The first money truck has arrived in Texas, and you can see early results on local TV. The ads about Talarico’s record are showing up a lot. The first money truck is from MAGA:
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After weeks of speculation about whether President Donald Trump would deploy his vast campaign resources in Texas, MAGA Inc., the main pro-Trump super PAC, made a $10 million ad buy in the Texas Senate race.
The buy, which goes towards television streaming and digital advertising, is MAGA Inc.’s first expenditure of the general election, signalling the importance of the Texas Senate race to Trump’s political operation and the competitive nature of the contest.
Half of the $10 million tranche will go towards positive advertising boosting Republican Ken Paxton, an ally of the president, while the other half will go toward negative messaging against Democrat James Talarico. The ad spend was disclosed in an FEC filing Saturday afternoon.
As I mentioned, the results are evident to anyone watching the Rangers’ games over the weekend or other programming. We are finally hearing about Talarico’s record.
The other batch is coming from Elon Musk.
Again, the cash is evident in the new ads contrasting “High taxes” Talarico and “Low Taxes” Paxton.
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There is also something else happening. Talarico is starting to get some media questions about his record. A good one was over border security, where the candidate was critical of the Biden record. He now calls himself a “border security Democrat,” but the rebranding lacks substance. Did he ever criticize the former administration over border security? His answer is yes, but there is no record on that. It doesn’t get better on the oil and gas industry. Again. He claims to be a strong supporter, but nobody in the industry recalls that support.
So the Texas campaign has finally moved into substantive debates over issues. It’s hard to see how Talarico can compete on that front. His remarks on capitalism will be hard to swallow for most Texas:
Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) demanded the “dismantling” of capitalism in 2020 — calling it an “oppressive system” during a climate forum in resurfaced comments his campaign now seeks to distance itself from in his bitter race against Republican Ken Paxton.
CNN’s KFile unearthed video Tuesday of Talarico, then a 31-year-old state representative, speaking at a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Austin chapter of the Sierra Club.
He sounds like a DSA candidate, doesn’t he? Yes he does. Talarico is now claiming that those are old videos and that he has “changed.” The problem is that there is no record that he changed. His so-called “change” sounds more and more like a cynical rebranding of a liberal record in a conservative state.
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Keep it up Paxton.
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