Texans have been inundated with political advertisements this cycle. Combined advertising for the campaigns reached over $500 million, and Elon Musk donated over $150 million to help the Paxton campaign secure a win. <\/p>\n
Paxton has a strong conservative record as attorney general. In 2024, his office secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta over its unauthorized collection of Texans\u2019 biometric data. Around the same time, he successfully defended the pro-life Human Life Protection Act before the Texas Supreme Court. Paxton also successfully sued the Biden administration to force the removal of an injunction on border wall construction in Texas.<\/p>\n
But in 2023, the Texas House of Representatives impeached Paxton for corruption and bribery, accusing the attorney general of using his political status to intervene in a federal fraud investigation of a donor. The state Senate later acquitted Paxton. Then Paxton\u2019s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce in 2025, alleging her husband had committed adultery. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal published a nearly 2-year-old video<\/a> of Paxton celebrating New Year\u2019s Eve in Dubai with an indicted U.S. fugitive and a woman who is not his wife.<\/p>\n Still, at the Paxton rally, attendees seemed willing to overlook the attorney general\u2019s missteps. They saw the choice between him and Talarico as straightforward. <\/p>\n \u201cAs a Christian, I just believe that, you know, anyone without sin, throw the first stone,\u201d said Miriam Walker. \u201cI thought about the same thing with Trump. I know he came from a shady background morally, but I think morals and what they\u2019re willing to do in office are two different things.\u201d <\/p>\n About 40 miles from Allen in Tarrant County, Melissa, who declined to give her last name, had just cast her vote for Talarico. She said she was unhappy with the amount of negative advertisements she\u2019d seen from both campaigns. (Those include a pro-Paxton ad<\/a> with the tagline \u201cJames Talarico is weird,\u201d and another<\/a> calling Paxton \u201cdangerously corrupt\u201d and accusing him of offering a child sex offender a \u201csweetheart deal\u201d of only one day in jail.) <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJames Talarico speaks to attendees at a rally in Weslaco, Texas. Talarico has a homegrown appeal. He often reminds voters he is an eighth-generation Texan and the grandson of a Baptist preacher. He uses the biblical command to love thy neighbor as justification for his progressive social views and hopes to bring into his campaign centrist swing voters who may be turned off by Paxton\u2019s scandals.<\/p>\n That evening, Talarico supporters lined up outside the gymnasium of North Crowley High School in Fort Worth. In line, Talarico supporter Daniel Mitchell wore a shirt that read, \u201cI\u2019m a Talafreako,\u201d a nickname Republicans coined.<\/p>\n \u201cI think all the attacks on him are kind of silly, so I love the chirpy response on the T-shirts,\u201d Mitchell said. <\/p>\n Talarico has painted himself as a middle-class Texan standing up to established money. Todd Smith, former Republican Texas state representative for Tarrant County, endorsed Talarico, saying, \u201cRep. Talarico and I may understand better than most why it is in Texas that it is often not left versus right, but it is top versus bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n Talarico\u2019s appeal seems to have reached some traditionally Republican voters. Former President George W. Bush\u2019s daughter Barbara and his younger brother Neil have both thrown their support behind Talarico. Neil Bush said that he voted early for Talarico after developing concerns about Paxton\u2019s judgment and conduct as attorney general.<\/p>\n Despite Talarico\u2019s frequent references to Bible verses and Christian themes, he still falls on the wrong side of certain issues important to Christian and conservative voters. In a CNN town hall<\/a>, Talarico claimed to Jodi Hunt, a Catholic professor at the University of Dallas, that the Bible is \u201csilent on the issue of abortion.\u201d <\/p>\n Talarico also once suggested God was \u201cnonbinary\u201d during a House floor speech arguing against a bill protecting girls\u2019 sports from male participation. (He now claims<\/a> he supports national protections against gender transition surgeries for minors.)<\/p>\n \u201cTalarico is running a campaign that is focusing on certain issues that seem to be resonating with Texans, which I think is somewhat disingenuous given that his record suggests he is running more moderate than he will actually govern,\u201d said Doug Blair, press manager at Heritage Action, explaining Talarico\u2019s rise in the polls. <\/p>\n Blair blamed the broader political challenges facing Republicans across the country in this midterm year for Paxton\u2019s tough race: \u201cIt\u2019s a bad environment for Republicans at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to come down to every vote by November 3rd,\u201d said Chris Hammons, a professor of political science at Houston Christian University. \u201cPeople say they love Talarico, but whether or not they\u2019ll actually show up and vote for their preferred candidate, we\u2019ll have to wait and see.\u201d<\/p>\n While speaking to supporters, Paxton likes to cite Talarico\u2019s previous comments to argue he is too radical for Texas. \u201cHe calls himself a Christian who hates Christianity. I\u2019ve never heard a Christian say that,\u201d Paxton told Allen rally attendees. <\/p>\n Despite his opponent\u2019s radical soundbites, Paxton has been unable to position himself as a clear front-runner in the Senate race. In September, Trump hosted the first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas. During a speech meant to help Paxton, the president said<\/a> that some people don\u2019t like the way Paxton looks or talks but, \u201cin the history of Texas, he is the single greatest attorney general you\u2019ve ever had.\u201d Later, in audio leaked to The New York Times<\/a>, Paxton blamed his poor polling numbers on the midterm convention. <\/p>\n Paxton\u2019s Come and Take It tour is stopping all over Texas until election night. The attorney general is still relying on the Trump administration for support. At his Oct. 19 rally in Fort Worth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stumped for Paxton. And on Tuesday, Trump addressed voters in Lubbock and Corpus Christi, urging Republicans to vote for Paxton. <\/p>\n At the Allen rally, Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen had a similar message for Texans. \u201cWhen you guys get out and vote, bring about three dozen people with you,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cAnd look, if you run across some conservative that just ain\u2019t into it and all that kind of stuff, say \u2018Suck it up, buttercup, and get out and vote.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loading the Audio Player… At a Mexican restaurant in Allen, Texas, attendees at a Republican campaign rally sip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13723,5058,13164,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-480872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-13723","tag-campaign","tag-senate","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480872","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=480872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Talarico.jpg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAssociated Press \/ Photo by Michael Gonzalez\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n