Five and a half months ago, a triumphant Ken Paxton took the microphone at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Collin County, his political home base, with major news: He had spoken with President Donald Trump earlier that day, and Trump’s long-awaited endorsement had arrived.
Paxton celebrated with an exuberant crowd of supporters, days ahead of his Trump-fueled shellacking of Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff. It was one of the best days of his over 18-month campaign for U.S. Senate.
On Monday, the final evening of the campaign, Paxton returned to the same restaurant, Matt’s Rancho Martinez, at a much more nerve-wracking moment. Down in the polls and with Texas Republicans’ 32-year unbeaten streak in statewide races hanging in the balance, he urged a mostly full room of supporters, most of whom had already voted, to canvass their contacts.
“Understand what is actually at stake here: Texas has never been this close to slipping away,” Paxton said. “We’ve never been this close to losing everything that we hold dear — our jobs, our livelihoods, our way of life in Texas. If Texas falls, we don’t have another Texas to move to. Every poll shows that this is going to come down to the wire.”
Some 220 miles south, Democrat James Talarico was closing out his campaign at a concert venue in Austin where around 1,800 supporters heralded him as a kind of hometown hero. The Austin state lawmaker’s victory was far from a lock, but for the Democrats cheering him on, Talarico’s last campaign event was a festive affair, if not one laced with anxiety that his bid could prove another heartbreak.
At a rally interspersed with performances by local musicians, Talarico noted that the contest had become the most expensive U.S. Senate race in American history, looked out at a crowd made up of his core supporters and called them his “slingshot” in the David-versus-Goliath battle of his campaign.
“There’s that moment in every game, the last play of the last drive, when you have to leave it all on the field,” Talarico said, his voice hoarse after dozens of campaign stops. “Austin, we are in that moment.”
Monday night brought an end to a season of furious campaigning from the Senate candidates, who made stops from the Panhandle to the border and the Permian Basin to the Gulf on dueling tours themed around the Texas Revolution, for Paxton, and the small-town Texas high school football show “Friday Night Lights,” for Talarico. On the eve of Texas’ most competitive election in years, the candidates closed their final tours in their respective hometowns, both rich with symbolic and electoral resonance.
Paxton had planned to make his last stand at the Alamo, but a last-minute schedule change brought him back to Collin County instead. Still, he urged supporters to conjure up images of the Texas Revolution — when Texian settlers raised a “Come and Take It” flag to the Mexican Army during the Battle of Gonzales — when casting their ballots.
Before getting to his stump speech, Paxton, looser and chattier than usual, reflected on the nostalgia of ending his campaign in Allen, where he recalled holding his first political event when he ran for the Texas House in 2002.
“It all started for me right here,” Paxton said. “So it’s so amazing, after 17 days on the road, we covered thousands of miles, and after 19 months of campaigning overall … that I’m back here in Allen, Texas. I’m really grateful that you all showed up tonight, and I’m so grateful that I get to finish here.”
Paxton needs to carry Collin County, a fast-changing area north of Dallas, or keep it relatively close. Talarico will need epic margins in Travis County, the bluest part of the state, and strong showings in the suburbs around it, including Williamson County, where he flipped a Republican-held state House seat in 2018.
At their final rallies, the two played the hits.
Paxton hewed closely to his stump speech, ticking through a list of Talarico’s past comments and votes that he’s described for months as too radical for Texas. And he repeated jokes about Trump’s penchant for renaming bodies of water and, after describing Talarico’s past comments on transgender children, quipped that Texans should transition him out of office.
He touted his record of suing the Biden administration. And he described the stakes as existential for the nation, returning to a favorite metaphor: Whichever side a drop of rain falls on the Continental Divide determines where it ends up, thousands of miles apart.
Supporters saw the stakes of the race as similarly existential. David Knaus, a rally attendee from Plano, equated the stakes of the election to those of World War II.
“We were fighting to save the world,” Knaus said. “And we needed generals like George Patton, people like that, to win that war. I look upon Ken Paxton in this battle to save our state and our culture the same way. … He’s not always orthodox. He’s not always real polished. But they know how to get the job done.”
Surrogates, including state Rep. Mitch Little, a Lewisville Republican who defended Paxton during his impeachment trial; state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood; and multiple pastors described the election in similarly stark terms, as a history-altering battle to defend Texas values.
Hall offered supporters a boiled-down summary of the case they should make.
“I’m going to give you three good reasons why you’ve got to do everything you can in the time we have left to get the votes out so we can send Ken Paxton to Washington and turn our Senate around up there,” Hall said. “The first reason is James Talarico. The second reason: James Talarico. And the third reason? Freako Talarico!”
And though the primary is long over, its throughlines remained evident. Paxton, Little said, was not supposed to have made it this far, given that he “fought down the Bush cartel to become the greatest attorney general in the history of the state” — a line that got big cheers.
Talarico, too, once more delivered the message he’s taken around the state over the past 14 months of his campaign. He described an economic system rigged for the ultrawealthy as the product of a broken political system corrupted by billionaire and corporate influence. He called Paxton the “embodiment” of that corruption and the election a choice between “a senator who serves you, or who serves megadonors.” And he cast his campaign as a movement of “people power” standing up to big money — namely, Elon Musk and the more than $200 million he spent on the race in support of Paxton.
“This is the last play of the last drive,” Talarico said. “It’s the powers that be versus the powers that ought to be, and it’s time for us to start flipping over some tables.”
Burned by close statewide losses before, his Democratic supporters at the rally repeatedly used the phrase “cautiously optimistic” to describe their state of mind heading into Election Day.
David Marcham, 67, echoed Talarico’s diagnosis of the state of today’s politics, arguing the country had a “real, huge integrity problem.” He called the election “one of those moments for not just Texas, but America to stand up and say we’re ready for another path.”
A Talarico victory will hinge in part on whether he can persuade enough Republican voters to cross over and cast their ballot for him, or otherwise leave the Senate race blank.
Nate Hill, a two-time Trump voter, was precisely the kind of Texan Talarico had been looking to win over since the primary. Wearing a black cowboy hat while waiting in line for a beer, Hill, 26, said Talarico was the first Democrat he’d ever voted for. He said he was disappointed that Trump had embroiled the country in a new war in the Middle East, and found Paxton “super corrupt.”
What about the ads attacking Talarico for his past statements on gender and other culture war issues? “They’re really pissing me off,” Hill, a native of Ponder, said. “They’re just lying to people.”
In Allen, Paxton and others emphasized the importance of Election Day turnout. Nearly equal numbers of voters with Democratic and Republican primary histories voted early, a trend that has some GOP operatives sweating given Republicans usually go into Election Day with hundreds of thousands more of their primary voters banked. The attorney general said there were over 1 million Republicans who had yet to cast their ballots — and that he felt confident he would win if all of his rally attendees encouraged the Republicans in their circles to head to the polls.
Supporters at the Paxton rally projected a mix of confidence and nervousness.
Michael Kern, of Plano, had spent the day door-knocking. Of the 500 houses he hit today, they were split “about half and half,” Kern said. He attributed the competitiveness of the race to the economy. Business is good, he said, and he believes concerns about the economy are an overreaction — but he hears grumblings about high costs.
“There are a lot of liberal-minded folks that would like to see a change,” Kern said. “I’m not one of them. But, I’m glad they’re going to the polls. Let’s see what happens. I don’t want my state to change, but it could.”
Others believed Paxton’s victory was assured.
“I feel good,” said Jannese Knaus, of Plano. “Because Trump said he’s going to win in a landslide.”
Talarico, meanwhile, evoked the “Friday Night Lights” state championship game where the Panthers found themselves down at the half to describe the arc he hopes for his own campaign.
“They played the game of their lives in front of a crowd that had given up hope, in front of a crowd that wanted to believe but had forgotten how,” he said. “They won despite everyone telling them it was impossible. They risked it all. They left it all on the field, and they won with clear eyes and full hearts.”
Gabby Birenbaum reported from Allen. Kayla Guo reported from Austin.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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