Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is opening the week on offense with two new television ads, one in which he says he called out former President Joe Biden "for failing us on the border" and another going after Republican Ken Paxton over his ties to the data center industry.
The spots land days after Talarico came back from a bout of flu that kept him off the campaign trail for more than a week, an absence Paxton and President Donald Trump seized on in recent days. He returned Friday with an unannounced appearance at the Austin City Limits music festival, his first public appearance since September 30.
Taken together, the ads reflect the coalition Talarico needs to become the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994: Hispanic voters along the border who drifted toward Republicans during the Biden years, and rural and suburban voters fed up with data centers and their utility bills. Early voting starts in a week, and most polls have him narrowly ahead.
Newsweek reached out to Talarico's campaign for comment on Monday.
The Two Ads
In the border spot, Talarico stands in front of a Texas flag and speaks directly to the camera.
"I'll always put Texas before any political party," he says. "I called out Joe Biden for failing us on the border. I worked with Republicans to pass the largest property tax cut in Texas history."
He has made the argument since July, when he unveiled a border plan in Terrell County and said Biden "and his administration failed us on our southern border." Republicans have questioned when that criticism began. Fox News Digital reported that his campaign could not point to a break with Biden while Biden was still in office, and Talarico has cited a speech from 2022.
Republican strategist Mike Madrid told Newsweek in April that the centrist pitch was deliberate from the start. "His style and his appeal has been to be more centrist from the beginning," Madrid said. "In Texas, you can't do this with just Democrats. You've got to have Republicans."
In the second ad, Talarico walks toward the camera as he makes the case against Paxton, the state's attorney general.
"Ken Paxton is selling off Texas, our land, our water, our communities. Anything to make a buck," he says. "He gave data centers billions in special tax breaks and they gave him nearly half a million in campaign contributions."
When the campaign posted the ad on X, it added a line of its own: "Data centers bankroll Paxton, they get tax breaks, and you get stuck with the bill." A note underneath said the ad "was made by humans, not AI," a reference to Paxton, whose campaign has aired spots built around an AI-generated Talarico.
The contribution figure tracks with a NOTUS analysis of Federal Election Commission records, which found Paxton's campaign took in at least $448,000 through June from executives and committees tied to companies that build, run or invest in data centers.
James Talarico Vs. Ken Paxton: Latest Polls
Talarico has led most surveys since Paxton clinched the nomination, usually inside the margin of error. The RealClearPolitics average of polls taken from September 18 to October 8 has him at 48.1 percent to Paxton's 45.3 percent.
The newest poll in that average, from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group, was fielded October 6 to 8, largely during Talarico's absence, and found him ahead 47 percent to 44 percent. YouGov and a New York Times/Siena College survey each had him up 6 points in early October, and a late-September Fox News poll put the gap at 2.
"There is no evidence Texas voters are warming to the national Democratic message," Alex Patton, a Republican strategist with Ozean Media, told Newsweek earlier this year. "The data shows that Texas voters are responding to Talarico as a candidate and support for the opposition is softening."
Paxton has polled better on the border. A Texas Pulse poll by the Texas A&M Bush School and ReconMR in late July found him ahead 48 percent to 44 percent on securing the U.S.-Mexico border.
James Talarico Vs. Ken Paxton: Recent Developments in the Texas Race
Talarico disclosed the flu on September 30, calling in by video to a U.S. Hispanic Business Council event in Edinburg he had planned to attend in person. "I guess I've been shaking too many hands on the campaign trail, and so I want to keep everybody safe," he said.
Paxton's campaign responded by demanding "proof of life," setting up a "Tala-Freak-Out Tip Line" and circulating missing person posters, The Texas Tribune reported, while right-wing commentators promoted unverified theories about his absence. After a rally in San Antonio, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Talarico was "MISSING IN ACTION."
Talarico, 37, has Type 1 diabetes, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says raises the risk of serious flu complications.
"Hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but James is still alive and meeting with voters at ACL today," spokesperson JT Ennis posted on X on Friday.
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The Money Game
Talarico has raised more than Paxton in candidate fundraising, bringing in $27 million in the first quarter and $30 million in the second. Paxton's campaign said it raised more than $18 million from July through September, by far its best quarter. Talarico had not released his third-quarter numbers as of Monday.
Outside spending has favored Paxton since September. Texas PAC, a super PAC affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, spent $131 million in 17 days, and Republican super PACs overall have steered more than $150 million toward Paxton, against roughly $4 million from Democratic super PACs for Talarico. AdImpact estimates total ad spending in the race has passed $440 million, the most of any Senate contest this cycle.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has also stepped into the race in his adopted home state, where he keeps a residence in Austin and built Starbase, the SpaceX company town in South Texas. Musk gave $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group backing Paxton, along with $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, according to figures his representatives supplied to The New York Times this week. His own super PAC, America PAC, had spent more than $6 million by late September supporting Paxton and opposing Talarico, Federal Election Commission filings show.
It is unclear how much the late money will move voters. "Can many millions of dollars poured in late to rough up Talarico allow Paxton to squeak through? We'll see," Calvin Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, told Newsweek last week.
Where James Talarico, Ken Paxton Stand on Data Centers
Talarico has built part of his campaign around cracking down on data centers. His "Hold Data Centers Accountable Plan," released in July, would repeal the state's sales tax exemption for the industry, require developers to fund their own power and water infrastructure, mandate closed-loop water systems and give communities a say before projects break ground. He stopped short of the statewide moratorium some Texas Democrats have backed.
He has pointed to an estimated $3.2 billion in state tax breaks for data center companies as money that could instead lower housing, child care and prescription drug costs.
Paxton was slower to define a position. In a May appearance on the Valuetainment podcast, he called the issue "complicated" and said that on artificial intelligence the U.S. is competing with China and "we cannot lose that race."
Governor Greg Abbott, who once declared Texas the "epicenter of AI development," has since moved to tighten oversight of new projects and end the industry's sales tax breaks. Paxton followed in August with his own "Texas First Data Center Plan." It backs Abbott's push to repeal tax incentives, would make data centers pay for the electricity infrastructure they need and use closed-loop cooling, and would restrict AI facilities in rural residential areas.
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Polling shows broad opposition to data centers in Texas. A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll in August found 57 percent of registered voters opposed building a data center in their community, 41 percent of them strongly, a result statistically unchanged from June.
Nationally, the backlash has put pro-data center lawmakers in tossup races on the defensive, and voters in eight states are weighing data center ballot measures.
Opposition runs highest in rural areas, where 62 percent opposed a local data center in the June survey, half of them strongly. Sixty percent of suburban voters also opposed it.
Paxton's campaign has pointed to Lone Star Rising, the main pro-Talarico super PAC, which has taken about $10 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a backer of data center growth. CBS Texas also found that Talarico voted for a data center sales tax incentive in 2023, though it never became law.
James Talarico, Ken Paxton Stance on the Border
Biden's name still carries weight along the border. Customs and Border Protection frequently logged more than 2 million migrant encounters a year during his presidency, and Democrats paid a price in 2024, when Trump flipped Hidalgo and Cameron counties and won Starr County by 16 points.
It was the first time in a century Starr backed a Republican for president, according to the Associated Press.
Talarico spent the summer trying to win those voters back. Asked on MS NOW whether Democrats had erred by neglecting border security, he answered, "Absolutely," and said, "National Democrats took the border for granted." An Emerson College poll in August found Hispanic voters breaking for him by 19 points, and a later survey for the Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision had him ahead 63 percent to 30 percent among Hispanic voters.
Paxton, who sued the Biden administration scores of times as attorney general, has dismissed the shift.
"James Talarico is a hypocrite who has taken a page out of the Joe Biden playbook," he said in a statement this summer.
What Happens Next
Talarico headlines a CNN town hall on October 14, his first big televised appearance since getting sick. Third-quarter fundraising reports are due to the Federal Election Commission the following day. Early voting runs October 19 to 30, and Election Day is November 3. Paxton has not yet accepted any of the four debate invitations Talarico has received.
Democrats are treating the lead with caution. In interviews with Newsweek published Sunday, party strategists warned that narrow edges in Texas and other Senate races could vanish, pointing to 2024, when Kamala Harris's September lead was gone by November.
"Every Democrat should be running as if they're 10 points behind," Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of UpShift Strategies, told Newsweek.
Patton, the Republican strategist, sees no sign of Democrats coasting. "You gotta run through the tape and leave nothing to chance," he said.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Gray R. Thomas