In news that will surely make the local MAGA hat-wearing crowd choke on their 7-Eleven coffee, Democratic State Rep. James Talarico just announced he hauled in a staggering $27 million in the first three months of 2026. That’s not just “Texas big”; it’s a national record for a Senate candidate in the first quarter of an election year. Apparently, people are so desperate to see someone other than a Republican in statewide office that they’re treating Talarico’s campaign like a high-stakes GoFundMe for the soul of the state.
While Talarico is swimming in Scrooge McDuck levels of cash, the Texas GOP is busy doing what it does best: eating its own. Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton are currently locked in a bitter, mud-slinging runoff for the Republican nomination. Cornyn managed to scrape together $9 million—barely a third of Talarico’s haul—while Paxton brought in a measly $2.2 million. You know things are weird when a guy with a pending legal calendar as long as a CVS receipt is being out-raised twelve-to-one by a guy from Austin.
Of course, we’ve seen this episode of Texas Politics: The Great Disappointment before. Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred both put up massive numbers and “grassroots energy” before ultimately being swallowed whole by the red sea that begins somewhere just east of Dallas and doesn’t stop until it hits the New Mexico border. Talarico’s campaign manager says winning will require “unprecedented resources,” which is political speak for “we need enough money to buy a television ad for every single person currently stuck in traffic on Loop 289.”
Despite the record-breaking $40 million total he’s raised since September, Talarico has already burned through $24.4 million just to survive his primary. It’s a bold strategy: spend more money than the GDP of a small island nation just to convince voters in places like Lubbock that a Democrat isn’t actually a harbinger of the apocalypse. Meanwhile, our local GOP stalwarts are probably wondering if they can trade their “Ken Paxton is Innocent” bumper stickers for some of that sweet, sweet Talarico cash.
With over 540,000 donors chipping in, it seems there’s a lot of hope floating around the state—but as any long-suffering Lubbockite knows, hope is usually just the thing that gets crushed right before the dust storm hits.
If $27 million can’t flip a state that hasn’t gone blue since the mid-90s, at least we can all take comfort in knowing the TV commercial breaks during the evening news will be exclusively populated by Talarico’s face and contractors promising to fix your roof.
Is it a political revolution, or are we just watching the world’s most expensive way to lose a Senate seat in a state where “progressive” is still a four-letter word?
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