The Texas Senate Race Is Now the Most Expensive Non-Presidential Contest on Record, at Roughly $544.5 Million in Ads
By the time Texas votes Tuesday, the Talarico-Paxton Senate race will have drawn roughly $544.5 million in advertising — the most ever for a non-presidential contest — including roughly $150 million or more in independent spending tied to Elon Musk backing Ken Paxton.
The Texas Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has become the most expensive non-presidential contest on record, with roughly $544.5 million in ad buys, according to the spending account read by the desk this cycle, which cites ad-tracking firm AdImpact's count as carried in the Wall Street Journal's campaign-trail coverage. The figure counts advertising across the race, not the candidates' own fundraising, which this station has reported separately from the campaign filings.
The largest single current runs through one donor. Independent transfers tied to Elon Musk supporting Paxton total roughly $150 to $158 million in the account's range, and the Journal reported Musk contributed more than $160 million to Republican-aligned groups backing Paxton — figures the desks report as the trackers published them, not as a single reconciled total. Talarico made that money his closing argument in San Antonio on Sunday: 'He is trying to buy Texas,' he told several hundred supporters at The Espee, in the Journal's account. 'Texas is not for sale.'
The spending record lands on a race the polls cannot separate: public surveys show Talarico narrowly ahead and inside the margin of error, with the final New York Times/Siena poll at 50 to 43 and a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 points. A Talarico win would be the first Democratic statewide victory in Texas in more than 30 years. Polls are open Tuesday 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.; the most expensive Senate race in American history will be decided by the Texans who walk into vote centers, not by the ads that followed them there.
