President Donald Trump won the Lone Star State by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024, but a recent compilation of polls by Real Clear Polling shows far-left Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico is now leading Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton by almost one point.
According to a Fox News poll, the Democrat is up by six points among both extremely motivated and extremely interested voters.
Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, is unpleasantly surprised by those figures.
"Unless Texas exchanged with New York recently, I don't see how Texans could even be passively, even a little, thinking about voting for this guy," he recently told American Family Radio. "They would be represented in the Senate by one of the most left-wing senators in the entire United States Senate."
Despite the president’s endorsement in the GOP primary against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, Paxton has yet to fully unify the GOP. One of Bauer's contacts in Texas told him Paxton's personal problems are affecting his campaign.
"Suburban Republican women don't like the Republican candidate because he's had some missteps in his personal life, and they will not vote for him," Baur relayed.
He said Republicans need to do everything they can to wake those women up.
"Do they realize, in their disdain for the Republican guy's personal life, they would turn the country over to the Left, with all the implications of that?" he warned.
Talarico is running a high-profile campaign that capitalizes on his opponent's legal scandals and massive grassroots fundraising.
He has focused on a populist, "people-powered" message rather than relying strictly on traditional party lines, invested heavily in diverse coalitions, including a major $25 million push to actively compete for and win over black voters across Texas, and emphasized retail politics, town halls, and aggressive debate challenges to appeal to independents and working-class voters.
Given the chance, he would pursue comprehensive immigration reform.
As senator, he would provide Democrats a crucial vote in the U.S. Senate, which would obstruct conservative federal judicial appointments and national Republican policy agendas.
He would also reinforce progressive and moderate Democratic priorities in Congress, ending a 30-year streak of conservative Texas representation in the Senate and signaling a monumental political shift in the largest red state in the country.
