In early April, the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC aligned with the Senate Republican leadership, unveiled an ambitious investment plan for the midterm elections. The SLF announced that it would spend nearly $350 million in what it considered the seven most competitive Senate races.
The list — which included Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Maine, Iowa, New Hampshire and Alaska — wasn’t altogether surprising, though it was difficult to miss that some of the money was going toward Senate races in states that are generally seen as GOP strongholds, which Donald Trump won by double digits as recently as 2024.
Just as notable, however, was that the Senate Leadership Fund didn’t bother to include Texas’ Senate race on its list — no doubt because Republicans were confident about holding on to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn’s seat.
One month later, Cornyn lost badly to scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a GOP primary. Five months later, take a wild guess which race was just added to the Senate Leadership Fund’s 2026 slate. Politico reported:
Texas Republican Ken Paxton is getting a major infusion of financial help in his Senate battle with Democrat James Talarico.
A new super PAC linked to Senate Republican leadership has purchased at least $32 million in airtime to boost the controversial Republican attorney general, according to the tracking service AdImpact.
The SLF ad buys are notable in their own right (like many Republicans, the super PAC is leaning heavily into anti-trans attack ads), as is the fact that others are suddenly throwing money at the Lone Star State, too.
Donald Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., invested $10 million in support of Paxton last week, and The New York Times reported that a half-dozen other GOP groups have added tens of millions of dollars.
This is notable, in part because it’s the development Paxton and his allies have been begging for. Talarico enjoyed a financial advantage over the state attorney general, and now that edge has effectively been reversed thanks to outside intervention. But the cash infusion also tells us something important about the underlying electoral conditions: Paxton appears to be losing this race.
It gets back to my “watch where they spend, not what they say” maxim. There’s no such thing as bluffing in campaign politics when it comes to resource investment. If Republicans were confident Paxton were on track to succeed, they wouldn’t be scrambling to write eight-figure checks.
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