Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says his Senate race against Democrat James Talarico carries stakes far beyond the Lone Star State, warning that a Republican loss in Texas would effectively end the party's Senate majority.
Paxton, who won a bruising Republican primary runoff with a late endorsement from President Donald Trump, laid out his case in a mid-August interview on Breitbart News Saturday. He described a campaign still climbing out of a deep fundraising hole, a Democratic opponent spending millions on television ads funded largely by out-of-state donors, and a Republican electorate he believes is only now waking up to the danger.
"If we lose Texas, the Senate's gone. We're not going to hold the Senate," Paxton told Breitbart News Political Editor Bradley Jaye. The warning landed against a backdrop of polling that shows a race far tighter than Texas Republicans are accustomed to seeing.
Paxton's central problem is money, and time. He emerged from a three-month runoff against four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn with what he described as an empty war chest. "I started June 1 with basically $0," Paxton said. Meanwhile, Talarico avoided a contested primary and spent those same months raising cash.
Paxton pegged Talarico's haul at $30 million, a figure broadly confirmed by federal filings. Just The News reported that Talarico raised more than $30 million in the second quarter of 2026 alone, the largest second-quarter total ever recorded by a U.S. Senate candidate, while Paxton brought in $9 million over the same period.
By early to mid-July, Paxton said, Talarico had begun spending roughly $3 million a week on television advertising. Much of Talarico's money, Paxton argued, came from California and New York, not from Texas voters.
The fundraising imbalance is not unique to Texas. Democratic Senate candidates across the 2026 map have flooded their races with cash, forcing Republican committees to stretch resources thin in states the party once took for granted.
Paxton said he expects help from national Republican leadership. "I'm waiting, obviously, on some financial assistance, which I think is coming," he said, adding that he has had "great conversations" with Senate leaders who understand the stakes of the seat. But he offered no dollar figures or firm commitments.
Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1988. But multiple polls now show Talarico within striking distance or narrowly ahead. A Fox News poll put Talarico at 51 percent to Paxton's 48 percent. A Texas Southern University survey cited by the Washington Examiner showed Talarico leading 47 to 45, within the margin of error.
Breitbart News analyzed polling on August 4 and concluded that Talarico had not yet reached a winning margin, noting that uncommitted voters in the surveys were the type who traditionally vote Republican. Paxton seized on that analysis as evidence that his voters simply have not yet locked in, not that they have abandoned him.
"I've never seen more excitement at things that I've been at," Paxton said, describing rallies he held in the two weeks before the interview. "I know that our voters are starting to get motivated, and that's the key."
Paxton's campaign adviser Nick Maddux offered a blunter assessment to the Washington Examiner: "The only poll that matters is November 3. Talarico's campaign will end up exactly where every Democrat before him has ended up in Texas, a pipe dream."
Republicans have reason to worry that confidence could be misplaced. Fox News reported that 59 percent of Texas voters expressed concern about Paxton's character, compared with 47 percent who viewed Talarico as "too extreme" for the state. And the narrow margins in the Senate have already created headaches for the party, as seen when the confirmation of Attorney General Todd Blanche squeaked through on a 50-49 vote.
Paxton devoted much of the interview to framing his opponent as a far-left candidate hiding behind centrist advertising. He called Talarico "the most dangerous candidate in Texas that we've ever had" and accused him of "trying to deceive voters right now" by "running from all these radical positions that he voted on."
Paxton characterized Talarico's policy record as aligned with Democratic Socialists and described his agenda using the term "woke leftist agenda." He pointed to votes Talarico cast in the Texas state legislature on issues including girls' sports, gender transitions, a state income tax, and diversity programs in schools, though the interview did not detail the specific bills or votes involved.
Paxton urged voters to look past the television ads. He asked listeners to imagine Talarico as a U.S. senator and then delivered his verdict:
"Now open your eyes up. That's a nightmare."
He called the race "a binary choice" and said that even Republicans who backed other candidates in the primary should rally behind him. "Everybody I vote for doesn't win, but eventually I move on and vote for the Republican," Paxton said. Asked whether he would have supported Cornyn if the incumbent had won the runoff, Paxton did not hesitate: "Absolutely, no doubt about it."
Paxton's primary victory itself was a signal of Trump's influence over the Republican base. The Associated Press reported that Trump's endorsement came late, after early voting had already begun, but proved powerful enough to overcome Cornyn's roughly $109 million advertising campaign. Cornyn became the first Republican senator from Texas to lose the party's nomination since his initial election in 2002.
Senate GOP leaders had backed Cornyn, warning that Paxton would be a weaker general election candidate and would cost the party millions more to defend. That warning now looks prescient, at least on the fundraising front.
Paxton pivoted repeatedly to election security, a subject he has made central to his campaign and his tenure as attorney general. He pushed hard for passage of the SAVE America Act, which he described as a top legislative priority for President Trump.
During the primary runoff, Paxton had gone so far as to say he would consider dropping out of the Senate race if the Senate acted to pass the legislation, a gambit Breitbart's Jaye characterized as an effort to pressure establishment senators into action.
Paxton alleged that in "almost any of the Democratic states," voters do not have to show photo identification, election officials are not required to verify noncitizen status on voter rolls, and mail-in ballots lack adequate security measures. He described California and other Democratic-run states as having "rigged" election systems.
"That has to be fixed, or we are going to lose this country."
He said a "few Republican senators" would not vote for the SAVE America Act and questioned whether those members were "interested in protecting national elections." He did not name them.
"I don't think there's a more popular issue in America than the Save America Act. So why don't we pass it?" Paxton said. "It doesn't make sense to be non-responsive to the people that elected you."
The frustration with Republican senators who break from the party line on key votes has become a recurring theme in conservative politics. Senate leaders scrambled before the August recess to confirm Trump nominees amid tight timelines and narrow margins that left little room for defections.
Paxton's candidacy has drawn explicit support from the White House. Vice President J.D. Vance, responding to a question from Breitbart News White House correspondent Nick Gilbertson, said Trump's endorsement of Paxton should serve as a message to Republican senators and potential challengers about responding to Republican voters and supporting the president's agenda.
Paxton embraced the alignment. "I love President Trump. I love his agenda. I think we should support it," he said. "We don't have these opportunities forever."
He framed the Texas race in national terms, arguing that Democrats target the state because of its electoral weight. "If they take Texas, we're not going to elect another president from the Republican Party," Paxton said. He pointed to Beto O'Rourke's 2018 challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz, which Cruz won by less than two points, as evidence that Democrats view the state as flippable.
"I think it was less than a two-point race for Ted Cruz, and they're hoping for the same thing here," Paxton said. "We just got to make sure that doesn't happen."
Democrats already hold three of the four largest states, by Paxton's count. Losing Texas, and its 40 electoral votes, would reshape the national map for a generation. And in the nearer term, losing the Senate seat would strip Republicans of the slim majority they need to confirm judges, pass legislation, and sustain Trump's second-term agenda.
Competitive Senate races elsewhere on the 2026 map have already produced surprises. In Maine, a sexual assault allegation upended the Democratic Senate candidate's campaign, reshuffling expectations in a race both parties had been watching closely.
Paxton enters mid-August with 18 endorsements from Texas Republican members of Congress, a Trump endorsement, and growing grassroots energy by his own account. What he does not yet have is the money to match Talarico's television blitz, or a guarantee that national Republican dollars will arrive in time.
"All this other stuff that we're for isn't going to matter if we can't protect our election and have the opportunity to have a majority."
If Paxton is right that Texas is the firewall, Republican leaders in Washington have a straightforward question to answer: are they willing to spend what it takes to hold it, or will they learn the cost of losing it?