Big Take: Texas Is Testing the Power of MAGA Inc.’s Money

Why is the Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico so competitive? I think when you look at this Senate race, one thing you really have to pay attention to is 2018, and that was Ted Cruz versus Beto O'Rourke at that point. That race was, I believe it was $125 million of spending, which blew it out of the water. And Democrats really felt Beto O'Rourke was a very interesting candidate because he was extremely charismatic. And I think they really felt that that was a good year for them, especially that it was a midterm election and he came within 2.6 points of Ted Cruz. So at that point, Democrats obviously very disappointed. Yeah, it's Lucy with the football all over. It seems, uh, with Democrats in Texas. One question. If you're not like steeped in this is why does this matter? The House has been expected to flip for a while. That's going to lead to a lot of oversight, investigations into Trump, into his businesses, into crypto and all that kinds of things. The Senate would really make a big difference. Nominees would basically stop. Uh, Trump would not be able to confirm people very easily, if at all. It would just completely change the nature of the last two years of his presidency. And so that's why the Senate right now is getting so much attention, in particular, because this year wasn't supposed to be Democrats. A year in the Senate, right? A third of the chamber is up every two years. This wasn't a very good Dem cycle for them. And so I think that just speaks to how quickly things are changing. And if Trump has neither the House nor the Senate for the last two years of his presidency, boy, a lot of people have a lot of predictions about how that's going to game out, but I think it could get pretty unpredictable pretty quickly.