Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in Texas’s Senate race, NBC News and Decision Desk HQ projected. The 37-year-old is the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Texas since 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen won his last term, six months before Talarico was born. He is also the first Democrat to win any statewide office there since 1994.
The money
Elon Musk spent more than $200 million to help elect Paxton, according to a New York Times analysis cited in Fortune’s tally of his political giving. Most of it went through the Senate GOP’s main super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund. Musk gave SLF $75 million on Sept. 9 and $83 million on Sept. 23, and each time, SLF moved nearly the same amount into a new entity called Texas PAC the next day, the Texas Tribune reported. His trust also gave $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, the main outside group backing Paxton.
The money came after Talarico had outspent Paxton on the airwaves for months. By the end of September, outside groups led by SLF had spent more than $217 million on ads in the race. Trump’s main super PAC added $10 million, its first major outlay of the midterms.
Talarico relied mostly on his own campaign. By early September he had raised $72 million to Paxton’s $16.8 million, and he finished the cycle as the most prolific fundraiser in the country. He made Musk’s spending part of his message. “This Senate seat doesn’t belong to Elon Musk,” he said on the trail.
Trump’s choice, Cornyn’s warning
Paxton reached the general election by beating Sen. John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent, in the May runoff. He won by nearly 28 points after Trump endorsed him. Cornyn had warned that a Paxton nomination could cost Republicans $150 million to $200 million to hold the seat, the Texas Tribune reported. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House on bribery and corruption allegations in 2023 and acquitted by the state Senate. After losing the runoff, Cornyn called Paxton “lazy” and said he would help Republicans elsewhere instead of raising money for him. Paxton never agreed to debate Talarico, making this the first Texas Senate race since 2000 without a debate between the major-party nominees.
Talarico, a state legislator and Presbyterian seminarian, ran on affordability and corruption. He argued that Paxton had served wealthy donors while Texans struggled with the cost of groceries, housing and health care. The race also turned on masculinity and anti-transgender attacks, the 19th reported.
It was the second time Tuesday night that a Republican whose path to the nomination ran through Trump lost a seat his party had held for decades. Earlier, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.
Where he won
Texans voted early in record numbers. Early voting reached 40.5% of registered voters, the highest midterm early-turnout rate on record in modern Texas. Talarico built his lead in the suburbs. In partial returns, he was winning Tarrant and Collin counties, which Trump carried by 5 and 11 points in 2024. Trump won Texas by 13.7 points two years ago.
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