Talarico Leads Paxton in Early Returns in Texas’ U.S. Senate Race

The Texas Tribune

AUSTIN, TX — Democrat James Talarico began election night with a lead over Republican Ken Paxton in Texas’ hotly contested U.S. Senate race, according to early returns that put Democrats within reach of snapping their three-decade losing streak in statewide races.

With Election Day ballots still being tallied Tuesday night, Talarico built his early edge with strong showings in the North Texas suburbs and enormous margins in the urban metros that had reported results.

More than 7.7 million Texans voted early, in person or by mail, through the state’s 12-day early voting period. That amounted to 40.5% of registered voters, the highest midterm early-turnout rate on record in modern-day Texas.

While the majority of the vote was cast early, Republicans expect to perform better among Election Day voters.

The race was the most expensive U.S. Senate competition in American history as Talarico, an Austin state legislator, and Paxton, the three-term state attorney general, fought an intense campaign that could decide control of the U.S. Senate through the end of President Donald Trump’s second term. Democrats need to flip four seats, and hold onto their existing ones, to win the majority.

Democrats have not won statewide in Texas since 1994, and they last captured one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats in 1988 — when Rick Perry was still a Democratic state lawmaker, the Cowboys were coached by Tom Landry and Talarico was not yet born.

But Talarico’s campaign breathed new life into Democrats’ perennial dream of turning Texas blue. He smashed fundraising records and held a narrow but consistent lead in the public polling average — something even Beto O’Rourke never did when he came within 3 percentage points of toppling U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico kept his campaign relentlessly focused on a crosspartisan message tying voters’ cost-of-living woes to a broken political system corrupted by billionaire and corporate influence. He depicted Paxton as the “embodiment” of that system, pointing to the attorney general’s numerous legal and ethical controversies and to the more than $200 million that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent in support of Paxton.

Talarico himself proved to be the most prolific fundraiser in the country this cycle, while also benefiting from a significant outside spending effort previous Democrats in Texas lacked.

Paxton, meanwhile, pitched himself as a conservative fighter who would keep Texas red. He attacked Talarico as “the most radical Democrat to ever run in Texas history,” highlighting the Austin Democrat’s various progressive statements from recent years including his now-infamous quips that “God is nonbinary” and that he is a “Christian who hates Christianity.” (Talarico said some of his past remarks were meant to be “provocative” but “missed the mark.”)

Paxton leaned heavily on the national Republican cavalry. He defeated Sen. John Cornyn in a May runoff, winning a landslide after Trump endorsed him a week before the election. With Paxton trailing in the polls and unable to raise enough money to counter Talarico on TV, national GOP groups poured in north of $281 million for an advertising blitz heavy on attacks against Talarico. Trump and Vice President JD Vance also headlined six campaign events in Texas after Labor Day to drive up Republican turnout.

During early voting, GOP officials issued dire warnings to their voters that the left would take over Texas if Republicans did not show up to offset Democratic enthusiasm.

“Texas is excruciatingly close,” Cruz said on his podcast Friday. “We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That’s how close these numbers are.”