{"id":467264,"date":"2026-10-15T23:14:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T23:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/467264\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T23:14:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T23:14:30","slug":"ken-paxton-to-close-senate-campaign-with-come-and-take-it-bus-tour-ending-at-the-alamo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/467264\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton to close Senate campaign with \u201cCome and Take It\u201d bus tour ending at the Alamo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Republican U.S. Senate nominee <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/directory\/ken-paxton\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ken Paxton<\/a> is setting off on an 18-day bus tour Saturday that will take him to over 30 stops across the state leading up to Election Day, according to plans first shared with The Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Paxton will kick off the \u201cCome and Take It\u201d bus tour in Rockwall two days before the start of early voting on Monday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Evoking the Texas Revolution, Paxton\u2019s closing message to Texans draws on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/07\/14\/texas-ken-paxton-lawsuits-biden-administration-win-rate-senate-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">record as attorney general<\/a> of suing opioid companies, Big Tech and the Biden administration: \u201cWhen they come after Texans,\u201d his campaign said, \u201cKen Paxton goes after them.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">He plans to close out the tour with a stop at the Alamo on Nov. 2, the eve of Election Day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">\u201cIn Texas, \u2018come and take it\u2019 has never been a slogan,\u201d Paxton said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s a promise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Paxton\u2019s callback to these symbols of Texan defiance are laden with symbolism as he finds himself in a dead heat with Democratic nominee <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/directory\/james-talarico\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">James Talarico<\/a>, who is seeking his party\u2019s first statewide win since 1994. Public polls have shown the Austin lawmaker narrowly leading throughout the race, and Paxton <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kenpaxtontx\/posts\/191-years-ago-today-texans-raised-a-flag-with-one-message-come-and-take-itto-jam\/1638565004300964\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">has often framed<\/a> the campaign as a last stand against a Democratic siege. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">In a statement announcing his bus tour, Paxton contrasted his candidacy with that of Talarico, whom he accused of being \u201cbankrolled by national Democrats and Silicon Valley billionaires\u201d \u2014 a reference to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/07\/16\/texas-senate-james-talarico-super-pac-reid-hoffman-10-million-lone-star-rising\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">$11.5 million in donations<\/a> to a super PAC supporting Talarico. (Talarico\u2019s campaign has emphasized that the Austin Democrat \u201chas no control over contributions to any super PAC\u201d under federal law and wants to ban all super PACs.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">\u201cHe won\u2019t fight for you. He\u2019ll fight for them,\u201d Paxton said. \u201cSo my message to anyone who comes after Texas is the same one Texans have been sending for almost two hundred years: Come and take it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">National Republican power brokers, including President Donald Trump, Senate Republican leadership and Elon Musk, have poured over $214 million into Texas in recent weeks, tapping affiliated PACs to fund an advertising barrage aimed at promoting Paxton and attacking Talarico, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. In a Sept. 24 audio recording leaked to Politico last week, Paxton <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/10\/05\/paxton-campaign-dc-message-01106548\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">complained that<\/a> his campaign was \u201call coming from D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Trump has made several stops in Texas now in a bid to gin up Republican turnout and support Paxton, following a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2026\/09\/08\/republican-midterm-convention-dallas-texas-trump-paxton-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">midterm convention<\/a> in Dallas that prominently featured the attorney general.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">A prolific fundraiser, Talarico, meanwhile, is relying on his own campaign account for most of his ad spending, with $81 million booked on the airwaves so far. The super PAC in his corner has dropped an additional $8 million, while Senate Democratic leadership has put $3.5 million into the race so far. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-dLMFU sc-fHjqPf jbiTJv kYFPaL article-text\">Stops on Paxton\u2019s tour will feature to-be-announced special guests and include events in the following cities: Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, Odessa, San Angelo, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, Corpus Christi, Victoria, Tyler and Beaumont.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton is setting off on an 18-day bus tour Saturday that will take&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2135,1967,287,82,84,83,293,14165,6748],"class_list":["post-467264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-texas-legislature","tag-vote-2026","tag-well-b-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467264","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=467264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}