Dem
47
GOP
53
Today is the day that, barring the unexpected, Donald Trump will eject a perfectly electable U.S. Senator from his seat, and will replace him with just about the worst candidate imaginable. If the Republicans do lose control of the Senate in 2026, or even in 2028, it is likely that Trump's prioritizing petty personal needs in Texas will be the linchpin of the whole thing.
As we noted yesterday, even if you had no idea what the state of the race was right now, a review of the ads currently in heavy rotation would tell you what you needed to know. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is about to be sacrificed on the altar of Trump, has shifted into desperation mode, and is accusing state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) of being even more enthusiastic about gender-reassignment surgery for minors than Kamala Harris is. This is nonsense, of course, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. Meanwhile, Paxton has gone positive, and is running ads full of sunshine and rainbows. Paxton is one of the least positive people in American politics; for him to spend his last-few-days-of-the-primary ad budget on these ads is plainly an effort to sorta rebrand the candidate in anticipation of the general election. The message, to normie Republicans and independents, is "I'm not such a bad guy! Don't believe all the stuff you've been reading about me for the last 20 years!"
We do not believe, for one moment, that Paxton has any real hope of reinventing himself. His reputation is well-established and well-earned. And, it would seem, Paxton doesn't really believe it's possible either. That being the case, all he can really do is try to portray his general-election opponent, state Sen. James Talarico (D), as somehow even worse. As part of his pivot to the general, Paxton is already hard at work trying to do that. Part I of the plan, so far, is to use the old Trump trick of adopting a snotty name. Thus far, it would appear that the best that Team Paxton has come up with is "Tala-freak-o." Very clever!
Part II of the plan is... interesting. Roughly 4 years ago, Talarico made a speech in which he said that human beings should aspire to reduce their meat consumption, for both health and environmental reasons. This is not a particularly radical idea; one can find numerous bestselling, non-fanatical books that make the same point (the collected works of Michael Pollan come to mind). Texas, however, is a state where meat—particularly the barbecued variety—is central to many residents' identity. And so, Paxton has decreed that Talarico is a literal meat-hater, a weirdo who eats—hold on to your chair—a vegan diet. Ewwwwwwwww! This has been going on, here and there, for a couple of months, though Paxton aggressively renewed this line of attack yesterday.
We obviously do not know Texas political culture as well as someone who has been elected statewide three times, as Paxton has. So, we are open to the notion that if Talarico really was a vegan, that might be effective as a signifier that "He's not like us regular folks." Not unlike Mehmet Oz and his crudités. We are less persuaded that this will work on someone who is not a vegan, which Talarico is not.
Indeed, the moment we heard about Paxton's rather desperate attempt to slur his likely soon-to-be opponent, our thought was "This is an engraved invitation to Talarico to visit every damn county fair in Texas, and to get photographed eating a hot link, or a beef rib, or a turkey leg." It would seem that the Talarico campaign had the exact same thought, since the candidate's PR team released this "statement" the first time that Paxton deployed the vegan line of attack:
In case you can't tell, that is a barbecued turkey leg he is eating.
The bottom line is that just as Cornyn is running from a clear position of weakness in the primary, Paxton is already running from a clear position of weakness in the general, despite the fact that the general hasn't even started. We suspect that many Texas voters might just notice that Paxton has nothing to offer besides "The other guy suuuuuuuuucks!" Other Texas voters might just notice that a dishonest, adulterous Republican is doing a worse job of living up to the message of the Bible than a seminarian who happens to be a Democrat.
Finally, it is at least possible that if Paxton stumbles coming out of the gate, and there are several polls showing him as a significant underdog to Talarico, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and the NRSC might just conclude that they are better off using $250 million or so to try to protect three or four or five GOP-held Senate seats as opposed to protecting one that might be a lost cause. For what it is worth, Paxton's worst Paxton-Talarico poll had the AG down 8 points, 42% to 34%. A couple of others had Talarico at 46% or 47%. If the leading candidate is at or above 50%, or the trailing candidate is down by 10 points, those tend to be "time to think about cutting bait" polls.
Anyhow, it's going to be very interesting to watch. Absolute crack for politics junkies. (Z)