Closing Day in Texas: Abbott's Last Stop Is a San Antonio Burger Joint, the Democrats Packed a 3,200-Capacity Hall, and Paxton's Alamo Stand Is Canceled
The final day of the most expensive Senate race in American history did not look like a stadium tour. It looked like small rooms, full rooms and one famous room that will now stand empty on Election Night.
Gov. Greg Abbott made his final San Antonio campaign stop on Monday afternoon at Big'z Burger Joint on North Loop 1604 West — a crowd the San Antonio Current described as what appeared to be a few dozen people, at one of a series of intimate establishments on the governor's statewide "Let's Roll" tour, which took him last Wednesday to another small crowd at Texas Pride BBQ in Adkins. University of Texas at San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor told the Current the small rooms say less about Abbott's ability to draw a crowd than about his campaign's eagerness for control of the setting. The contrast the same city offered a day earlier was not small at all: on Sunday, Democratic nominees Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico packed The Espee in San Antonio, a room with a capacity of nearly 3,200.
And one closing scene quietly disappeared. Over the weekend, the Texas Tribune reported, Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton canceled his last stand at the Alamo for his Come and Take It Tour, which had been scheduled for Election Night. The cancellations and the small rooms sit on top of numbers that explain the nerves: a Texas Southern University survey puts Abbott at 50 percent to Hinojosa's 47 in the governor's race — even as the final New York Times/Siena poll put Hinojosa one point ahead, 48 to 47 — and the same TSU survey scores the Senate race Talarico 49, Paxton 47, with Libertarian Ted Brown on 3. On Kalshi's market, Abbott's price narrowed to 62 percent against Hinojosa's 38, and Talarico's stood at 74.
The money underneath it remains the record it was. Talarico told supporters in San Antonio that more than $300 million had already been spent by outside groups trying to defeat him, calling the contest the most expensive Senate race in American history; the Associated Press's accounting of total advertising expenditure stands at just under $340 million. Both sides closed with the same sentence, because in a state polling this close it is the only honest one: turnout will decide it. Texas polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m., and anyone in line at 7 votes.
