Dem
54
GOP
46
The U.S. Senate race in Texas is, of course, of enormous interest to us and to any outlet around the country that covers politics. It could very well determine control of the upper chamber. And, perhaps more importantly, it could be a sea-change election for Texas politics. So, every day, there are two or three pretty big stories out of that race.
Yesterday, the biggest story was probably "money." Q3 totals are due for campaigns and PACs, and this will be the last deadline before the election. Democrat James Talarico, for his part, took in $64 million, which is a Q3 record for any Senate race. Clearly, as we noted earlier this week, that campaign is not hurting for money, despite its pretensions to the contrary. Also, Talarico is spending a LOT of money on "Give me money!" ads on YouTube and social media. If he spent $10 million on those ads, then the $64 million is much more impressive than if he spent $50 million. But it's hard to know.
Meanwhile, it was already known that Republican Ken Paxton raised $18 million in Q3. He got that out there as quickly as he could, in order to send a message along the lines of "I'm not dead yet." The news yesterday was that, by and large, Paxton has one donor, namely Elon Musk. Of the slightly more than $200 million that has been poured into Paxton's campaign since the primary, the evidence suggests that about $190 million of it came from Musk. Since Musk is very toxic, it's not great for Paxton that the cat is out of the bag. Also, it could not be clearer that there is a real lack of enthusiasm for the candidate, both among grassroots donors and among the leaders of the various PACs that exist to help Republican candidates win elections (e.g., Tim Scott and the NRSC).
Also lacking enthusiasm for Paxton, as we noted in the earlier piece, is Donald Trump. In theory, Trump should be helping Paxton a lot, because Paxton is Trump's handpicked candidate. In reality, Trump has largely kept his PAC's wallet closed. And yesterday, the President gave a clear indication that he believes his chosen one is in deep trouble, posting a long and rambling screed to his social media platform in which he pre-blamed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Karl Rove if Paxton does lose. Trump described that pair as "WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks." Guess he doesn't care about having Cornyn's vote for the final 24 days of the 119th Congress.
And finally, dessert. This isn't particularly important, but it is amusing. Paxton has decided he will close his campaign with a bus tour, which will be called the "Come and Take It" bus tour. That is a reference to the notion that Paxton is tough, and that Texans are tough, and yada, yada, yada. The delicious part is that the final destination on the tour will be The Alamo. Obviously, that is an iconic Texas location. However, it is also a place where a bunch of doomed Texans were done in, with Mexicans doing the job of finishing them off. We will remind readers that if Paxton loses (alongside a bunch of Texas House members), it will be substantially because Latino voters turned against the Republicans this cycle.
The polls are close enough, and there's enough noise, that it's hard to generalize. That said, it certainly looks like the race is tightening up a little. The obvious explanation is that Talarico was off the campaign trail for nearly 2 weeks while trying to recover from the flu. And Paxton did have a poll from a nonpartisan house this week that shows him tied with Talarico. That said, Paxton gets about one of those a month. He's had an actual lead in just two nonpartisan polls since the primary, one in early August and one in mid-June, and in both cases he was up by just 1%. In roughly 90% of polls, Talarico leads, and that includes 9 of the last 10 nonpartisan polls that have been published. So, the Democrat still maintains an average lead of about 3 points, 48.5% to 45.5%. (Z)