The limestone facade and entrance of the Alamo chapel in San Antonio — The Alamo in San Antonio, where Ken Paxton planned his final rally before Election Day. File photo. (Photo: gillfoto / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

November 1, 2026 · 3 min read

Paxton Heads to the Alamo and Talarico to Austin as the Costliest Senate Race in U.S. History Nears Its End

Polls show a near tie in the Texas U.S. Senate race. Here is how Ken Paxton and James Talarico are closing, what each side has said about the other, and the money behind it.

The last time a Democrat won a statewide race in Texas, James Talarico was in kindergarten. On Tuesday, the 37-year-old Austin state representative will find out whether he can end that streak against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton of McKinney.

Both men are closing out what has become the most expensive U.S. Senate race in the country's history, according to The Texas Tribune. Paxton announced a final rally before Election Day at the Alamo. Talarico's tour was set to end with a concert in Austin.

Where the race stands

Polls show a race that could go either way. A Texas Southern University survey released Oct. 29 found Talarico at 49% and Paxton at 47%, ABC13 Houston reported. Libertarian Ted Brown is also on the ballot.

Republicans have sounded the alarm. "Texas is excruciatingly close," U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said on his podcast Friday. "We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That's how close these numbers are."

At a Weatherford rally headlined by Vice President JD Vance on Thursday, Comptroller Don Huffines told supporters, "You need to be scared, and you need to be concerned — the early vote is not in our favor."

President Donald Trump and Vance have headlined six campaign events in Texas since Labor Day, the Tribune reported.

The money

Combined advertising since the primaries has reached $408 million, according to the Tribune. National Republican groups, funded almost entirely by Elon Musk, have put more than $272 million into the race. Beginning in early September, an outside group affiliated with Senate GOP leadership aired $182 million in ads attacking Talarico.

Talarico's own campaign has raised more than six and a half times what Paxton's has, mostly from small-dollar donors and mostly from outside Texas, while most of Paxton's contributors are in the state, ABC13 reported from campaign finance reports.

Paxton's closing message

On his "Come and Take It" bus tour, Paxton invoked the Alamo and cast Texas as a conservative state under siege. He has called Talarico "the most radical Democrat to ever run in Texas history."

"If you vote for a guy like James Talarico versus me, we end up 3,000 miles apart," Paxton said in Lubbock last week.

Republican ads have pressed Talarico on two fronts. One is cultural: clips of his 2021 remarks that "God is nonbinary" and that he is a "Christian who hates Christianity," along with his statements defending transgender rights. Talarico has said those 2021 comments "missed the mark" and were "cringey." The other is economic: ads say he "voted for an income tax," based on his vote against a measure that would have made a state income tax harder to enact. Texas has never had one.

Talarico's closing message

Talarico, an aspiring Presbyterian minister, ended on his "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts" tour, drawing on his Christian faith and Texas figures from Sam Houston to Barbara Jordan. He has told crowds that Musk is "trying to buy Texas."

"This won't happen overnight — but a giant state deserves giant dreams," Talarico said in Lubbock.

His campaign's ads have centered on Paxton's record: his impeachment by the Texas House on bribery and corruption charges, on which the state Senate acquitted him; securities fraud charges that prosecutors dropped after Paxton agreed to pretrial diversion without admitting guilt; and travel the Tribune reports cost taxpayers $3.3 million. "I have a legislative record; Ken Paxton has a criminal record," Talarico has said.

No debate, and a rumor that proved false

Paxton did not accept at least four debate invitations from news stations, making this the first U.S. Senate race in Texas since 2000 without a debate, the Tribune reported.

A few weeks before early voting, the flu kept Talarico, who has Type 1 diabetes, off the trail for nine days. Paxton suggested Talarico was having a mental breakdown, and online influencers spread a claim that he was at a mental health facility in Ohio. Talarico denied it, and the facility confirmed he had never been a patient there, according to the Tribune.

A fair word

Both men speak of faith on the trail. Christians should weigh words, records and character the same way, whichever party is asking for the vote. False rumors about an opponent's health have no place in that weighing, and neither does a vote cast without reading what each man has said and done.

Election Day is Tuesday. Then the voters, not the ads, decide.