An 'AstroTurf Recruitment Process': National Republicans Propped Up Jasmine Crockett to Push Her Into a Senate Run

[Celerity]

The NRSC started including Crockett’s name in polling and conducted “a sustained effort” to get Crockett, the party’s preferred candidate to run against, into the race.

https://www.notus.org/senate/jasmine-crockett-nrsc-texas-senate

https://archive.ph/TmkAs



Republicans’ Senate campaign arm has actively worked behind the scenes to encourage Rep. Jasmine Crockett to jump into the Senate Democratic primary in Texas, believing she will be the easiest opponent to beat. Just a month ago, there was grave concern among Republicans about the Senate race, where incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is running for reelection. Democrats were running two formidable candidates, and Cornyn was caught in the middle of a bruising three-way primary that Republicans were concerned would weaken the eventual nominee.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee put out a poll in July with Crockett’s name included, which showed her as the leading Democrat in a hypothetical matchup. “When we saw the results, we were like, ‘OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,’” a source familiar with the process told NOTUS. The fact that Crockett was included in the poll was no accident. In June news broke that Texas Democrats Colin Allred, James Talarico, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro met to discuss the 2026 election.

Operatives at the NRSC realized that Crockett — whose political stock had been rising — wasn’t included in that meeting and also hadn’t been included in any credible poll. So they decided to change that. Following the NRSC’s polls, other surveys began to include Crockett and showed similar results: She was surging in the primary. The NRSC then worked to amplify those polls and is taking credit for helping “orchestrate the pile on of these polling numbers to really drive that news cycle and that narrative that Jasmine Crockett was surging in Texas,” the source said.

Crockett herself even admitted she was encouraged to jump into the race by all the positive polling she was seeing ahead of her announcement. “The more I saw the poll results, I couldn’t ignore the trends that were clear,” Crockett said during her announcement speech. Crockett did not return a request for comment. But the Republican efforts didn’t stop there. In what the source dubbed an “AstroTurf recruitment process,” the NRSC had “allies that were seeding these new polls pretty aggressively into progressive digital spaces.”

snip

[QueerDuck]

1. Lester Maddox has some thoughts about that, I'm sure.

[Haggard Celine]

4. Bring out the hatchets!

[walkingman]

2. I like her but I will be supporting James Talarico because I think he

has a better chance here in the Bible Belt.

[Haggard Celine]

5. I'm not a Texan, but just observing things

from here, I don't think a black woman can win in a Senate race in Texas. I can't believe they convinced her to run, honestly. I really like her, but she's going to lose, and we won't have her voice in the House anymore.

[Kali]

3. I really hate the dirty mother fuckers

hope it backfires on them BIGLY

[Sympthsical]

6. It would be amusing if she won

Just like everyone thought Trump would be the easiest Republican to run against in 2016. Whoops! Whoopsie!

I don't have high hopes for her though, and she wouldn't have been my first choice. She's a fun media personality, but that invention of character should really only go so far. I fear she's forgotten it was originally a put on. I cannot begin to imagine it playing in Texas statewide. The only thing that works in her favor potentially is that Cornyn has all the charismatic appeal of a damp HEB bag found in a parking lot. And even then, these are the voters who think Ted Cruz has value.

I foresee a fun podcast in her future.

[Bobstandard]

7. Republicans just aren't that smart or clever enough

Now that she’s in they’re trying to poison the well by pretending they got her into the race. They need a strategy like this because even Texas is sick of Trump and Abbott and the whole Republican schtick. Their target with this PR blitz is Democrats and you can see it’s working just by the comments here. The circular firing squad is forming.

[leftstreet]

9. Oh yes they are

It's the Democrats who do "they go low, we go high"

Not GOPers

[MorbidButterflyTat]

12. Agree.

Completely.

[JCMach1]

8. I think Rep. Crockett is clever enough to smell any BS

This article reads like cointelpro to undermine her campaign.

I haven't decided who to vote for yet here in TX for the record.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

13. Yes.

[tanyev]

10. Mind the blowback, GOP.

[MagickMuffin]

11. Cornyn's fb feed is posting a lot on Jasmine since she announced

They are borderline racist, misogynistic and mostly lies.

It’s interesting that the commenters are decidedly defending her. Of course, one never knows if those are real people.

Funny that fascist Cornyn thinks he won the primary already. A lot of Texans support Paxton. There should be more sucking sounds coming from the two to see who their lord and savior picks. They’ve both been useful idiots. Hard decisions.

[pecosbob]

14. The real rat-fucking was to eliminate her House seat and that of Al Green through mid-decade redistricting...