James Talarico pulled his black campaign bus with “Talarico for Texas” across the side up to Memo’s Restaurant in Eagle Pass, Texas, as he tried to win back Hispanic voters along the Texas border who swung toward the GOP in a race that could help decide control of the U.S. Senate.
Who Gets Managed, Who Gets Sold
Bibi Valdez watched the bus arrive and said many Hispanics had changed their political leanings. “A lot of people, for some reason, especially the Hispanics, changed to Republican,” she said. “I just don’t see what the logic was.” That’s the terrain here: border communities turned into a political laboratory, with voters treated like a problem to be solved by whichever party can package the better story.
Talarico, a former middle school teacher and state lawmaker, is seeking to become the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas since 1994. He made the border push this month during a trip that included Eagle Pass, one of the places where national campaigns come to harvest outrage, fear and loyalty.
The border counties he visited became national political curiosities after the 2024 election. Once consistently Democratic, most voted for Republican President Donald Trump, some by a lot, as Hispanic voters shifted to the right nationally. Residents and elected leaders along the border point to two reasons: the rise in border crossings and everyday prices. Border crossings dropped dramatically since 2024, while the cost of living remains high.
What People Actually Live With
In communities along the Rio Grande, which defines the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, the ebb and flow of migrants is not abstract. People there still recall hundreds huddled in reflective emergency blankets under a bridge and the hit to local businesses and town coffers. Some said little aid came from President Joe Biden’s administration. Hector Flores, 72, said, “It was a nightmare because of him. Now, you don’t see no immigrants,” while sitting with two friends at a McDonald’s in Maverick County, about an hour south of Memo’s Restaurant.
Maverick County had one of the sharpest swings toward Trump of any county in the country in 2024, moving from backing Biden by 10 percentage points in 2020 to supporting Trump by 19. The three men at the McDonald’s were not closely following the Senate race, but they were talking about the same issues Talarico and Paxton have been discussing, including high costs, ICE and social issues. Eduardo “Lalo” Riojas, 73, said, “You go down to HEB to buy merchandise, groceries,” before Flores supplied the word: “Expensive.” Riojas, who supports Talarico, added, “Mr. Trump is crazy.”
Flores, who works with orphanages across the border in Mexico, said high prices were not making him question his Republican vote, and he said, “I love ICE.” Mike Garcia, 76, who said he voted for Trump three times in a row, said, “The ones they’re killing, some of them, been here in the United States for years and years and got children.” He said Paxton, who has been impeached, then acquitted, and faced allegations of corruption and extramarital affairs, has a “horrible reputation.” Garcia also said he was bothered by comments Talarico has made about God’s gender, a statement Paxton has used to attack his opponent as he appeals to Texas voters’ conservative values. Garcia said he still did not know which candidate he would support in November.
At Memo’s Restaurant, Talarico told the crowd, “So many politicians show up at the border to demonize and weaponize. We are doing the opposite. We are showing the beauty of our border communities.” He said little about the border itself during the stop and instead focused on the economy, which he says is rigged to help “mega donors.” He called Paxton a “puppet politician” for the wealthy and said, “We can’t get ahead no matter how hard we work, no matter how much we save, because the system is rigged against us.”
The Election Machine Keeps Grinding
Talarico is not the first Democratic Senate candidate in recent years to draw crowds and give the party hope in Texas. Beto O’Rourke made a similar run in 2018 and failed. Republicans remain confident about Texas, but Democrats see some reason for optimism. While Trump gained with Hispanic voters in 2024, AP-NORC polling shows opinions of the president have fallen among Hispanics overall since he took office. Only 29% of Hispanic adults nationally approved of his performance as president in a June AP-NORC poll, down from 41% at the start of his second term.
Paxton has leaned on immigration enforcement, including during his own border stop in the Rio Grande Valley. In McAllen, he spoke in a circle of supporters, promoted the lawsuits he filed against the Biden administration over immigration enforcement and cited his endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council. He also repeated his attacks on Talarico, including the Democrat’s statement that “God is nonbinary,” which Talarico, a seminary student, said on the Texas House floor several years ago while citing Scripture.
Paxton’s campaign director of Hispanic outreach, Alex Alarcon, said Paxton has delivered what Hispanics want, including taking on criminals and companies that gouge consumers. He called Talarico “wimpy” and said, “Hispanics know Ken Paxton is a strong man who shares our values, and we see in James Talarico a wimpy liberal. No one looks at him and thinks, now there’s a guy who’ll protect us from the cartels.”
Talarico did not avoid immigration enforcement entirely during his border tour. At a news conference in Sanderson, Texas, he stood with local sheriffs and pledged investment in surveillance technology to catch illegal crossings and to hire more border patrol agents and immigration judges. After a town hall where voters complained about rent, property taxes and healthcare, he said, “The Biden administration failed border communities like this, and so people were feeling disillusioned. They were open to an alternative and Republicans came down here with some big promises.” He added, “Now, they’re seeing a lot of those promises weren’t kept.”
That’s the whole game on display: campaigns, lawsuits, endorsements, sheriffs, judges, border patrol agents and polling numbers, all circling communities that are left to absorb the costs. The people at the bottom keep living with the prices, the fear, the enforcement and the promises. The people at the top keep calling it strategy.