{"id":180025,"date":"2026-02-25T19:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/180025\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T19:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T19:06:09","slug":"texas-outpaces-senate-primary-spending-record-ahead-of-march-3-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/180025\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas outpaces Senate primary spending record ahead of March 3 election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas set a new record for the most expensive Senate primary<\/a> in U.S. history, hitting a whopping total of $110 million in campaign ad spending alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Approximately $88 million has been spent in campaign advertising favoring Republicans competing in the race, compared to just under $22 million for the two Democrats in the race, according to data from AdImpact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sitting Sen. John Cornyn (R) has led the pack in ad spending, with a total of $64 million spent on advertising supporting his re-election campaign. Since Feb. 1, a total of $18.8 million in ads favoring the incumbent candidate have run or been scheduled to air.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has garnered nearly all of his $3.6 million in ad support since the beginning of this month. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) has received a total of $11.4 million in ad support for his Senate bid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AdImpact said that the majority of funding for these ads comes from outside groups, including super PACs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite receiving the highest amount of ad funding in the race, Cornyn is slightly lagging behind Paxton in a recent University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project survey<\/a>. Paxton received 36 percent of support from poll respondents, with the sitting senator getting 34 percent. Hunt ranked third at 26 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

President Trump has yet to endorse<\/a> a candidate in the race, telling reporters recently that he \u201clike[s] all three\u201d of the top Republican candidates in the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the toughest races,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve all supported me. They\u2019re all good. You\u2019re supposed to pick one, so we\u2019ll see what happens. But I support all three.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president is expected<\/a> to visit Corpus Christi, Texas, this Friday ahead of the primary election on March 3. <\/p>\n

Early voting in the state primary showcased higher voter turnout than previous years, with data from the Texas secretary of State indicating a particular increase<\/a> in Democratic voters casting their ballots during this early voting period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Democratic candidates in the race \u2014 U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state representative James Talarico \u2014 have fallen far behind in the primary\u2019s ad spending campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since Feb. 1, Crockett has garnered $3.9 million in ad support in comparison to Talarico\u2019s $14.3 million. However, the University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project poll<\/a> shows the congresswoman continues to best her primary opponent in the polls, leading by 12 percentage points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted from Feb. 2-16 among 1,300 self-declared Texas primary voters and had a margin of error of approximately 2.72 percentage points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas set a new record for the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history, hitting a whopping total…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72221,72220,3309,72222,1967,72219,27,29,28,55028,72217,1863,72218,13602],"class_list":{"0":"post-180025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-ad-spending","9":"tag-campaign-ads","10":"tag-john-cornyn","11":"tag-john-cornyn-texas","12":"tag-ken-paxton","13":"tag-senate-primary-texas","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-texas-headlines","16":"tag-texas-news","17":"tag-texas-primary","18":"tag-texas-race","19":"tag-texas-senate","20":"tag-texas-senate-2026","21":"tag-texas-senate-race"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}