GOP Siblings Hope Trump Won't Hurt Bids
at SA Rally as Much as Paxton Dallas Pitch
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
October 5, 2026
A South Texas brother-sister combo will be hoping that President Donald Trump doesn't prove to be as much of a drag on their campaigns for Congress at an event this week in San Antonio as he turned out to be for Ken Paxton's U.S. Senate bid at the GOP's historic midterm convention in Dallas last month.
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz and Carlos De La Cruz are slated to be the prime beneficiaries of rally that Trump is staging on Wednesday in the 77-year-old Freeman Coliseum - a venue that used to be the home long ago for the local rodeo, professional wrestling matches and a couple of minor league soccer teams.
Trump's third rally in Texas in the past month will unfold in the shadows of the Frost Bank Center, which opened beside the Freeman Coliseum as the SBC Center almost two dozen years ago as the home court for the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball Association. The mere sight of the NBA arena across the parking lot could bring trigger memories for the president on how the Spurs' legendary former coach Gregg Popovich became a ferocious Trump critic after he took over the GOP 10 years ago.
On the bright side for the Republicans, the Freeman Coliseum holds half as many people as the American Airlines Center in Dallas where Trump's midterm convention unfolded in September with seas of empty seats in the upper level. But Trump spoke on Saturday in Mobile, Alabama in a small college basketball facility that's smaller than the Freeman Coliseum and had scores of chairs in the upper level with no one sitting in them during the rally.
The De La Cruz siblings may be the first to know that empty chairs at a rally less than a month before a major election aren't the best optics for an event that's designed to spur a large turnout at the polls next month. Trump and the Republicans would have had a more realistic chance to fill up an arena if they'd scheduled the upcoming SA event at the Blossom Athletic Center - a high school basketball venue that holds 5,000 people on the north side of the city near the airport.
But the Republicans on the ground in SA will have had five days to try to get friends, relatives and supporters to flock to the east side to see the president trying to save the De La Cruz family members in races they're running as underdogs in U.S. House districts the Republicans fully expected to win this fall.
De La Cruz the second-term incumbent in Congressional District 15 needs all the help she can get in a fight with Democrat Bobby Pulido, whose probability of victory in the upcoming midterm vote hit all-time highs on the major prediction markets on Monday at 82 percent on Kalshi and 80 percent on Polymarket.
Carlos De La Cruz has better odds in an open race in Congressional District 35 - one of five seats that Republicans in Austin targeted on a map that Trump ordered them to draw in special session last year. But Democrat Johnny Garcia's win probability jumped on Monday to their highest points yet in the prediction platform oddsmaking - with Kalshi listing him as a 64 percent favorite to hold the CD 35 seat for Democrats while Polymarket gave him a 61 chance to prevail at the polls on November 3.
Democrat James Talarico, who's led Paxton in the polling on the Texas Senate race for the past three months, found his odds higher than ever on Kalshi as well on Monday as the favorite at 67 percent. Paxton had a 58 percent shot at victory on Kalshi when the Republican midterm convention in Dallas ended on September 10. That represents a swing of 25 percentage points in the Democrat's favor in the Senate competition here.
more to come ...
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