For months, Ken Paxton’s US Senate campaign was in a very rare place for a Republican running statewide in Texas: trailing. In poll after poll. It had gotten so worrisome, Paxton took to Fox News to essentially beg donors for cash.
Now, finally, he can breathe somewhat easier. The money has arrived—all at once, and from some of the most powerful players in the party.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, funneled nearly $54 million into Paxton’s race this month through a newly created Texas-based affiliate, Texas PAC, which has purchased at least $51.3 million in airtime to boost him, according to the tracking service AdImpact. President Trump’s own super PAC, MAGA Inc., also threw $10 million into the race last week—its first general-election spending anywhere in the country this cycle.
That new money has flipped the advertising math for the race’s final stretch: Republican-aligned spending now holds a 5-to-1 advantage over Talarico and his allies in ads booked from Sept. 1 through Election Day, according to AdImpact. That comparison isn’t perfectly apples-to-apples—federal law entitles candidates’ own campaigns to discounted “lowest unit charge” ad pricing that outside PACs don’t get, so Talarico’s dollars likely stretch further in actual airtime than the raw spending gap suggests. Still, the shift marks a reversal from the summer, when Talarico’s campaign had the airwaves largely to itself over the summer while Paxton’s campaign spent no more than $20,000 in ads in any single week.
The scale of the intervention is a stark admission of how much trouble Paxton has been in. According to the latest FEC reports, Talarico’s campaign had $21.5 million in the bank at the end of June compared to just $1.8 million for Paxton. The wave of GOP spending comes as a recent AARP Texas poll again showed Paxton trailing Talarico, part of a string of surveys pointing the same direction.
It also follows months of national Republicans like Thune publicly urging Trump’s political network to spend big on behalf of the scandal-plagued candidate the president helped push to victory in the GOP primary.
Trump made the stakes explicit at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention in Dallas last week, telling delegates he’ll keep returning to Texas on Paxton’s behalf: “We have to elect Ken Paxton. We have to. We have to elect him. And if I have to, I’ll come back twice or three times. You’ll say, ‘Get this guy out of here. Get him out.’”
Senate Leadership Fund Executive Director Alex Latcham framed the spending as a show of party unity: “The Republican Party is united to elect Ken Paxton and keep Texas red in November. Senate Leadership Fund’s investment through Texas PAC affirms our commitment to maintaining the Republican majority and defeating Far-Left liberals like James Talarico.”
The sudden cash marks a reversal for a candidate the party establishment once opposed. Most Republicans who backed incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the primary have now rallied behind Paxton amid signs he could become the first Republican to lose a Texas Senate race in nearly four decades. Elon Musk’s America PAC has joined the effort too, putting $2.6 million behind Paxton so far—he’s reportedly authorized his America PAC to spend $100 million across races this election cycle.
Democrats, facing a steep financial disadvantage in Texas’ sprawling and expensive media markets, have so far leaned on out-raising Paxton directly rather than matching Republican super PAC spending; their main Senate super PAC has not yet reserved any airtime in the state, according to AdImpact. Instead, Talarico’s campaign is working to turn Paxton’s controversies into a liability, aided at times by Trump himself.
In a statement, Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis dismissed the new spending as a sign of desperation rather than strength: “Billionaire-backed dark money groups are lying about James because they’re scared of the people-powered movement we’re building to fix this broken, corrupt political system.”
What the new money buys Paxton, most immediately, is a level of television presence he’s lacked for most of the race—one his own campaign, working with a fraction of Talarico’s cash on hand, could not have afforded alone.
