{"id":478355,"date":"2026-10-27T17:36:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T17:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478355\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T17:36:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T17:36:39","slug":"trump-and-talarico-hold-dueling-rallies-in-lubbock-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478355\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Talarico hold dueling rallies in Lubbock, Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump and Democratic rising star James Talarico Tuesday were set to hold dueling rallies<\/a> just three miles apart in the deep-red west Texas city of Lubbock as both parties vie for support in the state\u2019s crucial U.S. Senate race.<\/p>\n

Trump is hoping to rev up his right-wing MAGA base<\/a> of loyal supporters to turn out in force to elect Republican Ken Paxton, who is fighting to hang onto the GOP-held seat in a state that hasn\u2019t elected a Democratic senator in more than two decades.<\/p>\n

But Talarico narrowly leads Paxton in most polls<\/a> of their crucial Senate contest.<\/p>\n

Trump and Paxton will address supporters at the 4,900-capacity Lubbock Civic Center after an afternoon stop in Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n

Talarico\u2019s campaign event will be held across town at the Fiesta Center, which holds up to 2,300 people. The Democrat\u2019s campaign said it moved the speech from a smaller venue<\/a> to accommodate enthusiastic supporters.<\/p>\n

Trump won Lubbock County by a landslide 69%-29% margin<\/a> in 2024, while winning statewide by 14%, although the city of Lubbock is somewhat less red-leaning.<\/p>\n

Paxton needs to run up the score in west Texas while Talarico seeks to blunt his advantage in the region while racking up big margins<\/a> in the state\u2019s sprawling metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess who is winning the battle for the early vote.<\/p>\n

Democratic analysts say turnout is higher in deep-blue counties<\/a> like Dallas and Houston\u2019s Harris County, and blue precincts are drawing bigger crowds of voters than GOP ones.<\/p>\n

Republicans scoff at those claims, noting that Trump-backing GOP voters increasingly prefer to vote in person on Election Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt certainly seems a lot bluer than 2022 and 2024,\u201d said Kyle Kondik, a non-partisan analyst with Sabato\u2019s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia. \u201cAnd one of the things we\u2019ll be watching is: can Republicans catch up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats likely need to win at least four Republican-held Senate seats to retake control<\/a>, including Texas. That once seemed like a long shot, but with Trump\u2019s approval rating at historic lows, pundits now give them better than even odds of flipping the chamber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump and Democratic rising star James Talarico Tuesday were set to hold dueling rallies just three miles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[145,2135,1967,168,170,169,20114,13164,27],"class_list":["post-478355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-donald-trump","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-midterms","tag-senate","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478355","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=478355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}