Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton are taking their Senate fight to Tarrant County on Monday, holding dueling rallies in Fort Worth as Texans cast the first ballots in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country.
Tarrant County has swung back-and-forth over the past decade. Former Representative Beto O'Rourke carried it in his 2018 Senate race with 313,497 votes to 309,189 for Senator Ted Cruz, the last time a Democrat below the top of the ticket won the county.
In presidential elections, former President Joe Biden edged President Donald Trump there in 2020 by less than a quarter of a percentage point, and Trump took it back in 2024, beating former Vice President Kamala Harris 51.9 percent to 46.7 percent. Both campaigns now see the county as pivotal.
Where Are Talarico and Paxton Rallying Today?
Talarico and Paxton are holding competing rallies in Fort Worth on Monday as they crisscross the Lone Star State ahead of Election Day.
Talarico, an Austin state representative, starts the day with a 1 p.m. rally at the University of North Texas in Denton before heading to North Crowley High School in southwest Fort Worth. Doors open at 6 p.m., with the program scheduled for 7 p.m.
His “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts” tour began with a stop in Plano on Sunday. It will continue through East Texas, Houston, the Gulf Coast, San Antonio, South Texas, El Paso and Lubbock before returning to Dallas on October 29. Talarico plans to hold his final rally in Austin on November 2.
Paxton, the state's attorney general, will also rally in Fort Worth at 7 p.m., joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His campaign has not publicly announced the venue.
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The Republican will begin the day in Allen, in Collin County, after stops in Rockwall and Killeen on Saturday and San Antonio on Sunday. GOP Governor Greg Abbott is also scheduled to appear in Fort Worth on Monday.
The candidates have offered contrasting messages on the trail. Paxton's “Come and Take It” tour frames him as a defender of Texas values, including Christianity and the oil and gas industry. At a Saturday rally in Rockwall, he accused Talarico of threatening those values and urged supporters to vote early.
Talarico has focused on political divisions and Paxton's legal and ethical controversies. At a CNN town hall last Wednesday, he said, “We cannot afford Ken Paxton's corruption.”
Talarico Has a Broad Donor Edge in Tarrant County as Paxton Allies Write Big Checks
Talarico has built a far wider fundraising base than Paxton in Tarrant County, according to a Newsweek analysis of third-quarter filings covering July 1 to September 30. ZIP codes were assigned to the county where most of their area falls, so county totals are approximate.
Talarico's campaign committee took in $730,047 in itemized individual contributions from about 2,560 Tarrant County donors. Paxton's campaign raised $304,148 from about 570. The Democrat outraised the Republican in 66 of the county's 74 ZIP codes and had more donors in 69.
Paxton's leads, on the other hand, were small and scattered. The biggest came in Fort Worth's 76114 ZIP code, where six Paxton donors gave $10,059, compared with $3,839 from 21 Talarico donors. Paxton also led narrowly in Euless 76040.
Even the Republican-leaning suburbs inside Tarrant broke Talarico's way. Colleyville sent his campaign about $52,700 from 145 donors; Paxton got $27,600 from 45. In Keller, 154 donors gave Talarico $37,700, more than double Paxton's $17,100 from 46.
Republican-leaning Suburbs Inside Tarrant
Grapevine ran $30,200 from 131 donors for Talarico and $19,500 from 26 for Paxton. Mansfield was lopsided, at $21,900 from 75 donors against $4,100 from 12.
Southlake was the closest on money, $33,400 for Talarico to $26,300 for Paxton, though Talarico had nearly three times as many donors there, 111 to 42. In Arlington, the county's largest city after Fort Worth, Talarico raised $121,000 from 427 donors and Paxton $30,700 from 75.
Paxton's joint fundraising committee scrambles that math. Paxton Victory collected about $703,000 from just seven Tarrant County donors, most of them in west Fort Worth. Seven checkbooks, in other words, roughly matched what some 2,560 people in the county gave Talarico's campaign.
The two largest checks came from Seth Crawford, who gave $274,300, of which the committee later refunded $8,500, and Gary Blake, who gave $200,000. Paxton Victory also funds the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSS) and a leadership PAC, so not all of that money goes to Paxton's campaign.
Talarico has far more people giving in Tarrant. Paxton has a handful of wealthy allies writing checks big enough to close much of the distance.
James Talarico Vs. Ken Paxton: What Latest Polls Show
The newest survey landed on the eve of early voting. A University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll of 2,000 likely voters, conducted October 10 to 14 and released Sunday night, found Talarico ahead 48 percent to 46 percent, with a margin of error of 2.19 percentage points. Libertarian Ted Brown drew 3 percent, and 3 percent were unsure.
Republican defections account for a good part of the margin. In that poll, 98 percent of likely Democratic voters backed Talarico, while 88 percent of likely Republican voters backed Paxton, and 6 percent of Republicans said they would vote for the Democrat. Independents favored Talarico 60 percent to 32 percent.
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute who worked on the survey, told Newsweek that O'Rourke trailed Cruz in nearly every poll at this point in 2018, while Talarico leads in most surveys now, sometimes by only a point or two.
The suburbs are where Jones sees the difference. Paxton is “deadlocked with Talarico in the suburban areas,” he said, a problem for a party that relies on “running up the numbers in the suburban areas to make up for the losses that they always experience in the big urban areas like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.”
Most other October surveys look similar. A CBS News/YouGov poll of 1,458 likely voters, taken October 8 to 16, had Talarico up 51 percent to 49 percent. The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project, which fields its surveys through YouGov, found him ahead 50 percent to 47 percent among 861 likely voters questioned September 25 to October 5.
Marist's poll of 1,196 likely voters, conducted October 8 to 11, put Talarico at 47 percent and Paxton at 45 percent, with 6 percent unsure, though a majority of respondents expected Paxton to win anyway. ActiVote, working with a much smaller sample of 400 likely voters, gave Talarico a 4-point edge, 52 percent to 48 percent.
Paxton led in only one of the six most recent public surveys. InsiderAdvantage had him ahead 49 percent to 48 percent among 1,200 likely voters polled October 13 and 14.
"He was losing, and he's leading," Trump said last week of Paxton, giving the rallies credit for the turn.
When Does Early Voting Begin in Texas?
Early voting began Monday, October 19, and runs through Friday, October 30. Texans can vote at any early voting site in their county of registration, and Election Day is November 3. Voters must show an acceptable photo ID, such as a Texas driver's license or a Texas Election Identification Certificate.
The pool of voters is the largest in state history. Secretary of State Robert Howden announced last week that Texas has 19,041,684 registered voters, up 2.2 percent from the November 2024 general election.
Why the Texas Senate Race Matters in 2026 Midterm Elections
Texas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, making the seat one of the few places where Democrats can play offense as they try to overturn the Republicans' 53-47 majority.
Paxton reached November after a bruising primary. Senator John Cornyn sought reelection but lost the nomination to Paxton in a May runoff, and Trump endorsed Paxton on May 19. During the primary, Cornyn and Senate Majority Leader John Thune warned that a Democrat could beat Paxton if he became the nominee.
The race has become the most expensive contest of the 2026 midterm cycle, and Talarico's latest quarterly haul tripled Paxton's.
The broader ballot is less favorable to Democrats. In the gubernatorial race, Abbott leads Austin Democrat Gina Hinojosa by 3 points, and other statewide Republicans lead by 5 to 7 points. Tarrant County, where Abbott and Paxton campaign on Monday, will test how much ticket-splitting Talarico can count on.
Forecasters see it as a coin flip. The Cook Political Report moved Texas from "Lean Republican" to "Toss Up" in August, and the race has stayed there. In its most recent Senate overview, published October 6, Cook shifted Kansas to "Toss Up" too and wrote that a Senate majority is now squarely within Democrats' reach.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editor for this story: Anthony Murray and Jason Lemon.