Since declaring her historic candidacy for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Texas in December 2025, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett has faced many questions about her electability.
“Don’t waste your money sending to Jasmine Crockett. Do not do it,” said comedian Matt Rogers on “Las Culturistas” podcast earlier this month, to the displeasure of supporters of Crockett. “She’s not going to win a Senate seat in Texas, you guys.”
Rogers and his co-host, Bowen Yang, quickly apologized for dumping on Crockett’s campaign after receiving public backlash and accusations of perpetuating racist and sexist stereotypes on a Black female candidate.
In an exclusive interview with theGrio, Crockett gets candid on her feelings about how Black women are treated in the Democratic Party, comparing the criticisms she is facing to the misogynoir that former Vice President Kamala Harris endured during her similarly historic run for president in 2024.
“We know that the most loyal voting bloc, when it comes to Democrats, no matter what part of the country you look at, is actually Black women. And it is all good for us to labor…we allow this party continue to say, yes, yes, yes, we need Black women, go ahead and pull up [but] we’re not even going to focus on spending our dollars to you, because we know y’all are gonna hold it down,” said Crockett when asked about critiques of her electability in a traditionally Republican, red state like Texas.
“No one is looking at the credentials. Like, holler at me and say that you have an issue as relates to my credentials,” said the former civil rights attorney, public defender, and Texas state representative.
Crockett added, “It’s the exact same thing that they did when it came to the vice president.”
Harris, who details the struggles she faced as a Black woman running for president in her memoir “107 Days,” faced similar questions of “Can she win?” which many Black Democrats saw as code for, “Will Americans vote for a Black woman?”
Even before the former Vice President officially declared her candidacy for president as then-President Joe Biden faced calls to drop out of the race, Harris was met with what critics called racist and sexist attacks, like one Republican calling Harris, a former state’s attorney general and prosecutor, “unserious” and “incompetent.”
“We saw a party that decided that they would hold what some would argue was an impossible standard to the vice president,” Crockett told theGrio.
By contrast, the U.S. congresswoman noted, Republicans “lined up in droves and made sure that they supported the first-ever, 34-count convicted felon to make it into the White House,” referring to President Donald Trump, who was found guilty in 2024 of falsifying business records to defraud voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Reflecting on Trump’s once improbable return to the White House, Crockett continued, “[Trump is] the first ever person who had been found liable for sexual abuse. The first ever president who has filed for bankruptcy at least 6 times…[Republicans] got in alignment.”
Harris, Crockett said, was “the more qualified candidate on the ballot.” However, pointing to the different standards held against Harris, she added, “I think that we really need to talk about some of our own party issues.”
She continued, “Why is it that so many Democrats would challenge the ability to elect a woman on our side, when allegedly we are the ones that are always looking out for women?”
Given the political blowback against Trump’s second term over the administration’s handling of the economy and its aggressive immigration enforcement, Crockett believes, credentials aside, she is in a “better position” post-2024.
“There are those that believe that maybe it was wrong to just be sold a bag of goods and not listen to [Kamala Harris],” she told theGrio.
Crockett explained that more women than men, 57% or more, are expected to vote in Texas’s primary on March 3. By the general election on Nov. 3, more women are also expected to vote than men, she claimed.
“Frankly, I think with a strong woman at the top, we may be able to run that number up even more,” the U.S. Senate candidate told theGrio.
Crockett also dismissed much of the chatter about her electability as “people from outside that’s got a lot of opinions, but they don’t know anything about Texas.” The Dallas congresswoman pointed out that Texas has elected two women as governor in 1924 and 1990, long before most states. She also noted that Texas elected a woman, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, to the U.S. Senate in 1993.
“Now, she was a Republican, but my deal is, if Republicans can elect a woman, then why is it that so many Democrats would challenge the ability to elect a woman on our side?” said Crockett.
Looking back on Kamala Harris’s devastating loss for Democrats, Crockett recalled Harris comforting her as she tried to cope with the 2024 election’s outcome.
“I remember being very frustrated, and her being the one to encourage me, even though it was the election that she was at the top of the ticket for. She said, ‘We can’t stop,'” Crockett told theGrio. “This is our time to dig in.”
