For the first time since 1994, a Democrat has won statewide office in Texas, the largest red state in the nation. State legislator James Talarico, a former schoolteacher and seminarian, has defeated the scandal-plagued Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, according to projections by Decision Desk HQ and NBC News. 

Talarico has made history in Texas, notching a Democratic Senate victory there for the first time since 1988, NBC News projects.

A Democrat last won statewide in Texas in 1994. Since then, the party has lost more than 100 straight statewide contests, a losing streak surpassed only by that of the Harlem Globetrotters' hapless foil, the Washington Generals.