Texas is the kind of state Republicans win by habit. This year they are spending $166 million on television advertisements to do it, and even their own strategists think the money is being thrown away.
A CNN analysis of TV advertising, published Monday, lays out the scale of the effort to save Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, in his Senate race against the Democrat James Talarico. From the start of September through Election Day, Republican-aligned groups plan to spend $166 million for Paxton. That is more than they are set to spend in Michigan and Maine combined ($83 million and $61 million), and more than in every other Senate battleground except Ohio, where Senator Jon Husted is fighting off former Senator Sherrod Brown. Add the tens of millions GOP groups spent trying to stop Paxton winning the primary, and the total Republican bill in Texas should exceed $300 million. Texas, per rews’s map of the cycle, was already one of the rare tossups.
The panic has a cause, and it is arithmetic. A president with a 33% approval rating in CNN’s poll this month sits at the top of the ticket, and the Republicans face what the network calls historic midterm headwinds. They chose Paxton over the incumbent senator, John Cornyn, and now they are paying for the choice, dollar by dollar and spot by spot.
Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who backed Cornyn, was not coy about it.
“I think we are looking at the numbers going down. The top of the ticket is not helpful for down-ballot candidates. Now we have a nominee that could — potentially — we could lose the seat over.”
Karl Rove was blunter. Asked at the Texas Tribune Festival on Saturday whether the Texas outlay was a good use of the Senate Leadership Fund’s money, the veteran strategist said: “No, but they’re going to have to do it, and that’s just the start. That’s enough through the end of September. If John Cornyn were the nominee, this race would be over.”
Most of the money comes through Texas PAC, a group affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, the leading Republican super PAC in Senate races. Its executive director, Alex Latcham, told CNN the spending “affirms our commitment to maintaining the Republican majority and defeating Far-Left liberals like James Talarico,” and an official said Texas is a “dedicated” effort costing other states nothing. Paxton’s campaign did not reply to requests for comment.
Where does $166 million go? To Judge Judy, for a start. One pro-Paxton commercial ran 258 times on that courtroom programme in September alone, the CNN analysis found, and Texas PAC spent about $600,000 on more than 750 airings there. College football did better still: the top Paxton ad played 413 times during games in September, over $2 million in more than 1,300 spots. Morning news on the three big networks came next, with “Jeopardy” and “Family Feud” behind them.
The ads do two jobs. The first is to attack Talarico: a MAGA Inc. spot says that “when it comes to taxes, Ken Paxton’s the better choice,” and Texas PAC recycles a 2024 Trump campaign slogan, calling Talarico “for they/them, not you.” The second is to refurbish Paxton himself, and that is the harder job. His fellow Texas Republicans impeached him on corruption allegations in 2023 — it failed — and GOP groups used that record against him in the primary. One new spot praises his anti-trafficking work: “Prosecutor, dad, attorney general.”
Five weeks out, the two men remain neck-and-neck in public polls. Two Democratic operatives told CNN their internal numbers have not moved much since the spending wave began. There is a reason. Super PACs pay far more for airtime than campaigns do — one operative called it an “absolutely punishing premium,” sometimes five times the price. Over the last week in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, AdImpact data show Texas PAC outspent Talarico’s campaign almost four to one on local broadcast television and got less than twice the audience for it. Republican groups expect nothing so cheap elsewhere.
Democrats are firing back, though not yet with money to match. The Senate Majority PAC announced Tuesday it would start spending in Texas through Election Day, beginning with an anti-Paxton ad on streaming and digital platforms; it would not say how much. A spot calling Paxton “the most corrupt politician in Texas” ran 182 times during “Judge Judy” in September. Talarico’s own ad, backed by more than $4 million of airtime this month, answers the barrage directly: “billionaires are spending millions attacking me,” he says, because of his stands against corporate PAC money, congressional stock trading and gerrymandering. In another he says, “my faith teaches me to serve my neighbors.” Republican-aligned groups are currently set to outspend the Democrats more than five to one: $166 million to $32 million.
The old record for airtime in a Texas Senate race was $55 million, set in 2018 when Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke, according to AdImpact. That mark has already been left far behind. Nobody yet knows what it will have bought.