democratic primary. Eighty percent of Black voters surveyed by Emerson said they planned to support Crockett, mirroring a December poll by Texas Southern University that found 89% of Black voters were behind her. Almost half of Black voters surveyed by TSU said they did not know enough about Talarico.

Talarico’s progressive outlook on his Christian faith came under fire from conservatives earlier this month after the Austin Democrat said on Ezra Klein’s podcast that he believed Christianity “points to the truth,” while adding, “I also think other religions of love point to the same truth.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.