CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Everything is bigger in Texas, and with a week to go until Election Day here, that holds true both for the amount of money being spent in the campaigns and for the political capital at stake for President Donald Trump.
The president is making his third visit in the past month to the Lone Star State Tuesday with his endorsement power on the line. In the state’s primary, he helped oust incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in favor of embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
More than $1 billion in overall ad spending by both parties has already poured into Texas, and the critical race between Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, where well over half of that money has gone, is on track to become the most expensive Senate contest in U.S. history.
According to the latest polling average from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne, Talarico has a slight edge over Paxton, 49.2% to 46.5%.
Trump’s trip back to Texas to stump for Paxton and other Republicans is another stop on his red state tour to turn out his base in the campaign’s closing days, with control of the House and Senate at stake.
On Tuesday he will make a play to energize those supporters, particularly young men, with two former college football stars beloved in the state, Johnny Manziel and Colt McCoy, along with two-time Super Bowl champion Danny Amendola, joining him in Texas, according to a White House official. Axios was first to report the former football players joining Trump on the trail.
Trump is making two stops, rallying first in the southern coast city of Corpus Christi followed by a visit to Lubbock in deeply conservative West Texas. Corpus Christi is located in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, which is one of a handful across the country that voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election but elected a Democrat to the House.
A GOP strategist knowledgeable about Republicans’ thinking in the midterms who was given anonymity to talk freely about party strategy told MS NOW that the district is “one of the best offensive opportunities for us in the entire country in the House.” The competitiveness is evident in ad spending here: Republicans’ efforts to flip Democratic incumbent Vincent Gonzalez’ seat and Democrats’ attempts to defend it make it the most expensive House race in the state, according to data from ad tracking firm AdImpact.
As Trump travels from the southern coast to Lubbock, he’ll have company: Talarico is set to hold a community rally in town, just a few miles from where the president will be at about the same time.
“Lubbock is a chance for us to juice turnout in a red area,” the GOP strategist said, adding that bringing out “hardcore Trump supporters” from some of the reddest parts of red states to boost Republican votes in statewide elections has been a “theme” of many of Trump’s other rallies in the final stretch of the midterms.
“Texas is a state where the more people turn out, Dems don’t have the path to victory,” the strategist explained.
But as Trump urges his supporters to pretend he’s on the ballot in November, it remains to be seen whether his support will translate to a win for Paxton.
Paxton does have a clear financial advantage. It’s not from his own campaign fundraising, however, but instead from outside super PAC money that has poured in. Almost $560 million has been spent on advertisements in the Senate race, according to AdImpact, with Republicans’ spending making up nearly $400 million of that total.
One of Paxton’s biggest backers is SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Last month he dropped an eye-popping $158 million into a Senate GOP leadership-linked super PAC, to be directed to another group focused on boosting Paxton, making Musk the single biggest known GOP donor at the federal level this election cycle. That was after he gave $10 million to support Paxton in August.
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