Billionaire Cash Floods Texas Senate Race, Voters Get a Ballot

Elon Musk has spent more than $150 million of his own money to help Ken Paxton keep pace with James Talarico's fundraising in the Texas Senate race, and he's poured nearly half a billion dollars into elections across the 2026 cycle. That's the number hanging over a contest that, by Tuesday, will be sold to Texans as a free and open choice.

Both candidates spent Saturday closing the deal. Talarico, a Democratic state lawmaker, worked a crowd in Houston. Paxton, the longtime state attorney general, held court in Fort Worth. Control of Congress rides on the result, and the race is a tossup.

Who Has the Power

Talarico put it plainly in Houston. "This election is about whether you want a senator who puts money in your pocket or who puts money in his own," he said. He accused Paxton of serving "billionaire megadonors" like Musk and called him "bought and paid for."

Paxton has weathered indictment and impeachment. He has Donald Trump's endorsement. He beat Sen. John Cornyn in this year's GOP primary with Trump's help, which tells you how the ladder gets climbed inside that party: not by the voters at the bottom, but by the nod from the man at the top.

Trump himself, meanwhile, spent the lead-up railing at his own party's strategists. He lashed out on Truth Social at Karl Rove and Cornyn, calling Rove a "Super RINO" and Talarico a "Radical Left Lunatic." Rove, a former senior aide to President George W. Bush, answered by writing in the Wall Street Journal that he'd vote for the Democrat running for the Texas Railroad Commission, only the second time he's ever voted blue. The apparatus is eating itself, and it's doing it in public.

What They're Calling "Choice"

Paxton's closing pitch was fear. "I'm not exaggerating when I say, if we lose Texas, we lose America," he said, casting Talarico as a lackey for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. "The left in this country keeps getting more and more radical," he added. Then he urged Republicans to match the Democrats' early turnout. "Pray for our Texas," he said. "Pray for me."

Talarico's pitch was David versus Goliath. "The people of Texas are my slingshot," he told supporters, promising the state would "shock the nation" on November 3. It's a good line. It's also a line delivered by a candidate running in a race where the other side's biggest patron has dropped $150 million of personal cash.

The party machinery is measuring success in turnout, not in anything that changes who holds power over people's daily lives. RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said: "Midterms are a turnout game, and anyone who denies that the president's rallies have boosted support for our Republican candidates is cosplaying as a Republican strategist." Rove, for his part, said Trump's "pretend I'm on the ballot" message is not "about what am I going to do to make your future better."

The Numbers Behind the Theater

Early balloting approached 50 million heading into the weekend, and CNN reported more than 50 million voters had already cast ballots. About 112 million voted in total in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage in the Senate. Democrats need at least four new seats for a majority, and at least five if they lose Michigan.

That's the whole fight, reduced to a seat count. Fifty million people have already stood in line or mailed a form to pick which set of donor-backed professionals gets to write the next round of rules. The Daily Beast reported Paxton polling between 3 and 4 points behind Talarico, which means the outcome may turn on a margin thinner than the gap between two billionaires' checkbooks.

Trump, notably, stepped away from in-person rallies Saturday in favor of six virtual tele-rallies aimed at races in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan and Florida. Even the spectacle is going remote.

Election Day lands Tuesday, November 3. Texans will be told it's their voice. The money already spoke.