For months, Republicans have known they have one shot at preventing a blue wave in the 2026 midterm elections. The Democrats has an advantage in polling, in public opinion, in candidate profiles, and voter mobilization. But the GOP, as it so often does, has the money.
“Musk will spend the money,” one Republican fundraiser told me a few weeks back, waving off the growing threat of James Talarico flipping one of Texas’ two Senate seats blue. He wasn’t wrong: In the 2026 cycle, Republican megadonor Elon Musk dropped more than $400 million into races nationwide, with $158 million of that going toward= super PACs supporting Talarico’s opponent, Texas’ scandal-prone Attorney General Ken Paxton.
But now, on the eve of the election, Democratic consultants think that Musk’s best shot at taking them out of the race failed to land. The dark money, they say, doesn’t seem to have buried Talarico — and other candidates around the country also seem to be holding their own in the face of an onslaught of conservative spending.
“We’re feeling as good as we possibly could,” says Luke Warford, a Texas Democratic strategist and co-founder of the Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund.
Still, Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic strategy group, says the sheer volume of cash was an immediate concern. “I was worried about it just like everybody else,” Angle says. “None of us had any illusions that we’d have as much or more as the Republicans.”
Warford says that the mountain of dark money can only buy so many attack ads — and the lines of attack are already played out. PACs funded by Musk, like the Texas PAC and the nationwide America PAC, have blasted Talarico on TV, radio, social media, and other networks for weeks, mostly calling him “too radical” for Texas voters and highlighting his views on abortion, LGBTQ issues, “dismantling capitalism,” and border security. One ad, directly produced by the Paxton campaign, features an AI-generated Talarico defacing a Bible.
“They’re just playing the hits from 2024,” Warford says. “But it’s not 2024 anymore!”
Talarico has run a campaign specifically designed to insulate himself against this kind of spending, Warford says, focusing on earned media and direct communication with voters through social media. TV-focused attack ads, he says, work better if they’re “projected on a blank slate,” meaning a candidate with little name recognition or national profile.
“Democrats have kinda woken up from the losses of the last couple of cycles,” one Democratic operative tells me, noting that both parties are investing heavily in ad spends outside of traditional TV markets. “They’re spending much more strategically now.”
“The fundamentals are the reason that Democrats have a shot,” Warford says. “If the election was a perfect tie — yeah, $100 million in paid ads might win the race… but can Elon Musk buy Ken Paxton five points?”
Angle says that Musk’s involvement itself is another narrative that Talarico and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa have been able to exploit. Musk’s close ties to Donald Trump, as well, make his funding another example of Texas Republicans “selling their brand and becoming national Republicans.”
“They [Paxton and Texas Republicans] are super-glued to Donald Trump and the billionaire class,” Angle says. “The T by their guy stands for Trump and the T by our guy stands for Texas.”
The amount Musk has contributed is staggering — more than any political donor in history — but Musk’s own reputation, in some ways, undercuts its impact.
“The money comes with so much baggage,” Warford says. “I could not think of a more egregious example than the world’s richest man trying to save an incredibly weak and unpopular candidate at the last minute. I mean, everyone knows it’s Elon Musk!”
One of the biggest advantages Democrats have, Angle says, is that the Republican money cannon committed friendly fire during the primaries: Incumbent Senator John Cornyn, who lost to Paxton after the latter secured Trump’s endorsement, had also benefitted from a massive dark money spigot that pumped out months of negative media about Paxton before Talarico even came to the plate.
“That probably did more damage to Ken Paxton than anything else,” Angle says.
If Democrats pull off a win on Tuesday, they’ll have climbed over a mountain of cash larger than anything the country has ever seen. The last few days will be tense. One strategist I talked to knew exactly how many minutes of early voting still remained as of the time of our call
“We’re Texas Democrats,” Warford says. “We’ve been hopeful before. But this is the best opportunity we’ve had in a generation.”
