Texas Democratic candidate for Senate James Talarico has inspired a deluge of spending from the GOP to help prevent a blue wave in Texas, but the 37-year-old’s campaign is privately fretting that the Lone Star State could remain in Republican hands.
Sources within the Democrat’s campaign told the New York Times that private polling shows that Talarico is tied or within the margin of error of Texas Attorney General and Republican candidate Ken Paxton.
‘I think James has at most a 50 percent chance of winning,’ Luke Warford, the chairman of the Travis County Democratic Party, told the outlet. ‘Which, look, in Texas, that’s phenomenal. If you told me a year ago a Democrat would have a coin-flip chance of winning, I’d be doing backflips.’
Weeks ago, polls found Talarico with a six-point edge. More recent surveys find the race is tightening, and sources are saying that’s because of an avalanche of donations from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who now lives in Texas and operates his major corporations Tesla and SpaceX from there.
Musk has donated at least $158 million to groups supporting Paxton’s campaign, the Times reports.
The funding has gone to attack ads targeting Talarico, which some sources in his camp admit are hurting their numbers going into Election Day. The race could be the most expensive non-presidential race in US history.
Reports indicate that both campaigns have already spent over $400 million on advertising alone.