Jonathan Martin: Out-of-State Money in Texas Senate Race Gives Talarico Late-Stage Political Ammunition

EXCERPT:

MARTIN: "Yeah, the tell is the enthusiasm gap that’s driving a lot of the small-dollar contributions and why basically every competitive Senate race features the Democratic candidate significantly outraising the Republican. On the hard-dollar side, this has been a trend in recent years, Senate Democrats have been able to sort of leverage the small-dollar culture, mostly online, in their party, to raise a ton of national money. The difference is that you do have Elon Musk, an extraordinary, I think, development in the history of campaign finance reform, Joe, effectively floating the entirety of Ken Paxton’s campaign. I was joking on Twitter, it’s like, you know, Brown and Root underwriting LBJs rise to the Senate, but just less subtle. It’s a lot more overt. And, you know, it helps with a lot of ads, but I think it’s also, Joe, it’s an issue, too, that Talarico can hold up in the final two weeks of the campaign. One man who’s not from Texas trying to basically underwrite the, you know, the entire campaign of your opponent, it’s a sort of gift-wrapped issue for Talarico. Now, would yhe rather have the same money himself? Of course he would. But the politics of it, I think, are a bit of a gift for Talarico, if he can find a way to use this in the last weeks of the campaign. But I should say, Joe, the big story here is also the gov races that are not getting the money. Democrats do not raise similar money for gubernatorial races as Senate races, and they could have their biggest cycle in 20 years and still leave some of these gov races on the table because they can't raise the same cash."