Texas was never supposed to be a nail-biter. Republicans have not lost a statewide race there in more than three decades. President Trump carried the state by about 14 points in 2024. And yet Ken Paxton, the attorney general who just beat John Cornyn with Trump’s endorsement, has spent the summer getting out-raised, out-advertised, and occasionally out-polled by a 37-year-old Austin Marxist who once grouped capitalism with white supremacy and climate change and said all three needed dismantling.
That standoff just ended. MAGA Inc., the super PAC tied to Trump, disclosed a $10 million ad buy on Saturday — $5 million boosting Paxton, $5 million hammering James Talarico — its first major general-election spend of the midterms. The money goes to television, connected TV, and digital ads across the state.
Trump told reporters Friday the PAC would spend “whatever amount of money necessary,” putting the midterm number in the $400 million to $500 million range and calling the war chest “my money.”
He was not whispering.
High Tax Talarico Meets an Actual Checkbook
Talarico has been living on oxygen. The Texas Tribune has him at $72 million raised since the campaign began, mostly small-dollar, against $16.8 million for Paxton. He has owned the airwaves. He talks like a Sunday school teacher who wandered into a DSA meeting and decided both rooms could be his. He collects groceries for the neighbors while calling the Dallas midterm convention a “Billionaire Ball” with a $20,000 ticket.
His campaign’s answer to the $10 million was the usual sermon.
Billionaire-backed dark money groups are lying about James Talarico because they’re scared of the people-powered movement we’re building to fix this broken, corrupt political system.
MAGA Inc. spokesman Alex Pfeiffer did not bother with the liturgy. He called the Democrat “High Tax Talarico” and said he “wants to take money out of Texans’ pockets.”
The ads hit Talarico on taxes and rural hospitals and sell Paxton’s Protecting the Texas Promise Agenda — doubling the child tax credit, tax relief for medical bills, and a $50,000 deduction for first-time homebuyers.
Paxton put it this way on X.
While James Talarico has a record of raising taxes on working families, my Protecting the Texas Promise Agenda cuts costs and makes life more affordable. Thank you, President @realDonaldTrump, for your support. Together we will win for Texas and America.
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
The Cassette Tape Prophet
Talarico’s people now call him a “proud capitalist.” That is adorable. In a 2020 Sierra Club forum, he thanked activists for linking “climate change and white supremacy and capitalism,” then said only by ending the way those “oppressive systems work together” could they begin “dismantling them.”
In the same appearance he compared Texas oil and gas — the industry that still produces more than two-fifths of America’s crude — to “being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s.” That industry, he promised, “is not gonna last.”
His campaign later said those comments “missed the mark.” They did not miss the mark. They hit the target he was aiming at when nobody in Midland was listening.
This is the man selling himself as the common-sense preacher who will un-rig the economy. He beat Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. He hired a Cornyn deputy after Paxton finished Cornyn off. He talks about Jesus and then preaches that God is not a Christian when the subject is abortion or Christian schools. The costume changes. The instinct does not.
A Toss-Up in a State That Should Not Be One
Recent surveys have the race inside the margin. An Overton Insights poll shared with the New York Post had Talarico up 44.0 to 43.4 among likely voters and tied at 50 when leaners were included. Other surveys have flipped a point either way. Cook and Fox have treated the seat as a toss-up.
Republicans hold the Senate 53-47. Texas is one of the states that can keep it that way or turn a bad night into a disaster.
Breitbart notes MAGA Inc. had barely touched the general election before this — an $827,000 outlay for Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina and almost nothing else. Elon Musk’s America PAC had already started writing checks for Paxton. The cavalry was late. It is not imaginary.
Talarico will keep calling it dark money. He will keep collecting canned goods while the Dallas convention fills up. Fine. Texas voters can decide whether they want a senator who treats oil like a dead format and capitalism like a sin, or an attorney general who spent years fighting the Biden-era lawfare machine and now has Trump’s PAC on the air.
Ten million dollars does not buy a soul. It does buy a fair fight. After a summer of Talarico ads with no answer, that is the least a red state is owed.
