Texas candidates for the U.S. Senate are taking their campaigns across the state ahead of the midterm elections on November 3.
Democrat James Talarico's "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts" tour and Republican Ken Paxton's "Come and Take It" tour are taking them to cities and towns across the Lone Star State in the final stretch of the campaign.
Polls suggest a closely contested race in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.
A map shows the candidates’ scheduled tour stops from October 17 to November 2, with Paxton expected to announce more events.
Talarico Takes Campaign to Campuses
Talarico began his two-week, 21-stop "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts" tour on October 18, kicking off with a rally in Plano. The tour name references Friday Night Lights, the TV drama about a fictional Texas high school football team.
Talarico’s tour hits major cities like Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, as well as smaller cities and suburban communities.
His itinerary includes several educational institutions, with events scheduled at the University of North Texas, the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas Tech University and North Crowley High School in Fort Worth.
The campus stops come as polling suggests Talarico has strong support among younger voters. An October YouGov poll found that 69 percent of voters under 30 favored the Democrat.
Talarico’s tour will wrap up with a concert in San Antonio on November 1 and a closing concert in Austin on November 2, on the eve of the election.
Paxton’s Tour Invokes Texas’ Revolutionary History
Paxton has meanwhile begun his "Come and Take It" tour, starting with a rally in Rockwall on October 17.
The tour has been billed by local outlets as an 18-day campaign push, with more than 30 stops planned. Paxton’s website currently only lists 13 upcoming events, with more to be announced.
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The Texas Tribune reported that Paxton’s tour would include events in several cities across Texas: Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, Odessa, San Angelo, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, Corpus Christi, Victoria, Tyler and Beaumont.
The tour is set to wrap up with an event at the Alamo on November 2, a site central to Texas’ fight for independence from Mexico in 1836, per the Tribune.
The venue reinforces the tour’s revolutionary framing: its name, "Come and Take It," invokes a slogan associated with Texan defiance during the Texas Revolution.
"My message to the far left extremists who are destroying our Texas is ‘Come and Take It,’" Paxton said at Rockwall. "That’s the message of our entire tour."
Unlike Talarico, Paxton has not yet announced any planned stops at high schools or colleges.
Polls Show Tight Race
Polling suggests the race between Talarico and Paxton is competitive, with recent surveys and polling aggregators putting the Democrat narrowly ahead.
Poll aggregator RealClearPolling currently puts Talarico ahead by 2.2 percent.
A recent CBS News/YouGov poll found that 51 percent of likely voters backed Talarico, while 49 percent backed Paxton. The survey was conducted between October 8-16 among 1,492 registered Texas voters, with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
The cost of living was the top issue for Texas voters in this poll, and Talarico led among those who said rising prices had hurt them financially.
However, Paxton benefited from Texas voters’ relatively greater support for the Trump administration’s deportation program and from Republicans motivated to back the president, according to the poll.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Robert Greenall and Matthew Cannon