Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett will announce Monday whether she will enter the Democratic primary for the 2026 United States Senate race in Texas. Her candidacy could make the Texas primary one of the most competitive in the country, with Ms. Crockett immediately jumping to the front of the pack. 

Ms. Crockett — a liberal darling with a prowess for fundraising — has represented Dallas in the House for nearly three years. She has teased for months that she may decide to enter the Senate race after Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps over the summer. 

“I am closer to yes than I am no,” Ms. Crockett told MSNBC in November of a potential Senate run. The filing deadline for the Texas primary is Monday, meaning Ms. Crockett will have to announce her intention to either run for Senate or for re-election in the House by the end of business that day.

Ms. Crockett has made a name for herself as a fiery critic of President Trump and his GOP allies, especially in heated exchanges with the likes of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene during congressional hearings that played well on social media. A former civil rights attorney, she is an unapologetic advocate of the Democrats’ social justice and equity agenda and frequently appears at events across the country and on late-night television shows.

On both sides of the aisle, the Texas Senate race is set to be one of the most expensive and brutal contests of 2026. The seat’s current occupant, Senator John Cornyn, is already facing primary challenges from hardline conservative state attorney general Ken Paxton and Congressman Wesley Hunt. According to some estimates, the Texas Republican primary alone could cost tens of millions of dollars. 

On the Democratic side, two candidates are already in for an ugly primary campaign even before Ms. Crockett teased that she would run. Congressman Colin Allred and state representatives James Talarico have already raised more than $11 million between the two of them with more than three months to go until the primary. 

The race could grow even more costly if no one wins the primary outright in March. In Texas, if no candidate wins a majority of the vote in the primary, then the race goes to a runoff at the end of May between the two leading candidates. 

If Ms. Crockett does decide to run, that move would nearly guarantee that a pricey runoff campaign would take place in the first half of next year, potentially draining useful resources that could be deployed for Democratic candidates both in Texas and around the country. 

Current polling suggests that Ms. Crockett would enter the primary race in the lead. A survey from the University of Houston conducted in October shows Ms. Crockett taking 31 percent of the primary vote, compared to Mr. Talarico, who takes 25 percent and Mr. Allred who would win 13 percent. Congressman Beto O’Rourke — who has indicated he will not run in 2026 — also polled at 25 percent in that survey. 

Her general election viability, however, would be cause for concern among her fellow Democrats. One poll from Change Research released on December 1 suggests Ms. Crockett would enter the general election as the weakest of the potential Democratic candidates. That survey shows her losing to both Messrs. Paxton and Cornyn by eight-point margins. 

The University of Houston poll shows that Mr. Allred is only two points down in a race against Mr. Cornyn, while Mr. Talarico is just three points behind the longtime senator. Against Mr. Paxton, Mr. Allred is only one point behind, while Mr. Talarico trails by only three points. 

Ms. Crockett’s decision of whether or not to run for Senate will have serious implications for the House races in Texas this year. Currently, there are three Democrats representing Dallas in Congress’s lower chamber — Ms. Crockett, Congresswoman Julie Johnson, and Congressman Marc Veasey.

The new congressional map in the state, however, eliminates one of those Dallas-based districts, meaning if all three sitting representatives run for re-election, there will have to be either a retirement or a lawmaker-on-lawmaker primary. If Ms. Crockett runs for Senate, both Ms. Johnson and Mr. Veasey will be free to run for those two solidly Democratic seats, however.