We’re in the final stretch of one of the most fascinating political races of the year. On one side, Democrats want to make history and win back a Senate seat with James Talarico leading the ticket. On the other, Ken Paxton is trying to hand Republicans (and Donald Trump’s presidency), a crucial win. Trump campaigned in Corpus Christi and Lubbock for Paxton this week, going after his rival, while an AI-generated ad from Paxton’s own campaign keeps drawing scrutiny from fact-checkers.
All of it plays out against a spending war that has already topped $400 million, with Elon Musk among the biggest donors on either side. The finish line is close, but it’s worth walking through where things stand first.
Trump says Talarico “wants to get rid of the guns,” oil and meat at Corpus Christi and Lubbock rallies
Trump’s Tuesday swing was his fourth Texas trip in under two months, and he leaned on arguments he’s made before: that Talarico opposes gun rights, wants to shut down the oil and gas industry, and has pushed a vegan lifestyle on the trail.
Talarico has become the central target of those attacks, picking up the nickname “Talafreako” along the way. At an earlier San Antonio rally, Trump claimed Talarico “loves meat” only to “throw up all over the place” afterward, and warned Texas would never be forgiven if it let him win. He’s repeated versions of those lines, plus the oil-and-gas claim, at nearly every stop since.
As Nate Silver has pointed out, Trump seems to be turning this election into a referendum on himself, at times asking voters to picture him as if he were the one on the ballot.
What Talarico has said on guns and energy: a record check
Much of that attack traces back to resurfaced video of Talarico comparing Texas oil and gas to “being the leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s” and calling capitalism an “oppressive system.” He’s since leaned into supporting the industry, citing family members who worked in it and promising to “fight for the good-paying oil and gas jobs that power our economy.”
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Paxton’s AI-generated “King James” ad: what’s real and what’s fabricated
Paxton’s campaign released its “King James” ad on Sept. 8, showing an AI version of Talarico reading from a fictional “King James Talarico Bible.” FactCheck.org found it blends real Talarico remarks, including a 2021 comment about seeing himself as “a Christian who hates Christianity”, with statements stripped of their context and lines he never said.
A notice that the video uses AI appears in small print about 20 seconds into the 30-second spot. A separate, 85-second ad from the National Republican Senatorial Committee shows an AI Talarico reading his own old tweets while adding invented commentary, with an “AI generated” label that fades in and out. Data centers, a key piece of the AI buildout, have become another flashpoint in this year’s midterms.
Texas deepfake law: what it says about political ads in the final 30 days
Texas was the first state to pass a law against campaign deepfakes. Senate Bill 751, in effect since 2019, makes it a crime to create or spread a deceptive video meant to injure a candidate or sway an election when it’s published within 30 days of voting, punishable as a misdemeanor carrying up to a $4,000 fine.
Whether either Talarico ad crosses that line is a question for an election-law attorney. One thing seems close to certain: with the election just days away, voters likely won’t get that answer before they decide.
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Republicans have spent more than $200 million backing Paxton as Talarico leads in direct fundraising
Outside Republican groups, led by the Senate Leadership Fund’s Texas PAC, pushed general-election ad spending past $200 million in support of Paxton, according to AdImpact, which tracked nearly $259 million in general-election ad spending through the end of September, already above the $202 million spent on the 2024 Cruz-Allred race. Counting the primaries, the two sides have put more than $432 million into the race overall.
Talarico, meanwhile, keeps outraising his opponent directly: his campaign brought in $64 million in the third quarter alone, more than triple Paxton’s $18 million over the same months. One of Paxton’s biggest donors has been Elon Musk, who, beyond giving money, has posted on X attacking Talarico directly.
Talarico responds: “putting words in my mouth”
Talarico’s campaign has been blunt about the ads. Spokesperson JT Ennis said Paxton and “his billionaire backers in DC know they can’t rely on facts to win this race, so their only answer is to literally put words in James’ mouth with AI deepfake videos to try and fool Texans.” Talarico told CBS News the tactic is “completely consistent with a liar like Ken Paxton,” saying Republicans “are using AI in order to mislead the people of this state.”
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Do the attacks move the race? Where Texas stands one week out
Public polling shows a genuinely close race heading into the final week, with Talarico holding small leads in most recent surveys. Prediction markets see it less competitively: Kalshi has Talarico’s chances in the mid-60s this week, while Polymarket puts him closer to 70%. Whether that gap between the polls and the markets narrows may depend on which closing message, Trump’s warnings or Paxton’s ad campaign, lands harder with the Texans who haven’t voted yet.
Add a strained, inflation-hit economy and the war in Iran to the mix, and the real question may be how much weight voters give to AI, data centers and the millions poured into each campaign when they finally decide.
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