The November elections are fast approaching, but there are some signs Republicans may not be rallying around GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton.
The major donors to U.S. Sen. John Cornyn have not thrown their weight behind Paxton since the Texas attorney general defeated Cornyn in the May runoff.
Axios reporter Asher Price sat down with the Texas Standard to discuss the newly released federal campaign finance data. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Can you give me a little more detail on the number or the percentage of Cornyn's big financial backers who have started to back Paxton?
Asher Price: Of the donors who gave at least $50,000 this election cycle to the political action committees that were supporting John Cornyn, zero have given since the runoff in late May to Ken Paxton's campaign or supporting political action committees, at least according to the latest campaign finance filings that covered a period that ended June 30.
It's probably hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison. There are so many factors that go into different campaigns and races, but that is much less than one might expect given the importance of this race. Was that your reaction?
You do see people who give to Cornyn who were giving to Paxton, but none of the major donors. And those are going to be key contributors in the home stretch of this election.
Ken Paxton is going to need all the support he can get in what's shaping up to be a really tight race. And he needs that money to do messaging, just as his opponent, State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee will also rely on every dollar to get his message across to voters across Texas.
So the money part is important, but it's also important as a kind of proxy about where Republicans are going to cast their vote come November. You know John Cornyn was the kind of establishment wing of the Republican Party and that's his donor base, and are those Republicans going to be casting votes for Paxton come November? That's the big question.
There's at least one top Republican leader who may not be surprised by this. What did Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick say that sort of predicted this scenario?
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is one of the savviest political participants in the arena today. And before the May runoff, he said: supporters of John Cornyn, you've got to get behind Ken Paxton if he wins, and supporters of Ken Paxton, you've got to go behind John Cornyn if he wins because 10% to 15% of you sit at home, James Talarico is going to win.
So that's an important question, whether Republicans are going to coalesce behind Ken Paxton.
We're seeing some movement in the polls that they will. Before the runoff back in April, only 63% of Republican votes said that they would vote for Ken Paxton. In a June poll by the University of Texas, 84% of GOP voters said they would vote for Ken Paxton, but there's still this group up in the air and the question is whether they'll cast votes for Ken Paxton, stay at home, or maybe even vote for James Talarico.
Let's talk a little bit about Talarico. What do his fundraising efforts look like in comparison to some of these struggles that Paxton faces?
Talarico is awash with money. In the second quarter of the year, he and the political action committees that support him out-raised Paxton and supporting PACs by a 3-to-1 margin. He also finished the quarter with a lot of money in the bank.
Ken Paxton honestly had a much more modest amount, I think it was something like $30 million that Talarico finished the quarter with, and Paxton finished it with something like $5 million. That's the money that you need to buy radio ads, buy TV ads, an expensive Texas set of media markets: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, etc.
Talarico is winning the money game, but he also faces a built-in disadvantage, which is that Texas is a Republican state in the sense that no Democrat has won here since the early 1990s.
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