A charter bus rolled into Fort Worth Saturday morning and let out about 70 people from Runaway Bay in Wise County, all headed to the same place: a Ken Paxton campaign rally at Cullen Yards. The turnout was part of a broader push by rural Texans to shore up support for the Republican attorney general and U.S. Senate nominee, who has spent the final stretch before Election Day trying to close a gap with Democrat James Talarico.
A Bus Ride From Wise County
The bus from Runaway Bay was one piece of a wider effort to get rural voters into the city for Paxton's 10 a.m. rally, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which reported that supporters were also bused in from other surrounding rural counties. JD Enright, described as Paxton's longtime friend, paid for the bus himself and met it at the curb, shaking hands and thanking each rider as they stepped off. Enright told the newspaper that people from both Wise County and Jack County made the trip to back the Republican nominee.
The rally itself drew about 100 people total, with the roughly 70 bused-in arrivals from Runaway Bay making up the bulk of the crowd, per the same report. That's a modest showing compared with some of Paxton's other recent stops in the region — the station's report notes that an earlier Fort Worth rally on the first day of early voting pulled in only about 250 people, while Talarico's competing event that same day drew roughly 1,400.
Why Tarrant County Matters So Much
Cullen Yards sits in Tarrant County, which Republicans have described as the last red urban county left in the country, according to the Star-Telegram's reporting. That label is increasingly contested: the county has shifted closer to the political center after long being considered a GOP stronghold, according to the Fort Worth Report, which called it potentially the most competitive large urban county in Texas. That competitiveness helps explain why both campaigns have repeatedly returned to the area in the final weeks before voting.
Paxton's Oct. 19 rally at T&P Station in Fort Worth drew a standing-room crowd of about 500, the Fort Worth Report found, while Talarico's gymnasium rally that same evening packed in more than 1,000 supporters, according to The New York Times. Two days before the Cullen Yards event, a much larger Republican rally in Weatherford backing Paxton drew about 3,000 people to a newly built warehouse, the Star-Telegram reported separately.
Polling Gap and a GOP Alarm Over Turnout
Paxton has been trailing in the polls heading into Election Day, the Star-Telegram reported. That matches findings from a Texas Public Opinion Research survey conducted Oct. 15-18, which showed Talarico leading 51% to 47% among likely voters, according to FOX 7 Austin. The Senate race between the two has been described by NBC News as one of the most closely watched contests in the country.
Concern over turnout has reached the highest levels of the party. Vice President JD Vance traveled to nearby Parker County to encourage Republican voters to get to the polls, according to NBC DFW. That same report found that of the roughly 6 million Texans who had already voted, those with Democratic primary histories had cast about 70,000 more ballots than those with Republican primary histories — though the outlet cautioned that early-voting figures do not establish which candidate is actually leading, since past primary participation doesn't necessarily predict general-election choices.
Record Early Voting Across North Texas
Early voting opened statewide on Oct. 19, and several North Texas counties posted record first-day numbers compared with the 2022 midterms, per NBC DFW. Tarrant County alone saw 50,409 ballots cast on that first day, up sharply from 29,197 in 2022 — though still short of the 58,487 ballots cast on the first day of the 2024 presidential election, the station reported.
The imbalance has pushed Republicans to lean harder on rural turnout to offset potential Democratic gains in cities and suburbs, according to the Houston Chronicle, which also found that roughly two-thirds of Democrats prefer voting early while Republicans are more evenly split between early and Election Day voting. That dynamic helps explain why Paxton launched an 18-day bus tour with more than 30 stops across the state in the run-up to Nov. 3, a schedule reported by the Texas Tribune, while Talarico pursued his own 20-city get-out-the-vote tour.
With polls set to open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., both campaigns are racing to close out a race that has drawn national attention to a state Republicans have long considered safe. For now, Enright's bus from Runaway Bay stands as a small but telling snapshot of the effort rural Texas Republicans are making to keep that record intact.
