The hallmarks of political fame are different for every elected official. For some, it’s a sold-out rally; for others, it’s a wave of approving press, but for Jasmine Crockett—who has represented Texas’s 30th congressional district in Congress since 2020—it was a Saturday Night Live impression. On the show’s recent season premiere, SNL cast member Ego Nwodim deemed Crockett “the bad girl of C-SPAN” and effortlessly quoted Crockett’s indictment of far-right conspiracy theorist and congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body.” Crockett only issued this insult, it should be noted, after Greene went after Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” at an Oversight Committee hearing earlier this spring; Crockett has since moved to literally trademark the phrase.
Crockett has amassed growing recognition by introducing the art of the masterful clapback to a Democratic Party that hasn’t always been known for its quick repartee. Nowhere, though, is the congresswoman greeted with more fanfare than in Dallas. When we meet on a sweltering October morning at Soirée Coffee Bar, a Black-owned cafe that Crockett counts among her favorite local spots, at least four fellow patrons who sidle up to Crockett to request a selfie–or just tell her, softly and unobtrusively, that she’s doing great work.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.Photo: Getty Images
From left, Sarah Sherman as Troye Sivan, Ego Nwodim as Jasmine Crockett, and Bowen Yang as Charli XCX in a sketch from the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, September 2024.Photo: NBC/Getty Images
“I represent a majority-minority district, so I’m always trying to support small businesses. West Dallas is seeing so much gentrification, and it’s really cool to have Black-owned stuff in this area that’s changing so rapidly,” Crockett tells me as we settle on a blue velvet couch under a mural depicting Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and other Black musical luminaries. Crockett’s district encompasses most of South and Central Dallas as well as parts of Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth and is the third-most populous county in Texas; 40% of her constituents are Black and 33% speak a non-English language at home, exemplifying the diversity of a state that is frequently assumed to be more homogeneous than it really is.
In 2020, Crockett was a first-time congresswoman with little national renown; today, she is one of the most requested surrogates affiliated with the Harris/Walz 2024 campaign, and the demands of stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris have kept Crockett on the road almost nonstop since the summer. Crockett’s uniquely energizing speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August—which, among other things, referred to former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump as “a vindictive, vile villain” who would “violate voters’ vision for a better America”—cemented her status as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars. On the day that I meet her, Crockett has just returned from New York, where she attended the vice presidential debate, and is gearing up for a campaign stop in Arizona the next day. (Crockett described Ohio senator and Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance’s performance with her typical panache, calling him “Ivy League-trained and slick, but he lied the entire time.”)