Talarico leads Paxton by 2 points and has crossover support from 6% of Republicans in the poll of 2,000 likely voters<\/a> conducted Oct. 10-14 by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs. But the overall 2-point margin is within the margin of error of 2.19 points.<\/p>\n The only other race in a virtual tie is Westover Hills Republican Bo French\u2019s campaign for one of three seats on the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas. French leads Houston Democrat Jon Rosenthal by 2 points.<\/p>\n Click to resize<\/p>\n James Talarico technically has a 2-point lead but that\u2019s within the margin of error in the race for U.S. Senate. Hobby School of Public Affairs\/University of Houston <\/p>\n Gov. Greg Abbott has a 3-point lead in his re-election campaign over Austin Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Other Republicans lead by 5-7 points.<\/p>\n Abbott, Paxton and Talarico scheduled Oct. 19 appearances in Fort Worth on the first day of early voting:<\/p>\n \u2022 Abbott chose the Old Texas Brewing Co. in west Fort Worth for a lunchtime rally with state Rep. John McQueeney, facing a challenge from Democrat Beth Llewellyn McLaughlin.<\/p>\n \u2022 Talarico announced an evening rally at North Crowley High School in southwest Fort Worth.<\/p>\n \u2022 That 7 p.m. event was set to compete directly with a Paxton rally featuring Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the T&P Station rail station ballroom downtown.<\/p>\n Gov. Greg Abbott leads state Rep. Gina Hinojosa by 3 points in the race for Texas governor. Hobby School of Public Affairs\/University of Houston <\/p>\n The Talarico-Paxton race has tightened and the candidates have been in a virtual tie in five major polls released since Oct. 11.<\/p>\n Talarico had a thin lead or was tied for the lead in four of those five polls.<\/p>\n In 2024, the same October poll by the University of Houston showed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz beating Dallas Democrat Colin Allred by 4 points. Cruz went on to win by 8.<\/p>\n Bud Kennedy<\/a><\/p>\n Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/p>\n Bud Kennedy is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram opinion columnist. In a 54-year Texas newspaper career, he has covered two Super Bowls, a presidential inauguration, seven national political conventions and 19 Texas Legislature sessions..
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\n Support my work with a digital subscription<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Rep. James Talarico, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Richard Rodriguez, Anna Moneymaker Getty Images Democrat James Talarico…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-470585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470585","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=470585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}