Trump and Republicans Hold Midterm Convention in Dallas to Boost Ken Paxton's Senate Bid Against James Talarico

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump and Republicans will descend upon Dallas, Texas for the Republican midterm election convention. That’s right, midterm convention — it’s OK, that’s a phrasing that naturally draws a double take.

Some Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader John Thune and many Republicans fighting for their paychecks in battleground districts will avoid the confab as Trump and Mike Johnson try to make the case to voters for keeping them in the majority.

But one Republican is thrilled Trump chose to hold this two-day rally and to do so in Texas: the state’s ultra-MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton. Ever since Paxton beat Sen. John Cornyn, thanks, in large part, to Trump endorsing him over the veteran incumbent, Paxton has trailed Democratic nominee James Talarico.

Trump has sought to fix this problem, opening his massive war chest at MAGA Inc. to throw $10 million of ads to support Paxton. Elon Musk’s America PAC also poured in resources last week.

But a look at past election results and where Paxton is the most vulnerable is clear: Trump and Paxton need to pump up his numbers the most in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and stop people from crossing over to support the Democrat — and that just so happens to be where this unprecedented midterm convention will be held.

While the city of Dallas is firmly Democratic, the big prizes for the GOP lie in the city’s suburbs. Particularly, Paxton and Talarico will need to duke it out in the three counties in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: Tarrant, Collin and Denton Counties. Paxton himself is from McKinney, which is right in Collin County.

These counties are overwhelmingly white, with Denton and Tarrant both having more than 66 percent of its population being white and 59 percent of Collin being white. They are affluent due to the financial industry, with Wall Street hosting an extension in the region. All three have median household incomes higher than the national average, with Collin being the richest at $121,600 and Tarrant being the least wealthy at $84,207. And about half the adult population in Collin and Denton have a college degree while 35 percent in Tarrant does.

In 2004, former Texas Gov. George W. Bush won a second term as president taking Collin by a whopping 43 percentage points, Tarrant by 25.4 points and Denton by 40.5 points.

The shift in the DFW area started under President Barack Obama but began in earnest after Trump ran in 2016, when Hillary Clinton kept him in single digits in Texas. In that election, Trump only won Collin by 16.7 points, Denton by 20 points and Tarrant by 8.7 points.

In 2018, Beto O’Rourke narrowly flipped Tarrant against Sen. Ted Cruz, winning it by only 0.7 points as he lost Denton by 8.2 points and Collin by 6.2 points. Joe Biden would hold Tarrant, kept roughly the same margins in Collin and improved Denton. A collapse in the majority-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley meant Biden lost the state, but his margins in DFW meant he only lost Texas to Trump by 5.6 points.

But the bottom would fall out in 2024. Trump would win back Tarrant and won Collin and Denton by double digits. That, combined with the sharp shift of Hispanics to the right, gave Trump his largest margin of victory of Texas of a little less than 14 points.

Democrats are hoping for a major shift leftward among Hispanics, buoyed by the high cost of living and Trump’s draconian mass deportation campaign. And local Democrats hope the backlash to data centers and Flock cameras could boost them in rural areas.

But if Talarico wants to win, he needs to not just win Tarrant County, he needs to run up the scoreboard, and improve O’Rourke and Biden’s margins in Collin and Denton. The political data site Votehub’s model currently has Talarico within two points in Denton while it has him leading Collin by a point and winning Tarrant by seven points.

But even with those margins and winning back the Rio Grande Valley, Talarico would still narrowly lose according to the model. This means Talarico would need massive amounts of crossover support among conservatives who voted for Trump at least once.

This explains Trump’s recent efforts to support Paxton and hold his shindig in Dallas while Paxton is airing his ad with AI Talarico on Newsmax rather than just the networks: Trump needs to keep his voters on Paxton’s side and Paxton needs to motivate the base to either not stay home or to outright vote for him.

Essentially, while other Republicans need to separate themselves from Trump as much as possible, Paxton needs to bear hug the president and remind them that he will be the MAGA warrior who filed a lawsuit to throw out swing states’ election results in 2020. Talarico needs to remind those same voters that Paxton’s own party impeached him and his wife divorced him a few years later.