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When Jasmine Crockett’s friend suggested in 2006 that she move to Texarkana, the future congresswoman was unsure.
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Born and raised in St. Louis, the recent University of Houston law school student had only ever lived in big metro areas. Located in the far northeast corner of the state, on the border between Arkansas and Texas, the town of 36,000 was foreign to her.
But Crockett listened, packed her things and moved to East Texas — an illuminating chapter that launched her political career.
“I tell people all the time that God clearly wanted me in Texarkana,” she said.
Crockett spent eight years there, first doing class-action defense work and then as an attorney in the Bowie County public defender’s office. She chaired the Bowie County Democratic Party, helping modernize it even as the tea party movement took hold in 2009. And she faced her only electoral loss — to date — in a bid to be Bowie County District Attorney.
Now a firebrand U.S. House member from Dallas known around the country, Crockett will be on the ballot in East Texas again for the first time in nearly two decades. She is running in a heated primary race for U.S. Senate against Austin state Rep. James Talarico for the chance to take on the Republican nominee in what will be Texas’ marquee statewide contest this year.
Crockett’s quick rise to prominence, from her sole term in the Texas Legislature to her ascension as one of Congress’ best-known members, has been well-documented. However, her eight years working and organizing in East Texas are a lesser-known — but no less important — part of her biography.
Crockett believes her relationships and familiarity in the region give her a leg up in the primary and beyond, even in counties where Democratic candidates have not cracked 30% in over a decade. Crockett’s supporters in the region, including friends from her time there, think her fighting spirit and experience in East Texas could help her turn out more Democratic voters in a region that the party has all but written off in recent cycles. Doing so would be a significant reversal of modern trends — but Crockett is convinced she can speak to these voters in a way past candidates have not.
“As someone who’s had to pick juries in rural Texas, rural Arkansas, as someone who served on the [Agriculture] Committee, and frankly, lived in rural Texas, I do just fine,” Crockett said.
Living in Texarkana, Crockett said, gave her exposure to the issues that rural voters face and an ability to speak about them honestly, which can sometimes surprise voters.
“When I go into rural areas, and I start to talk about living in Texarkana, and understanding about the chicken plant in Mount Pleasant, and knowing what it is to have to wake up and smell International Paper, needing to go to Shreveport or Dallas because there’s not a health care specialist right there in the town, people are like, ‘Oh!’” Crockett said.
The feeling is reciprocal for some Texarkana Democrats who want to claim Crockett as one of their own, said Rita Williams, a friend of Crockett’s from Texarkana and fellow Democrat who worked with her on voter registration initiatives.
“Bowie County, here in East Texas, used to be a Democratic County,” Williams said. Despite electoral setbacks, “Jasmine didn’t give up. She just did her best, and everything was always educational and encouraging.”
Crockett’s theory of victory for the general election is that there are legions of disaffected voters who she, through her nontraditional campaign style and high level of recognition, can drive to the polls in November, in large enough numbers to beat the Republican candidate.
“Disaffected voters — they feel like everybody’s lip service,” Crockett said. “And I get it. They want something different than business as usual.”
East Texas, which has had an abysmal turnout in Democratic primaries, will be a proving ground for her belief.
She’s said voters of color, in particular, will be attracted to her brand of politics. Black voters have overwhelmingly preferred Crockett in polling of the primary, and to win, Crockett will need to post high margins and improved turnout with East Texas’ significant Black population.
Guessippina Bonner, a former Lufkin City Council member, agrees that there are more Democratic votes to be found in the region. She knows that for Crockett to have a chance in the general election, she’ll need to run up the score in big cities. But every bit will help in places like Jasper and Gilmer and Carthage, all small towns in East Texas.
There are Black and Latino Democratic voters all across East Texas, Bonner said — they just need to be woken up.
“We could help around the edges here in East Texas,” Bonner said. “She could pick off just enough to be able to carry it over. And I believe it exists in East Texas, and I truly believe the Black vote is here, and the Latino vote is here.”
‘A pleasure to have her in my court’
When Crockett first arrived in Texarkana as a young lawyer, she worked at a law firm that defended corporations facing class-action lawsuits in a court known for its quick decisions on patent cases.
The experience was ostensibly an attraction for Crockett, who took on cases in her first year out of law school that city lawyers typically would not see until they were more senior. Instead, it made her miserable. She recently recalled sitting in depositions working on behalf of large corporations, and wondering how she had gone astray from her purpose in going to law school in the first place — to help the vulnerable.
Unsatisfied, Crockett began interviewing for other positions, contemplating a move to Dallas.
Instead, she interviewed for a role at the Bowie County public defender’s office, promising her inexperience was nothing to her ability to establish rapport with Black defendants.
Crockett was hired and spent the next three years defending people in the county as their court-appointed lawyer.
“It was always a pleasure to have her in my court, as she always demonstrated professional ability and concern for those Texans that didn’t have as many resources as some of her fellow Texans,” said longtime Judicial District Court Judge John Miller, who created the county defender’s office while district judge, in a statement provided by the Crockett campaign.
Crockett’s career as an elected official began when she won the Bowie County Democratic Party Chair in 2008.
David Beard, a former Texarkana tire plant worker and longtime Texas AFL-CIO executive board member, briefly campaigned for the seat. However, he dropped out of the race after Crockett got into the race. And while he and Crockett got off to a rocky start, he watched her rebuild the county party, and the two eventually became friends.
“She’s a Christian, she’s a fighter, and I think that she’s just one of these people who understands northeast Texas,” Beard said. “And she’s taking that spirit wherever she goes, because she grew up here politically, dealing with guys like me who would question her sometimes. And that little short woman there, all of a sudden, I’m looking up at her.”
She helped bring the party into the modern era, he said, by improving the county party’s technology and working to build multiracial coalitions.
Charlotte Bradley first met Crockett when the young lawyer asked to volunteer through the local Delta Sigma Theta chapter, a historically African American sorority that Crockett is a part of, which Bradley chaired. Crockett quickly became like an extended family member.
The two volunteered on voter registration drives, at church and with United Way. Crockett fit in easily in the community and quickly picked up small-town values.
“She’s able to fit into any particular environment,” Bradley said. “She could go to a small church and she could relate, and she could go to a larger church, and she could relate.”
Many of Crockett’s Texarkana friends and acquaintances say they were not surprised that the young lawyer they met two decades ago has risen to such political prominence. Williams remembers telling Crockett at the time that, as much as county party friends loved her, she may need to leave Bowie County to accomplish what she wanted.
She eventually did. In November 2010, Crockett opened a private law office in Texarkana. In 2014, Crockett began splitting her time between Texarkana and Dallas, opening an office there and practicing civil rights and personal injury law until she won her first state legislative race in 2020.
Those who knew her in Texarkana said they saw the fighting spirit she would become famous for in the U.S. House back in East Texas. Beard described her as a “fighter” then and now — unwilling to relent when she believes in something.
Not everyone in Texarkana politics is a fan. Rick Shumaker, a colleague of Crockett’s who went on to lead the Bowie County public defender’s office after Crockett left, acknowledged she was a “good lawyer”, but felt she was too focused on campaigning.
He said he was surprised when she decided to run for the Senate.
“If she ever gets elected President,” he said. “I’ve got to move to a new planet.”
Bowie County Democrats
The Piney Woods has been a source of frustration for Democrats running for federal office since the 1990s.
Republicans have only increased their margins during the last few decades. Take U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who is running for reelection in the Republican primary this year. In 2002, in his first run for U.S. Senate, he won Bowie County with 55% of the vote. By 2020, he received 71%.
Beto O’Rourke, whose 2018 campaign was a high-water mark for Democrats making statewide runs and for midterm turnout, struggled in the area. He only won 28% of the vote in Bowie County and did not crack 25% in neighboring Cass and Red River counties.
In Smith County, home to Tyler and the most populous county in northeast Texas, no Democratic presidential or U.S. Senate candidate has cracked 30% since Bill Clinton was in office. At the state level, former Houston Mayor Bill White was the last Democrat to win over 30% of the vote in the governor’s race in 2010. And no Democrat has won the county since Ann Richards won her first term as governor in 1990.
Despite all this, Crockett sees a path forward that draws on and is supported by her history in the region.
Local Democratic leaders said statewide candidates often write East Texas off because it’s so Republican. There are more votes to be found.
Bowie County, like many East Texas counties, is majority-white with a population that is about a quarter Black. Many local Democrats, according to organizers in the region, are Black and regular churchgoers.
Crockett’s friends said she was an active part of the church community in Texarkana and noted her ease in Christian spaces — a must for any candidate trying to earn votes in a region considered the most religious in the state. But she’s not the only religious candidate in the race — her opponent, Talarico, is a proponent of progressive Christianity and has made his faith a key element of his political brand.
Bonner, the Lufkin City Council member, said there are prospective Black Democratic voters in country towns all across East Texas. Crockett needs to make more stops in the region to energize them, she said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind about the African American community [supporting Crockett],” Bonner said. “But we need to see her. She doesn’t even have to stop. She can just wave. Because we need to see candidates come through.”
While Crockett swung through Texarkana and Marshall in early January, the congresswoman — who has to be in Washington on weekdays most weeks — has not been back to East Texas. She said she plans to rely on technology and partnerships with downballot candidates and surrogates, given the size of the state.
“This is a bottom-up strategy that needs to be played simply because it is so vast,” Crockett said. “Those local candidates are going to be consistently talking to people, unlike at the top of the ticket, where you’re not necessarily consistently talking to one.”
Black voters have overwhelmingly preferred Crockett in polling of the Democratic primary. Though East Texas counties are sparsely populated compared to the state’s urban centers, Crockett can boost her floor if Black voters across East Texas turn out in the primary and vote for her.
Such a scenario likely depends on improved turnout — which Crockett believes she can deliver.
In the 2020 Democratic Senate primary, a contested race in a presidential year, voters in the 38 counties that make up East Texas comprised just 4% of the electorate, with turnout far lower than the state average. In the 2020 runoff, a close race that also featured a Black Dallasite against a white Austinite, most East Texas counties broke for the Black candidate, state Sen. Royce West. Democratic voters in those counties only made up 3.5% of the July runoff electorate, underscoring what a tall order it is to boost turnout in the region.
Even so, local Democrats maintain there’s room to grow in East Texas — if apathy can be defeated.
“Democrats are really here,” said Yolanda Prince, a Tyler Democrat running in the deep-red 1st Congressional District. “We just need to get to the polls. They’ve been convinced that their vote doesn’t matter, unfortunately.”
Can Crockett be the one to do it, when so many of her predecessors have failed?
She certainly believes her East Texas background can help her do so.
“Typically, it is someone from the big city that is running, and [rural voters] wonder whether or not they’ll be forgotten, ignored, or if they’re only being spoken to because they’re necessary in the moment,” Crockett said. “And I do think it does bring about a sense of calm to know that, no, she’s not just talking. She lived it. She knows what it is.”
Disclosure: University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.