Fear and hope in Texas: Paxton vs. Talarico in an expensive US Senate showdown

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Winning Texas has been the Democratic Party's white whale for years, the much-hyped attempts repeatedly ending in disappointment.

Now, the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton is another tantalizing opening, and as the long race enters its final few days, the contest could well turn on its unusual points of friction.

Can a campaign rooted in hope douse one of fear? Will Paxton’s embrace of President Donald Trump propel or cost him? Can the world’s richest man tip the scales? And is Talarico his party’s salvation or just another expensive mirage?

The answers will have echoes beyond Texas and not just by helping decide which party controls Congress in Trump’s final two years in office. A Talarico victory in a Republican state could signal a redrawing of the national political map. A win by Paxton would extinguish a dream by Democrats that the state's shifting demographics would eventually prevail after decades of Republican dominance.

“We’re going to shock the world when we take back Texas,” Talarico told a crowd this week. Hours later, Paxton, at his own rally, told an energized crowd: “If we lose Texas, we lose America.”

As Paxton describes it, this election is like a drop of water above the Continental Divide — the line running down the spine of the Rocky Mountains where, on one side, the drop flows to the Pacific Ocean and, on the other, the Atlantic.

“They end up 3,000 miles apart. That’s what our elections are like now,” he explained to a crowd near the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s the America our founders gave us versus something they wouldn’t recognize.”

But a Senate seat that seemed like a Republican lock when the year began has instead become a referendum on Paxton's fraught background that includes being impeached by his own party over corruption accusations and a very public divorce. Still, he was able to win the coveted endorsement of Trump and defeat the incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn, in a primary .

Now, in the campaign's closing days, he is casting Talarico as an extreme liberal out of step with the state.

A vote for Talarico “is a vote for every dangerous idea that Democrats across the country are putting forward,” he said, which means violent criminals will destroy the country and the U.S. Supreme Court will become a radical liberal rubber-stamp.

Earlier that day, Talarico's rally had a different tenor, and without one direct attack on the Republican Party in a race in which he will need GOP voters to win.

“We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis,” he told a revved-up crowd at the University of Houston. “But we can change that in this election, in this state, in this race, if we come together not as Democrats or Republicans but as Texans.”

That reminds him, he often says these days, of David locked in a battle against Goliath , or, in this case, billionaire megadonors.

“(David) may not have had as many weapons, but he had faith, he had hope and he had a slingshot,” said Talarico, a Presbyterian seminary student. “You are my slingshot.”

His strategy? Stir every Texan's hopes despite the “D" beside his name.

Texas Democrats have had their hopes dashed before, notably when former congressman Beto O'Rourke lost a race to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 by less than 3 percentage points.

Talarico has generated at least as much enthusiasm, has amassed more money and has a less formidable opponent in Paxton.

Supporters who lived through O'Rourke's and others' attempts often hold contradictory feelings: a confidence that Talarico can win in such a deeply conservative state and a nagging suspicion that he, like many before him, will fall short.

Paxton has tried to leverage cultural issues against Talarico, emphasizing his support for transgender rights and previous statements such as “God is nonbinary.”

But Talarico has proved to be a nimble counter puncher, hammering Paxton about corruption and tying him to the struggling economy while also trying to sidestep partisanship and proffering a positive agenda.

In a state with a majority of Republican voters, Paxton is betting on the partisan loyalties holding.

"It's simple math,” said Carmen Calderone, the Nueces County GOP chair, in his warm-up speech at Paxton's rally. "We can win if we turn out the vote."

Paxton's campaign slogan for his final bus tour sledgehammers that point home: “Come and take it.”

Total ad spending sits just under $340 million since each candidate locked up his nomination, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

While Talarico's campaign outpaced Paxton's, big donors, including the world’s richest man, have come to the Republican's aid via super PACs. Musk has headquartered his companies Tesla and SpaceX — as well as himself — in Texas, and he has staked millions of dollars to defend its Republican monopoly in Congress. Trump, too, has flown to Texas several times and praised Paxton's work as attorney general, if not his appearance and attire.

To Talarico, it's a trifecta of Goliaths — “the richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, the most corrupt politician in Texas” — and plays into his own campaign message.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said Talarico's more forward-looking message can meet an electorate weary of partisan politics as “high-stakes drama,” while Paxton's message of doom if Talarico wins may struggle with voters dissatisfied with the economic status quo in a state — and a nation — led by Republicans.

“The fact that people are shocked into reassessing their own partisan beliefs is because of a sour economy," he said.

Paxton, who has never wavered in his public fealty to Trump, is now hoping that Texas will be a place where the president's presence, in person and on camera, will help deliver a victory. While Trump's poor approval ratings might dampen that advantage, Paxton just needs to motivate enough Republicans to turn out.

His challenge is that there is ample evidence that Talarico has won over independents and even several better-known Republicans. Neil Bush, the brother of Republican President George W. Bush, endorsed the Democrat this week, along with a few others from an older guard of the Republican Party.

While Trump's influence on the race is less clear, Musk's isn't.

He's contributed a total of $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund. The fund gave $158 million to Texas PAC, the largest contributor to Paxton’s campaign. Musk also gave $10 million to the Paxton-supporting Lone Star Liberty PAC.

Paxton, now with an advantage in total spending, doesn't talk about Musk. But it's played into the hands of Talarico's corruption spiel.

“Ken Paxton is funded by one dude," he told supporters at the rally. “He wants his very own personal United States senator.”