AUSTIN (The Texas Tribune) – State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, raised a staggering $30 million from April through June, his campaign announced Wednesday \u2014 more than triple the amount brought in by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton.<\/p>\n
The haul is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year, Talarico\u2019s campaign said, noting he has now raised more than $70 million from over 1.5 million donations, including 780,000 individual contributors, since launching his bid in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honored to stand alongside more than 780,000 neighbors who are tired of being divided into teams \u2014 red versus blue, left versus right, rural versus urban,\u201d Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement. \u201cWe are uniting Texans onto one team to change this broken, corrupt political system and bring down costs for working families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday, Paxton\u2019s campaign said he had raised over $9 million in the second quarter of the year \u2014 a personal best and the largest amount announced by any non-incumbent Senate GOP candidate this cycle, per his campaign. Both campaigns had yet to file their second-quarter reports, due July 15 to the Federal Election Commission, identifying their donors and how much cash they have on hand. <\/p>\n
Talarico\u2019s mammoth fundraising has boosted Democratic hopes that he could become the first Democrat to turn a Senate seat blue since 1988, particularly against Paxton, the Republican nominee who has historically posted relatively weak fundraising totals. Some of Talarico\u2019s fundraising edge could be neutralized, however, by a recent Supreme Court ruling that empowers Paxton to tap into the national GOP\u2019s deep coffers.<\/p>\n
Recent public polling has found the race essentially tied.<\/p>\n
Talarico\u2019s second-quarter haul easily outpaced those of Texas\u2019 recent Democratic Senate nominees, including the $10.4 million raised by former U.S. Rep. Beto O\u2019Rourke in the same period in 2018. Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred raised $7.9 million from April through June 2024 on his way to besting O\u2019Rourke\u2019s then-record fundraising. <\/p>\n
Talarico broke records in the first three months of this year, too, when he took in a whopping $27 million \u2014 more than any other federal candidate in the country over that stretch. <\/p>\n
\u201cRunning a truly competitive campaign in a state with nearly three times the population of any other battleground state will take unprecedented resources,\u201d Talarico campaign manager Seth Krasne said in a statement. \u201cWhile the Supreme Court creates new loopholes for billionaires and special interests to prop up their puppets, we\u2019re going to continue building a movement to take back power for working people. Because Big Money is nothing compared to People Power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talarico has sworn off corporate PAC donations, and his campaign said 97% of donations to his bid were $100 or less. The most common profession among his contributors, his campaign added, was teachers.<\/p>\n
Texas did not land on national Democrats’ initial list of top Senate targets this cycle, with Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio seen as the party’s prime pickup opportunities. But turmoil surrounding Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee in Maine, this week has sharpened the importance of Talarico’s campaign to Democrats’ quest to retake the Senate.<\/p>\n
Platner ended his bid Wednesday after a woman who dated him told Politico he raped her nearly five years ago and numerous Democrats called on him to drop out of the race. He has denied the allegation.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AUSTIN (The Texas Tribune) – State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, raised a staggering $30 million from April through June, his campaign announced Wednesday \u2014 more than triple the amount brought in by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton. The haul is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in … Continue reading James Talarico raises over $30 million in second quarter, campaign says, more than triple Ken Paxton\u2019s sum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1522340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-11 05:19:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1522340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522341,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522340\/revisions\/1522341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1522340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1522340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1522340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}