Ken Paxton Is in the Fight of His Life

The Texas Senate race between Attorney General Ken Paxton and James Talarico looks to be in a tie, according to several voter polls published in the past month.

A Tuesday survey by the New York Times and Siena University has the two candidates both locked at 47 percent of likely voters. A win for Talarico, a Democratic state legislator, would represent the first statewide election win for the party in Texas since 1994.

The New York Times/Siena poll was conducted among 656 likely voters from June 19 to June 27, with a sampling error of 4.5 percentage points.

Polling suggests that Talarico’s numbers are largely down to a majority of likely voters seeing the Democrat as having good character, he is a former public school teacher and is currently training to become a minister, as opposed to Paxton, who was indicted for securities fraud and impeached as state attorney general by the Republican-dominated Texas state House (although the Republican-majority state Senate acquitted all 16 articles of impeachment against him). Paxton is also a Trump loyalist, and may be associated with President Trump’s mishandling of the economy amid a widespread struggle with affordability.

My colleague Tim Murphy, who has covered the Senate race extensively, noted that many Senate Republicans favored incumbent John Cornyn but Trump endorsed Paxton late in the primary race. And on Talarico, Tim wrote in March that Talarico is “unsullied by doings in Washington” and his “faith-based populism impressed Joe Rogan and Barack Obama and showed strength in the places the [Democratic] party has been hemorrhaging support.”

Given that Democrats need to flip four Republican seats while defending all of their seats to win a Senate majority this November, Paxton vs. Talarico is definitely a race to watch.