'$5,000 and Latino Outreach: How Republicans Are Trying to Hold Texas in the Final Weekend
In Peñitas, a Hidalgo County Republican precinct chair knocks on doors with a simple closing pitch — keep Congress, get $5,000 — as Republicans fan out across the Rio Grande Valley to defend ground their own polling says is slipping: Talarico leads Paxton 49.2 to 46.5 and Abbott leads Hinojosa just 49.5 to 46.8 in the FiftyPlusOne averages, with Democrats ahead in the Valley's 34th, 15th and 28th House districts.
The Republican ground game in Texas has a price tag on it. In Peñitas, along the Rio Grande, Hidalgo County Republican precinct chair Art Echavarria knocked on doors with leaflets for the GOP ticket and a closing line he calls his 'carrot,' according to the USA Today Texas file published Sunday, read in full this cycle: 'If we keep the Congress, what do we get?' — 'You get $5,000,' he told one voter, invoking President Donald Trump's promise, first introduced at the Republicans' Dallas midterm convention, of $5,000 checks if the party holds the House and Senate. Republicans are facing tight races in a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since the 1990s, per the account: Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Senate nominee, and Gov. Greg Abbott are both locked into tight races, and Trump — who won Texas with roughly 56 percent in 2024 and visited twice in two weeks in October, rallying in San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Lubbock — has fanned out with Speaker Mike Johnson and local volunteers to keep the state red.
The slippage is measurable, and it runs through Latino voters. Trump took 55 percent of Texas Latino voters in 2024 — a Republican record, up 13 points from 2020 and 27 from 2016, per Texas Politics Project data carried in the account — but support is slipping now, and the redrawn South Texas maps built on that shift are under pressure: Democrats lead recent polling in the Rio Grande Valley's 34th, 15th and 28th Congressional Districts, with Tejano star Bobby Pulido leading Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz in the 15th, and Tano Tijerina trailing Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in the 28th, per the polls cited there. Statewide, the FiftyPlusOne averages carried in the account put Democrat James Talarico ahead of Paxton 49.2 to 46.5 — Talarico raised more than $146 million through Oct. 14 per FEC reports, against Paxton's $22 million, while Elon Musk has contributed $158 million to Paxton's general-election effort — and Abbott ahead of Democrat Gina Hinojosa just 49.5 to 46.8. 'The challenge in this cycle has been that there's been a real enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans,' said Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin, per the account.
So both parties are walking the Valley. Republican canvassers from Team Red chapters and the Hidalgo County party are working Harlingen, McAllen, Brownsville and small towns like Peñitas and La Joya; local candidate Celeste Cabrera-Huff's team aims at 1,000 doors a week, and the Abbott campaign aims at upwards of 5 million doors statewide, with a new peer-to-peer app, per the account. Abbott himself went from Amarillo to Laredo on Oct. 30, the final day of early voting. Democrats answer that the ground has shifted under the GOP: 'ICE is running rampant, terrorizing communities and people,' Hidalgo County Democrats Chairman Richard Gonzales said, per the account, arguing kitchen-table costs now cut against Republicans 'about 100 times worse.' One Republican canvasser, Sylvia Cardenas of Mission, summed up her own side's mood, per the account: 'I'm kind of scared. I'm worried with this election.' Election Day is Tuesday.
