Billionaire Cash Floods Texas Senate Race as Voters Watch

Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has spent more than $150 million of his own money to help Ken Paxton keep pace with James Talarico's fundraising in a tossup Texas Senate race. That figure alone says who the contest is really being run for. On Saturday, with early balloting totals approaching 50 million nationwide, both candidates began their closing arguments, and both asked ordinary people to believe the ballot is where power gets decided.

Who Has the Power

Paxton, the longtime state attorney general who has weathered indictment and impeachment, beat Republican Sen. John Cornyn in this year's GOP primary with Trump's help. Trump's endorsement did the heavy lifting; the primary voters followed. Talarico, a state lawmaker, seminarian and former teacher, framed it as a fight between a corrupt insider and the people. "This election is about whether you want a senator who puts money in your pocket or who puts money in his own," he said in Houston. "It's David vs. Goliath," Talarico said. "The people of Texas are my slingshot." Notice the slingshot has a fundraising operation attached.

Paxton, speaking in Fort Worth, painted his opponent as a puppet of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who would set the chamber's agenda if Democrats win a majority. "The left in this country keeps getting more and more radical," he said. Then he went mystical. "I'm not exaggerating when I say, if we lose Texas, we lose America," Paxton said. "Pray for our Texas. Pray for me."

The Senate arithmetic tells its own story. Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage. Democrats need at least four new seats for a majority, and at least five if they lose Michigan. Hundreds of millions of dollars and a nation's attention, all to shift a handful of chairs in a chamber where the same donor class keeps its seat at the table either way.

What They're Calling "Order"

Trump spent Saturday at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, and stepped away from in-person rallies in favor of six tele-rallies. His MAGA Inc. super PAC said the calls were lined up for races in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan and two separate calls for Florida. "Answer your phones, and ENJOY!" he posted. On Sunday he's set to hold rallies in Iowa and Kansas that were scheduled, pulled down and then rescheduled.

In Michigan, Trump posted an Islamophobic cartoon of a man with a flaming torch knocking on the door of the United States after setting fire to countries in Europe, aimed at Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. House Speaker Mike Johnson, in a Michigan tossup district, called it "a spiritual battle" and said of Democrats: "These are Marxists, socialists, communists. It's their ideology." He added that communists "murdered tens of millions of innocent people in the 20th century alone." This from a man who holds the gavel of a state that keeps its own tally of bodies.

The Reform Trap

On the other side of the aisle, the pitch is repair, not abolition. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, campaigning in Virginia's 2nd Congressional District with former Rep. Elaine Luria, who lost her seat to Rep. Jen Kiggans four years ago, promised "an affordable America." He pledged votes on reversing Republicans' healthcare cuts, sweeping voting rights laws and limits on Trump's military actions on Iran. "Beginning on day one, we're going to hold the crooks accountable," Jeffries said. He singled out Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth: "One of the first things we are going to do is run Pete Hegseth out of town." The southeast Virginia district is among the most competitive on the House map, where Democrats are targeting at least 60 seats. Trump won many of those by double digits in 2024, two years ago.

The promise is to limit the military's reach, not dismantle it. The crowd roared for a firing, not for ending the machine Hegseth runs.

Fighting Over Scraps

Even the opposition party can't hold itself together. In Michigan, Haley Stevens renewed her criticism of El-Sayed, and his campaign is no longer welcoming her to events, according to a person familiar with the matter. Stevens has demanded he condemn an advertisement linking U.S. support for Israel to rising grocery prices. El-Sayed answered in Sterling Heights: "We ought to keep our money here to invest in schools here, in infrastructure here, rather than sending it somewhere else to drop a bomb somewhere else." He noted how much Stevens and her supporters outspent him in the primary: "They might as well have set their money on fire, because we beat them anyway."

The fight over who gets to represent the people is loud. The question of who actually decides stays quiet.