LUBBOCK, Texas — On the day a sitting president landed in their town for the first time in 34 years, people waited for hours in lines that stretched for blocks in this reliably red city.
But this crowd on the east side of the city wasn’t waiting for President Donald Trump. They wanted to see Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.
“We’re all closet Democrats,” said Dr. Tim Jones, 66, an emergency room physician, laughing and gesturing to a sea of people around him in line before Talarico’s evening rally. “There are a lot of people who are finally upset at gas prices, diesel prices, inflation, lies, the war, all of it. It’s the corruption, tearing down part of the White House to build this vanity ballroom. I mean, it’s just pathetic. So people finally are deciding, ‘We’ll get out to vote.’”
Less than 3 miles away, a similar scene unfolded for Trump, who held a rally at the expansive Lubbock Memorial Civic Center as he sought to boost the Republican Senate candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton. In a new move, Trump brought out his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who won one of the biggest rounds of applause of everyone Trump introduced.
The dueling rallies and the fount of voter enthusiasm in this city of fewer than 300,000 underscored the high stakes in a Senate race that has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in spending and presents the biggest threat in years to the Republican Party’s grip on bright-red Texas. With just a week until the election, Talarico has held a narrow lead in polling. His trip to Republican turf is a sign he is trying to win Republican crossover votes he needs for a victory.
At their rally Tuesday, Democrats urged supporters to seize a once-in-a-generation chance to flip a statewide seat after three decades of Republican control. They panned the economy, high gas prices and closures of rural hospitals. Talarico repeatedly cast Paxton as corrupt and as a Trump sycophant. He called out Elon Musk, saying the tech billionaire — who has significant business interests in Texas — is trying to buy his own personal senator after having thrown more than $150 million into Paxton’s candidacy.
“We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis. But we can change that in this election, in this state, in this race,” Talarico said. “We are running against the embodiment of this corrupt system. We are running against the most corrupt politician in Texas.”
Republicans, meanwhile, showcased Trump, who cast Talarico as a Second Amendment-hating, meat-loathing extremist out of touch with everyday Texans. Minutes into his speech, Trump referred to him derisively as “Talafreako.”
He mentioned Talarico’s disappearance from the campaign trail earlier in the month, when he said he had the flu. Trump said he believed the reason either was a “mental problem” or he was “sick to his stomach” from eating meat.
While there are far more Republicans in Texas than Democrats, Republican strategists say they view the contest as a real fight at a moment when Americans are feeling anger and dissatisfaction toward Washington. Paxton has also battled his own personal scandals, creating a drag on his numbers. And Texas Republicans are still beset by infighting after a nasty primary campaign, when Trump endorsed Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, who had the backing of much of the party’s establishment.
Paxton has leaned on Trump’s advocacy. Trump has visited Texas three times this month, holding a pair of rallies Tuesday.
“Is it not awesome and amazing to be onstage with the greatest president in my lifetime?” Paxton told the crowd as Trump stood behind him and looked on.
Paxton said he spent the day with Trump, starting with a campaign stop in Corpus Christi. He said that as they were arriving in Lubbock, Trump told him he doesn’t normally do two rallies for any candidate: “He said, ‘I must really like you.’”
“Mr. President, I really like you, too,” Paxton said.
In a potential sign that Republicans were looking to attract a greater cross-section of voters, Trump handed Rubio a speaking part at the rally, as he did earlier in the day in Corpus Christi. Rubio has generally held higher approval ratings than others in the administration, including Trump. He is also a possible candidate in the 2028 presidential election.
Rubio, who had stayed clear of midterm campaign rallies until Tuesday, took the microphone and kept it brief.
“Our enemies are weaker. Our country is stronger, and our people are safer because Donald J. Trump is the president of the United States,” he said at the Lubbock rally.
Trump called Talarico an “anti-gun extremist” and said he and Paxton are the only things standing between Talarico’s becoming a senator.
“They’ve got a lot of bad people,” Trump said of Democrats. “That’s why we can’t afford to lose to some freak.”
But Talarico has embraced the moniker, calling out that he had never seen so many “Talafreakos” packed into one room.
“Lubbock is ready for change,” he declared to deafening screams. More than 4,000 people signed up to attend the event Tuesday night, according to his campaign. “They are scared. They are terrified. They see what we see — that we’re about to win this election.”
