{"id":479141,"date":"2026-10-28T09:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T09:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479141\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T09:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T09:42:18","slug":"trump-visits-lubbock-and-corpus-christi-as-republicans-fight-to-hold-texas-u-s-senate-seat-houston-public-media-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479141\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump visits Lubbock and Corpus Christi as Republicans fight to hold Texas\u2019 U.S. Senate seat \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"SupportersSupporters hold up signs during the Republican National Convention in Dallas on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. (Yfat Yossifor | KERA)<\/p>\n

Election Day is just a week away, and political campaigns are racing toward the finish line. For Republicans in Texas, that means bringing out their party\u2019s biggest figure: President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Trump will make stops in Corpus Christi and Lubbock on Tuesday, while Vice President JD Vance plans to visit Weatherford on Thursday. The visits are aimed at rallying support for Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re pulling out all the stops to come here and fight to try to keep that Senate seat,\u201d Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston, told The Texas Newsroom.<\/p>\n

The outcome of Texas\u2019 Senate race could determine which party holds control of the chamber in Washington for the final two years of Trump\u2019s term \u2014 a major factor in whether the president will be able to advance his agenda.<\/p>\n

Recent polling underscores how competitive the Texas race has become.<\/p>\n

An October Emerson College\/Nexstar Media poll<\/a> put Talarico at 48% and Paxton at 46%, too close to establish a clear leader. A separate Rasmussen Reports survey<\/a> found the candidates tied.<\/p>\n

A Talarico victory would give Texas its first Democratic U.S. Senate election winner since 1988, and end the party\u2019s more than 30-year statewide losing streak.<\/p>\n

Sims says the visits are telling in a state long considered reliably Republican.<\/p>\n

\u201cKen Paxton himself is just not a gregarious, appealing candidate, and hasn\u2019t generated that level of excitement with voters. So they\u2019re coming down to try and bolster that for him,\u201d Sims said.<\/p>\n

Beyond the U.S. Senate race, Trump\u2019s two Texas stops highlight different challenges Republicans are facing this election year: getting their base to the polls and holding on to recent gains in South Texas.<\/p>\n

Corpus Christi: Holding Latino support<\/p>\n

In Corpus Christi, the GOP isn\u2019t just looking to excite voters for Texas\u2019 U.S. Senate race. The region\u2019s congressional contests are also pivotal for the party.<\/p>\n

That includes Texas 15th, 28th and 34th Congressional Districts, where polling shows close races<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump narrowly won majority-Latino Nueces County in 2016 and 2020. But that support exploded during the 2024 election, when Trump won Nueces County<\/a> by double digits for the first time.<\/p>\n

According to Del Mar College political science professor Dr. Paul Gottemoller, the president\u2019s visit highlights the importance of Latino voters for Republicans\u2019 overall success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a hope that the 2024 election results signified a permanent partisan shift among Latino voters in South Texas,\u201d said Gottemoller.<\/p>\n

In fact, it\u2019s that repositioning by the area\u2019s Latino voters that partly inspired Republicans mid-decade redistricting effort last summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey redrew the maps in hopes of getting five additional Republican districts out of that,\u201d said Gottemoller.<\/p>\n

However, now polls show \u201cthat it was not a permanent shift\u201d and Gottemoller said votes from South Texas Latinos are still very much up for grabs.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s visit to Corpus Christi will be his second this year. He also visited before March\u2019s primaries to promote Republican candidates.<\/p>\n

Lubbock: Rallying the base <\/p>\n

This will be Donald Trump\u2019s first-ever public visit to Lubbock since beginning his political career. Even in his own campaigns for President, the Plains and Panhandle regions of West Texas were often considered a guaranteed win for the GOP \u2014 assumptions that have been repeatedly confirmed.<\/p>\n

Trump saw more than 66% of the vote in Lubbock County in 2016, and almost 70% in 2024.<\/p>\n

So, why now?<\/p>\n

According to Drew Landry, a government professor from South Plains College, it comes down to Paxton\u2019s U.S. Senate candidacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat that tells me is that even they think this is going to be a very close election,\u201d Landry said, an indication that \u201cPaxton is in trouble of being one of the first Republicans to lose statewide since 1994.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the last 30 years, Lubbock County has been the textbook example of a place that Republicans could count on for consistent party-line votes. But that hasn\u2019t always been true for Paxton himself. In his primary races for Attorney General, Paxton has often seen less support from Lubbock voters compared to other statewide Republican candidates.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what happened in March\u2019s primary, when sitting Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn won Lubbock County. But Paxton managed to turn it around, securing the majority of Republicans\u2019 votes in the county in May\u2019s runoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s carrying [Paxton] is the Republican name, and among Republicans, his tie to the president,\u201d Landry explained.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: \u201cThe President is coming to a place where his base is large, to gin up support,\u201d said Landry.<\/p>\n

While he doesn\u2019t expect any of the region\u2019s traditionally red seats to flip this year, Landry said he\u2019s expecting closer races than many West Texas Democrats have ever seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supporters hold up signs during the Republican National Convention in Dallas on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. (Yfat Yossifor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[155,2135,1967,139587,168,170,169,223,287,3311,28194],"class_list":["post-479141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-corpus-christi","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-latino-vote","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-texas-gop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479141","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=479141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}