Paxton Sees President as Messiah 8 Years
after Cruz Lead Shrunk in Trump Rally Wake
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
August 28, 2026
President Donald Trump conjured visions of his last rescue ride to Texas eight years ago when he headed here on Thursday for the opening act of a salvation show designed to carry Ken Paxton to a victory as a U.S. Senate candidate who's struggled to compete on his own in recent months.
After raising $9 million in 14 months compared to $69 million that Democrat James Talarico rounded up in ten, Paxton hoped to get a significant boost in a quest for campaign cash that he desperately needs with Trump's appearance on his behalf at a fundraiser in Houston for wealthy donors.
Trump's trip here reminded folks who watch Texas politics about the time he jetted to Houston two weeks before his first midterm election to lead the cheers at a rally for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz when he was fighting to stave off Democrat Beto O'Rourke in 2018.
Cruz was leading O'Rourke by 7 points on average in the polls on the Texas Senate fight that year when Trump came to his aid in the closing weeks before the election. Cruz won by 2.6 points in a midterm vote that produced a blue wave that down-ballot Democrats rode to wins in 14 legislative and two congressional districts that the GOP was attempting to defend.
The national climate is considerably worse for the Republicans in 2026 than it was before the midterm election in Trump's first term. But Paxton's camp has appeared undaunted by the prospects for another Democrat tsunami and the fact that Trump is more unpopular now than he's ever been. Paxton believes that Trump will be the savior who renders all of the Senate candidate's shortcoming to be irrelevant in the final analysis.
The president promised to be spending a lot of time in the Lone Star State between now and the general election 66 days from now. Trump is set to return in a couple of weeks for a first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas where he plans to speak on both days the event is set to take place. The novel gathering on September 9 and 10 is being billed as a national convention even though Trump agreed to make the GOP stage it in an attempt to prop up the Texas Senate nominee who's been no match for his Democratic foe in every aspect of the race up to now.
"We have a very good candidate - Ken Paxton," Trump said before departing Washington D.C. on Air Force One. "He’s running against Tel-a-freako. He is a little freaky. That’s not a man that represents the value of Texas."
But the Paxton push to unite a badly-divided GOP here suffered another setback on Friday when U.S. Senator John Cornyn gave the nominee an awful review for his performance since the AG eliminated him in a primary runoff election in May with a Trump endorsement a week before the vote.
"Paxton's a poor campaigner," Cornyn observed. "He's lazy and doesn't raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He's making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it - we are where we are."
Cornyn and Senate Republican leaders warned that the GOP would fumble the Texas seat away if the voters here picked Paxton to carry the torch for them in the fall. Cornyn would have expected to run as the favorite in a race that Talarico is on track to win if the polling in the past two months have been accurate.
But after being outclassed in fundraising, organization, work ethic, messaging, opposition research, outreach, dedication, enthusiasm, passion and every other aspect of the campaign, Paxton is depending on Trump to be the cure-all because he has nothing else on which to pin his hopes after a campaign for the past two months that's been lackluster, short on money, losing in the polls and surprisingly low on energy in a fight with a Democrat on perpetual overdrive.
Trump's approval ratings were substantially higher in 2018 when they hovered in the mid-to-low 40s for several months before the vote. The president has never been more unpopular across the country and in Texas specifically as he is now with approvals languishing at record lows in the low-to-mid 30s. Talarico has led Paxton by almost 3 points on average in the polls on the Texas Senate contest in the past two months. Talarico was up 3.3 points on average in three surveys that were conducted here in August.
Paxton pulled even with Talarico in the polls for several weeks in June after the runoff election. But Paxton fell behind again two months ago after putting his campaign on hold for a vacation in Europe during the Fourth of July weekend in the U.S.
Now - instead of hitting the campaign trail hard seven days a week, Paxton appears to have a relatively light schedule before the Dallas gathering with only two stops planned for next week in Corpus Christi and Weatherford. That may be what Cornyn was talking about when he portrayed Paxton as a victim of his own laziness.
Mike Hailey - the Capitol Inside publisher and editor - has published the column Hailey's Comment on a fairly regular basis since he founded the site almost 24 years ago.
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