Talarico Out-Raised Paxton $64 Million to $18 Million Last Quarter in America's Most Expensive Senate Race
The Democrat's campaign banked more than three times the Republican's haul from July through September — but outside groups backing Ken Paxton have spent more than $200 million the other way, in a race the Texas Tribune calls the most expensive Senate contest in the country.
The money race and the vote race are telling two different stories in Texas. Democrat James Talarico's campaign raised $64 million from July through September, against $18 million for Republican Ken Paxton over the same quarter — and Talarico has raised more than $146 million since launching his campaign, figures reported as the race entered its final weekend.
Paxton's side answers with outside money. Republican outside groups have spent more than $200 million supporting the attorney general, nearly all of it bankrolled by Elon Musk, according to the reporting cited in the piece — spending that offsets the campaign-account gap and has helped make this, in the Texas Tribune's description, the most expensive Senate race in the country. The BBC has put the race's total price at around $500 million.
What the money is buying is a genuinely open seat fight: Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, Democrats need a net gain of four to take the chamber, and Texas — which has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in three decades — is one of the races that could decide it. One data scientist's model, cited in the reporting, put Republican odds of keeping the Senate at 17.1 percent, down from 34.8 percent in September; that is a single analyst's model, not a result, and this station predicts no winner. The result will be built on the 7.55 million Texans who already voted early — 603,255 of them in Dallas County and 541,163 in Tarrant — plus whoever Tuesday's rain brings out.
