Terry Virts, Former Astronaut, Announces Texas Senate Run

Terry Virts, a retired NASA astronaut, is not a household name, even in his home of Houston. But the way he announced his campaign on Monday for Senator John Cornyn’s seat in Texas, taking a swing at both political parties, may be blazing a trail for Democratic candidates in 2026.

Mr. Virts’ official announcement video was revealing in two ways. It reflected the growing hunger among Democratic outsiders to take on President Trump. And it underscored how such outsiders believe the best way to do that is to also take on the Democratic leaders in Washington.

“Trump’s chaos must be stopped,” Mr. Virts said in the video. “But leadership is M.I.A.,” he added over an image of the Senate’s Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York.

Mr. Virts, who describes himself as a “common sense Democrat,” emphasized the point in a telephone interview on Monday. “The Texas senator should not work for the senator from New York,” he said. “I’m going to work for Texas voters.”

He said he was willing to break with the national party on issues such as immigration, which he says he supports only if it is legal. “The Democratic Party, for some inexplicable reason, gaslit us and told everybody that, ‘Hey, this illegal immigration is OK,’ and voters knew that it wasn’t,” he said.

Democrats in Texas, who have not won statewide office since the 1990s, have become hopeful about their chances in 2026, particularly if Mr. Cornyn is defeated in the Republican primary next year by the state’s hard-right attorney general, Ken Paxton.