Trump and Talarico Hold Dueling Rallies Less Than Three Miles Apart in Lubbock as the Senate Race Enters Its Final Week

President Donald Trump took the stage at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center on Tuesday evening, his second Texas rally of the day after an afternoon stop in Corpus Christi, and brought Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton up with him shortly into the program, praising him as the greatest attorney general in Texas history, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal's live reporting from the hall. Paxton told the crowd he had spent the day traveling with Trump through both rallies. "Mr. President, I really like you, too," Paxton said, according to the Avalanche-Journal.

Less than three miles away in East Lubbock, Democratic nominee James Talarico's rally at the Fiesta Center started late as organizers kept letting people into a venue that had reached capacity. Lines stretched more than five blocks around the building, and a Talarico campaign official estimated about 1,000 people were unable to get inside, the Avalanche-Journal reported. The Senate seat the two men are contesting could help decide which party controls the chamber, and recent polling has kept the race at the edge of the margin of error: an Emerson College Polling/Nexstar survey released Oct. 22 put Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, inside its 3.1-point margin of error, while a Cook Political Report battleground poll released Oct. 21 had Talarico ahead 49 to 44.

The turnout argument ran through both rooms. Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, warming up the Civic Center crowd in his home district, said more than 45,000 Republican voters in Lubbock County alone had not yet voted early as of Tuesday and warned against sitting the election out. Trump, for his part, pressed energy production and AI data center development, telling the crowd Texas should not turn data centers away. Early voting runs through Friday, Oct. 30, and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.