Paxton and Talarico open battle for South Texas with dueling rallies, diverging pitches

By Alejandro Serrano, Gabby Birenbaum and Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune
July 16, 2026

McALLEN — As the general election ramps up, the top of each party’s ticket this week headed to the epicenter of President Donald Trump’s 2024 gains with Latino voters: South Texas. And their opening salvos to voters were markedly different.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, held a “Rally in the Valley” at a McAllen brewery Tuesday night with two of the GOP’s key congressional recruits, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina and Eric Flores, an Army veteran and lawyer from the region. Meanwhile, Democratic nominee James Talarico ended the third day of a “Frontera Tour” 140 miles northwest in Laredo, where he traces his family’s roots, ahead of his own stop in the Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday.

The dueling visits underscored the region’s importance as a battleground this fall, two years after Trump won 14 of 18 border counties and carried the historically Democratic Valley. They also provided a glimpse of the contrasting visions Paxton and Talarico will present over the coming months to the predominantly Latino voters who populate the border.

Talarico, a state lawmaker from Austin, pitched what he called a “commonsense” plan for border security that prioritizes hiring personnel, while focusing the bulk of his remarks on the campaign trail on affordability issues. In his lone border stop in McAllen, meanwhile, Paxton bashed his Democratic opponent’s record in the Legislature on the border and taxes, while reminding those gathered at his rally that he relentlessly sued President Joe Biden over his “open border” policies that he said left border communities vulnerable. And Paxton cast himself as a champion of economic opportunity who will lower taxes, not raise them like he said Talarico would.

The two Senate hopefuls are courting South Texas voters under a much different political climate than the one that prevailed in the fall of 2024. At the time, the record number of illegal border crossings under the Biden administration were still fresh on the minds of voters in the region, many of whom saw the White House’s response as inadequate. By the summer, most Texans ranked immigration and border security as the state’s most important issues.

With border crossings having ground to a near halt, those issues are no longer at the top of Texans’ list of priorities. Taking their place are concerns about affordability and persistent inflation — particularly among Latino Texans, who have grown increasingly disenchanted with the GOP. The candidates’ pitches this week offered an early look at their messaging under the reshaped immigration landscape, and how they will weave in top-of-mind economic issues, heading into November’s midterms.

Targeting the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation crackdown, which has resulted in three deaths at the hands of federal agents over the last 9 days, Talarico tried to position himself as a more reasonable moderate who wants to secure the border while maintaining a humane posture toward immigrants and listening to border residents about their needs.

Earlier in the week, joined by local GOP officials from West Texas to roll out his border security plan, Talarico lambasted a border wall proposed by the Trump administration that would slice through Big Bend National Park, labeling it a “monument to corruption.” Instead, he said the nation needs more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges — and reiterated claims that members of his own party had failed border residents in the past, an error he said they can’t afford to make again.

“I think Texas Democrats should have felt more comfortable pushing back against the Biden administration when there was so much chaos on our southern border,” Talarico told The Texas Tribune after a rally in Eagle Pass on Monday night. “It felt like too many Democrats were silent about it, and we can’t repeat those mistakes.”

Paxton, meanwhile, closed his McAllen rally with a direct appeal to Hispanic voters, saying that the outcome of the U.S. Senate race would be critical to determining which party would control the upper chamber.

“As Texans, and particularly in this area, with Hispanics moving more Republican, we have the opportunity with this group of people to not only defend Texas values, to not only provide more opportunity for ourselves, but for our children and our grandchildren,” Paxton said Tuesday night at University Draft House. “And it’s all up to you.”

In the audience at both candidates’ events were hundreds of Latino voters who have grown frustrated with prices at the gas pump and grocery store, which have remained stubbornly high through the first year and a half of Trump’s term. In interviews, some said they felt even more exasperated by what they see as unnecessary spending on the United States’ conflict in Iran.

“I felt heard today,” said Rogelio D. Espinoza, a 21-year-old who will vote for the first time this November, after he told Talarico about his financial woes. He said nobody would hire him despite all the “Help Wanted” signs hanging on storefronts all over Eagle Pass. When he finally landed a job, the paycheck he earned working overnight was still insufficient and he was having to decide between making his car or rent payments, even after dropping out of college.

The candidates also doubled down on the criticisms of their opponents they have been hammering for weeks since the May 26 runoff, when Paxton defeated U.S. Sen. John Cornyn to become the GOP nominee.

Paxton began his speech by taking a jab at Talarico’s past stances on border security, and touting his own record. “We need a secure border. We need to protect our country. We need to make sure that we take care of America first,” Paxton said.

The three-term attorney general then plunged into the more socially conservative issues he and his allies have already dragged Talarico for in recent weeks, reupping the Democrat’s past comments about Christianity, transgender children, gender and sexuality. All evidence, Paxton said, that Talarico is unqualified to hold state office in ruby red Texas.

“Once this community knows what his views are on transitioning boys into girls and girls into boys, boys in girls sports, they’re not going to support him,” he said.

Those comments resonated with some voters at Paxton’s event, on top of his posture of remaining bullish on border security.

“Talarico scares me, he really does,” 63-year-old Martha Martin, a former Democrat from Laredo, said after the rally. “I want to protect children.”

At stops in Sanderson, Del Rio and Eagle Pass, Talarico said that he wanted to listen to border residents. He received an earload from people struggling to pay rent, forgoing medical care and feeling unseen in their plight.

During the question-and-answer portion of a town hall in Eagle Pass, 80-year-old Vietnam War veteran Javier Mancha asked Talarico how he planned to end the conflict in Iran, stop Trump and lower everyday costs.

Talarico told him he vividly remembers the billions spent on the Iraq War this century. The federal government needs to be reined in, the nominee told Mancha. As far as prices go, Talarico noted he supports suspending the federal gas and diesel tax, the second of which is overlooked, he said, but just as important because of all the commerce moved by diesel-fueled trucks.

Mancha approved.

“Talarico is down to Earth, like us,” Mancha said in an interview after the event. “He came to see us.”

For his part, Paxton also embraced the dominant conversation surrounding tight economic conditions. To a roar of applause, he said at his rally that he would fight for economic freedom.

Paxton’s company at the rally is also betting that voters’ disappointment in the Biden administration is fresh enough to keep driving GOP gains in South Texas.

Flores is challenging Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, in the 34th Congressional District, while Tijerina is running against Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, in the 28th Congressional District.

Both seats, located in South Texas and majority-Latino, were held by their moderate Democratic representatives last cycle despite being carried by Trump. They were redrawn by the Legislature last year to be more friendly to Republicans — both now would have elected Trump by 10 percentage points in 2024 — but are expected to be highly competitive races.

Throughout the primary and runoff, some Republicans worried that Paxton would be an electoral liability for down-ballot candidates. Cornyn allies put out a memo in early May listing a number of seats they believed Paxton would put at risk as the nominee, including the 34th District.

Tijerina, a former Democrat who defected to the GOP in December 2024, downplayed those concerns this week.

“South Texas is not moving. First of all, the big question is, what have the Democrats done for the Hispanic people?” Tijerina said after his rally with Paxton. “Which is, in the last few years, absolutely nothing.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.