endorsed<\/a> Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary over incumbent Senator John Cornyn. The scandal-ridden Paxton now faces a punishing contest against Democrat James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian.<\/p>\nPolls have regularly shown Talarico leading Paxton, although that lead has largely remained within the margin of error. A RealClearPolitics average of polls had Talarico leading Paxton by 1.7 points.<\/p>\n
Talarico\u2019s victory would mark a sea change in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.<\/p>\n
It would also represent a major rebuke to Trump, whose Republican Party is fighting to maintain its narrow control of the Senate. Democrats are widely projected to take control of the US House of Representatives in the November 3 vote.<\/p>\n
Talarico has used the final stretch of the race to focus on years of corruption allegations against Paxton, while drawing a contrast to voters\u2019 affordability concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cKen Paxton represents everything that\u2019s wrong with this broken, corrupt system,\u201d he said during an event in Houston last week.<\/p>\n
Paxton has sought to portray Talarico as too \u201cradical\u201d for Texas, saying his policies would hurt a state known for its pro-business policies.<\/p>\n
Trump and other administration officials, notably Vice President JD Vance, have regularly focused on cultural issues, distorting Talarico\u2019s past comments on transgender rights and border security.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Corpus Christi, Trump repeated those attacks and urged his supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go out, and if you all vote, we win in a landslide,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US president seeks to underscore Latin American military operation, as Iran war causes midterm affordability threat. United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,288,2277,223,27,29,28,464,7454,100172,23159],"class_list":["post-478575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-latin-america","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-us-midterm-elections-2026","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478575","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=478575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}