Trump Makes Third Texas Trip in a Month as Paxton Trails Talarico in Toss-Up Senate Race

President Donald Trump heads to Texas on Wednesday for the third time in a month, a remarkable run of attention for a state he carried comfortably in the 2024 election but where Republicans now find themselves fighting unexpectedly close midterm battles as they try to hold on to control of Congress.

Trump is scheduled to appear in San Antonio alongside Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, who is locked in a tight race with Democrat James Talarico ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The rally is set for the Freeman Coliseum, with the president expected to speak at 6 p.m. Central Time, according to Reuters.

The repeated visits underscore how much is at stake in Texas. A loss by Paxton in the Senate race would complicate the Republican Party’s path to retaining its slim Senate majority and mark a significant setback in what has long been considered a Republican stronghold, according to Reuters. Polls now show Talarico ahead: a Siena College poll released October 3 put Talarico at 51 percent to Paxton’s 45 percent among likely voters, while Fox News and New York Times polls this month showed Talarico leading 51 to 49 and 51 to 46 respectively, according to USA Today.

The race has moved sharply since the summer. In August, The Cook Political Report shifted the Texas Senate contest from Republican-leaning to a toss-up, giving Democrats hope they could elect a Democratic senator from the state for the first time since 1988, according to USA Today. Talarico and Paxton were statistically tied in multiple polls through the summer, but Talarico broke out of the tie in late summer and has held an actual lead since, USA Today reported.

Paxton became the Republican nominee after defeating longtime Senator John Cornyn in a bitter Republican primary in March that went to a May runoff. Trump surprised many Republicans by backing Paxton in the runoff over Cornyn, whom party leaders had regarded as the safer general-election bet. With early voting set to begin in two weeks, that endorsement is now being tested in earnest, according to USA Today.

Trump’s Texas schedule this fall has been relentless. In August he headlined a Republican fundraiser in Houston. In September he appeared at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. Just last week he returned again, stopping in Durant, Oklahoma, and Denton, Texas, according to USA Today. Earlier this fall he had promised to hit 35 of the most competitive congressional races around the country, but he keeps coming back to Texas, USA Today noted.

The repeated Texas trips are part of a broader push in Republican-leaning states that were expected to be safely in hand but have instead become midterm battlegrounds. His 32-day campaign blitz has taken him through Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ohio and Nebraska, while Vice President JD Vance has campaigned in Alaska. Trump and Vance carried all six states in the 2024 presidential election, according to Reuters.

Republicans are struggling as voters focus on high living costs and the war with Iran, giving Trump record-low approval ratings. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Monday put his approval at 32 percent, with Democrats leading Republicans 44 percent to 37 percent among registered voters, according to Reuters.

The stakes in Texas are personal for the president. James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told Reuters that losing the Senate race would be “devastating for Republicans and devastating for Donald Trump” given his support for Paxton. “I think the president clearly will do a lot to try to avoid that outcome,” Henson said.

The alliance between Trump and Paxton has appeared awkward at times. Trump has publicly mocked Paxton’s clothes, speaking style and appearance. At the Denton rally on October 1, Trump said, “Ken Paxton was at my side more than anybody; I have to always remember that because he could be a pain in the ass sometimes,” before adding that Republicans “need Ken so badly,” according to USA Today. Separately, Paxton was recorded telling donors that Republican candidates’ numbers fell after the Trump-centered convention in Dallas, according to The New York Times reporting cited by Reuters. Paxton’s campaign has disputed suggestions that the remarks amounted to criticism of Trump.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, described the dynamic as a dilemma for the campaign, telling Reuters: “Trump’s visits are a Catch-22. The president can inspire as much as he can repel.” Rallying Trump’s base is “necessary but not sufficient” for Paxton, Rottinghaus said.

The president’s political operation has also poured millions into competitive House races across the state. In San Antonio, Republican Carlos De La Cruz, an Air Force veteran, is running in a newly redrawn district that Democrats have called a partisan gerrymander, and he is expected to speak at Wednesday’s rally, according to Reuters. The district is rated lean Republican by The Cook Political Report, USA Today reported.

Texas Republicans, at Trump’s urging last year, pushed through a redistricting map aimed at helping the party gain five new seats in the U.S. House. After many legal battles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the map constitutional in December 2025, and this will be the first election cycle under the new lines, with many watching to see whether Republicans show a net gain, according to USA Today. Among the House battlegrounds worrying Republicans is the 15th Congressional District, rated a toss-up, where Representative Monica De La Cruz faces Democrat Bobby Pulido. The district favored Republicans and voted for Trump by 18 points in 2024, yet polling now shows the race tied or even Pulido ahead, according to The Cook Political Report’s analysis cited by USA Today. The 9th District was moved from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” USA Today reported.

Governor Greg Abbott, a close Trump ally who is also in a closer-than-expected re-election race, plans to skip Wednesday’s rally, citing other campaign events, according to Reuters. Abbott is seeking a fourth term and has led Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa in polling since the March primaries, but she has stayed within single digits, with The New York Times’ October poll suggesting she might even be taking a lead, according to USA Today. The Cook Political Report moved the governor’s race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican” on August 20, USA Today reported.

One demographic trend is working against the president’s party in Texas. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that just 24 percent of Hispanic voters approved of his performance. Hispanic voters were an important part of Trump’s success in 2024, when he won nearly half the Hispanic vote, and they are a bigger demographic in Texas than in most states, according to Reuters.

“My rallies are saving the Republican Party, again,” Trump said in an all-caps post on Truth Social on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Republicans are betting Trump can still turn out the voters who powered his 2024 victory even as his broader standing has weakened.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The single most telling fact in this story is not the polling or the venue. It is the calendar. A sitting president visiting the same state three times in 30 days to prop up his own party’s Senate candidate is something campaigns do in places they fear losing, not places they assume they own. Trump won Texas by 14 points in 2024. Two years later, the Senate race there is rated a toss-up, the governor’s race has tightened into “likely Republican,” and the president is spending his finite final month of campaigning on Texas soil rather than in states Democrats are trying to flip. The map, in other words, is being read defensively.

That defensive posture carries an opportunity cost. Every day Trump spends in San Antonio or Denton is a day he is not in the Pennsylvania, Arizona or Nevada suburbs where the broader Senate majority will be decided. Campaigns have a scarce and non-renewable resource — the candidate’s time — and the way Trump is spending it suggests Republican strategists believe losing Texas would be the kind of catastrophe that overwhelms everything else. Henson’s assessment to Reuters — “devastating for Republicans and devastating for Donald Trump” — is the kind of blunt language analysts use when the numbers keep them up at night.

The uncomfortable arithmetic is that Paxton’s problems are partly Trump’s own making. He chose Paxton over Cornyn in the May runoff, against the preference of party leaders who considered Cornyn the safer bet, and that choice is now the anchor around the party’s Senate hopes. The relationship since has been laced with public jabs: Trump’s mocking of Paxton’s clothes and manner, Paxton’s leaked admission to donors that the numbers “dropped” after the Trump-centered Dallas convention. Awkwardness alone does not lose elections, but the leaked recording is the more damaging of the two, because it hints at a private belief among Republican insiders that the Trump-centric strategy may be backfiring with exactly the swing voters the campaign needs.

That is the Catch-22 that Rottinghaus described. Trump’s rallies reliably energize the base, and a midterm electorate needs base energy. But in a state where the president’s approval sits at record lows, each mega-rally is also a loud reminder to the other side. The Siena and Fox News numbers tell the story of the sequence: a summer of ties, then Talarico pulling ahead just as the race became a national spectacle. The more attention the contest gets, the better Talarico has done — which is precisely the pattern a trailing campaign would hope to reverse, not accelerate.

There is a second story hiding inside the first, and it may matter more for the next decade than for November 3. Hispanic voters were central to Trump’s 2024 strength, when he won nearly half of them nationally. The Reuters/Ipsos finding that just 24 percent of Hispanic voters approve of his performance now is a stunning erosion, and Texas — more Hispanic than most states — is where that erosion would bite hardest. If the Hispanic shift toward Republicans in 2024 turns out to have been a Trump-specific phenomenon rather than a durable realignment, the party’s Texas firewall thins permanently. Watch the South Texas House races on election night: the 15th District, which Trump carried by 18 points, is now a toss-up where the same polls show Talarico leading. That is where the theory gets tested first.

The redistricting gamble adds another layer of risk. Republicans redrew the Texas map specifically to add five House seats — a bet that the state’s partisan lean was stable enough to be sliced and diced. If the statewide environment has shifted as much as the Senate polling suggests, a map drawn for maximum advantage can become a map with maximum exposure, spreading Republican votes thinly across districts that can all lose at once. The “net gain” question USA Today flagged will be one of the night’s most-watched experiments.

What to watch in the final stretch: first, the start of early voting in two weeks, when the abstract polling advantage either turns into banked votes or evaporates. Second, whether Trump modulates his message for the economic concerns — high costs — that Reuters identifies as the core voter anxiety, or stays on the Iran-war rally themes. Third, the down-ballot spread: if the 15th, 35th and 9th House districts all break badly for Republicans, the party’s Texas troubles are structural, not Paxton-specific. And finally, whether Abbott — skipping Wednesday’s rally while fighting his own tightening race — can maintain the split-ticket separation, or whether Texas is consolidating into a single statewide verdict on the Republican brand.

For now, the president keeps coming back to Texas. The frequency of those visits is itself the headline.

Sources

• Reuters: Trump makes third Texas trip in a month as Republicans defend longtime stronghold
• USA Today: Trump’s trip to Texas is 3rd in 30 days as Senate race tightens