Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton showed up at the same Wichita Falls steakhouse this week for a get-out-the-vote rally, but they never shared a stage. The split-screen moment captured the awkward state of Texas Republican politics heading into Tuesday's election, with both men fighting for their political lives and leaning on the same voters to turn out for them.
Abbott's campaign confirmed the basic outline of the stop: the governor's own campaign website says he brought his “Let's Roll” get-out-the-vote tour to McBride's Steakhouse in Wichita Falls on Oct. 26, and that he “was joined by Attorney General Ken Paxton.” According to The New York Times, Paxton's team requested that he join Abbott's event, and Abbott agreed — but the two did not appear on stage together, Abbott did not mention Paxton during his own remarks, and it was Paxton who thanked Abbott for hosting him.
That distance is no accident, according to reporting from Politico. John Colyandro, a consultant and former policy director for Abbott who was among a dozen Republican political consultants, campaign operatives and former Abbott aides interviewed by the Times, said Paxton's challenges carry ramifications for the rest of the ticket. Republican consultants told the Times that having Paxton atop the ticket is not helping Abbott, and that Abbott has been hurt both by some Republicans' lack of enthusiasm for Paxton and by the country's generally sour political mood.
A Senate Race That Has Republicans Nervous
Paxton is seeking to keep Texas's U.S. Senate seat in Republican hands, and by most measures his contest is far closer than Abbott's. A University of Houston survey found Democrat James Talarico leading Paxton 48% to 46% among likely voters, according to the University of Houston's Hobby School survey. The same poll put Paxton's net favorability at -16 points, with 41% of voters viewing him favorably and 57% unfavorably, per the school's statewide survey data.
Abbott, by contrast, led Democrat Gina Hinojosa 49% to 46% in that same October survey, with a far healthier net favorability of -2 points. Still, Politico reports that public polling has consistently shown Hinojosa within striking distance of the four-term incumbent, and a senior Texas Republican official told the outlet flatly, “Abbott has no coattails” this cycle — a sharp contrast to 2018, when Abbott's operation helped Ted Cruz beat Beto O'Rourke by roughly 219,000 votes while Abbott himself won by 13 points.
Abbott's Money Machine Keeps Humming
Whatever coattails Abbott may or may not have this year, his fundraising has not slowed. The Times reports he has raised more than $200 million for his re-election campaign, and Politico reports he pulled in $26 million in the 30-day reporting period that ended Oct. 24 — more than $8 million more than Hinojosa's $17.5 million over the same stretch. At least $6 million of Abbott's haul came from Elon Musk and others tied to technology and data-center businesses, including a $5 million check from Musk himself, the same Politico report states.
The cash gap shows up starkly in the closing stretch: Hinojosa had less than $1 million in her campaign account with roughly a week to go before Election Day, while Abbott's main political action committee sat on about $8.6 million in cash, according to Politico's reporting. Still, Democrats have mounted an unusually well-funded statewide push — a coalition of Democratic groups has invested $30 million in a coordinated campaign aimed at ending the party's 30-year losing streak in Texas, per the same Politico account.
Record Spending Collides With Record Turnout
The Senate race between Paxton and Talarico has become something else entirely: the most expensive Senate contest of its kind in American history, with spending surpassing $560 million and pushing Texas past Ohio's 2024 race as the previous national leader, according to The Dallas Morning News. Talarico's campaign has drawn contributions from more than 1.3 million people, the paper reports, a scale of small-dollar fundraising rarely seen in a Texas statewide race.
Early voting has matched that intensity on the ground. The Dallas Morning News separately reported turnout rivaling presidential-election levels in some Texas counties ahead of the Nov. 3 vote. Polling from the University of Houston underscores just how tightly Abbott's and Paxton's fates are tied together regardless of their public distance: 92% of voters who intend to back Abbott also intend to vote for Paxton, and 97% of Paxton's intended voters also plan to back Abbott, per the Hobby School's statewide data.
Two Republicans, One Turnout Machine
That mutual dependence is precisely why Abbott's operation matters so much to Texas Republicans this year. Politico reports that party officials who have lost confidence in Paxton as a candidate are now banking on Abbott's data-driven, polling-heavy get-out-the-vote machine to save the broader ticket, even as Democrats show unusual strength across the state. The 2026 election has sharpened tension between Texas's two most prominent Republicans, the Times reports, even as both men depend on the same bloc of voters showing up on Election Day to survive.
