Voters Make A Texas-Sized Gamble On Ken Paxton

Republican voters made a Texas-sized gamble last night in the Lone Star state, betting that even with the baggage he carries into a general election, Trump loyalist Attorney General Ken Paxton will be able to handle the threat from a strongly backed Democratic effort behind State Rep. James Talarico. We’ve heard the left’s dreams of turning Texas blue for decades, but even with his defects as a candidate and fundraiser, Paxton still enters the final contest as the favored candidate. The larger question is whether that gamble will cost Texans and Republicans in other races around the country.

As successful as he’s been politically — with a knack for surviving challenges, lawsuits, and even an impeachment — Paxton has never been an effective individual fundraiser. The biggest gap between him and incumbent Senator John Cornyn isn’t ideology or even loyalty to the president — it’s their capability to raise money in a state marketplace that demands it.

Cornyn’s campaign doomed his effort to hold on this cycle by squandering that money on television ads, poor staffing choices, and adopting a general Washington insider tone in a cycle of voter frustration — but they had plenty of money to dump into the effort. National Republicans are pissed off about the whole situation, understanding that they may now have to push money into a contest that wouldn’t have needed it if voters had decided differently. If their reluctance to spend big on yet another contest in a critical cycle holds and Paxton’s past is prologue, he’ll have to get a leg up from Texas donors called upon to grin and bear it about a candidate they’ve been reluctant to fund.

The concern among Texas Republican politicos is less about Talarico’s potential for victory, given his lengthy history of far-Left comments about everything under the sun, and more about the newly drawn redistricted map potentially netting fewer GOP victories than hoped for, given Paxton’s electoral appeal. While Cornyn and fellow Senator Ted Cruz have consistently held the line among Hispanic voters (in his Senate race, Cruz won Hispanic voters by 6 points over Colin Allred two years ago), Paxton has lagged. The latest polling has Talarico winning Hispanics in the state by almost 30 points, and such turnout from those voters in November could be a major drag on Republican congressional candidates down-ticket.

The fear in Washington is that Texas will now draw resources necessary to hold seats in Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio — potentially detracting from the strong GOP hopes of taking Senate seats in Michigan and Georgia. If Senate Majority Leader John Thune and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott decide to keep their focus on those five contests, Texas may be left on its own to get Paxton across the finish line.

The unpredictable element here is how much the national media will play in this contest. In the past, we’ve seen the national glow-ups for candidates like Beto O’Rourke totally backfire, turning a fairly middle-of-the-road El Paso Democrat into a progressive wet dream, the skateboard-riding bass player that made Austin swoon but who ultimately had no path to victory statewide. Will Talarico get the same treatment? He already is, though every interview he does betrays that his version of non-binary six gender abortion-loving Christianity is anathema in the Valley.

Texas state Rep. and Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico responded to GOP attacks over his past remark that God is “non-binary,” telling @edokeefe that some of his previous comments “missed the mark.”

“There are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret,”… pic.twitter.com/VRsEXHo6ir

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 27, 2026

Paxton is still the odds-on favorite. To a certain extent, the lengthy catalog of his failings is largely known to voters, while Talarico is still a fresh face who hasn’t confronted the scrutiny of running statewide in an old-school Texas knife fight. For Republicans who care about holding the Senate against a blue wave, they have hope that Paxton’s sins are already baked in, and that Talarico’s approach to running continues to look more like prep for his ideal next job — co-hosting a religion podcast for The New York Times.