In the final days of the midterm campaigns, Republicans and Democrats descend on a divided Texan border city

Stakes are high in the most expensive senate race in the history of the US, writes Hannah McCarthy

Texas State Rep Gina Hinojosa and Democratic senate candidate James Talarico in San Antonio on Sunday. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

As the most expensive senate race in the US on record nears an end, the duelling senate campaigns of Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton decamped to San Antonio on Sunday for one last push before election day.

At an outdoor amphitheatre in downtown San Antonio, locals lining up to enter Talarico’s concert file past a large inflated puppet featuring businessman Elon Musk as Paxton’s puppetmaster. Musk, who has significant business interests in Texas, has poured over $158m into the Senate race, where Paxton’s chequered past involving fraud investigations and impeachment proceedings, as well as the cost of living crisis, has dampened Republican voter enthusiasm in the traditionally deep red state.

Lying less than 250km from the US border with Mexico, San Antonio has one of the highest Latino populations among American cities, as well as a significant number of veterans with links to the nearby US military bases.

Around 40% of Texans are of Latino heritage and by a small majority they voted in the 2024 elections for US president Donald Trump, with southern Texan border towns and cities swinging heavily towards the Republican nominee for the first time.

Paxton, the 63-year-old attorney general for Texas, is tasked with maintaining that support among Latino voters, many of whom are religious and saw common ground with the Republican party on issues such as abortion and marriage equality in the last election, as well as border security.

Meanwhile, 37-year-old state representative and Presbyterian pastor Talarico is striving to win back Latino votes whose communities are under pressure from rising prices and have been frequently targeted by violent raids and mass deportations after the Trump administration introduced a hardline immigration policy in 2025.

At the Talarico rally, San Antonio local Tiffany says she is fed-up with “everything” and says the prices for gas and groceries are “crazy”. She is also concerned about raids and deportations spearheaded by ICE.

“We have two girls who live with us whose mom is undocumented, and she doesn’t go anywhere, and they’re scared because she hasn’t been in Mexico in over 25 years.”

Tiffany is attending the rally with her daughter Reagan who says even Maga supporters are “tired of what’s going on”. Polling indicates that some have switched their vote for the senate to Talarico, but many are still voting for Greg Abbot, the incumbent governor who is running for a fourth term. Texas has early voting and Tiffany says she has been checking the numbers of votes mailed in every day.

As is increasingly common across American towns and cities, social circles in San Antonio have become increasingly divided along political lines.

“I don’t have Republican friends,” says Tiffany. “I think it’s common for people who are decent to not associate themselves anymore with that.”

Her daughter Reagan says there were people at her school who have undocumented family members “and they would still be like: ‘Well, Trump, he’s going to do good for our country’.”

Tiffany, Reagan and Jordin at James Talarico's rally in San Antonio. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy

A 20-minute drive away, a Republican rally is taking place at the same time on the outskirts of San Antonio. In pick-up trucks and large SUVs, several hundred Republicans have arrived at The Angry Elephant, named after the Republican party’s logo.

The interior of the bar is decorated with American flags, T-shirts saying “only you can prevent communism”, and photos of senior Republican figures including Trump, Richard Nixon, and Nancy and Ronald Regan. The only Democrat who features in the bar is former US president Bill Clinton in a photo with Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern he was involved with while in office.

Wearing a Texan flag shirt and holding a “Paxton for Senate” placard, Monica Dorazio agrees that Republicans and Democrats don’t tend to mix in San Antonio. 

She says the Democratic Party is “very scary” to her and that “we could lose what we’ve known of freedom if the Democrats take over”. Dorazio, who is in her mid-60s, says she is an enthusiastic Paxton voter.

“He busted open one of the biggest online sex trafficking organisations,” she says. “He’s good at going after vicious, dirty people that need to be arrested. And for that, I respect him greatly. I believe he stood up for the rights of Texas and protecting the overreach of the federal government coming into Texas. He’s been a fighter to maintain the freedoms that we have known and to maintain the break between state and federal [government].”

When asked what would make America less free, Dorazio responds, “if you don’t follow the Constitution and the rule of law in this nation, they’re going to tear it down. And what do we have? We’ll have mayhem, just like they got going on in France.”

Student Xavier Gonzalez at the Republican rally for Ken Paxton in San Antonio on Sunday. Picture: Hannah McCarthy

College student Xavier Gonzalez says: “In a city like San Antonio, which is mostly Democrat voting, a lot more young people, at least Latino-wise, will vote for Talarico, but outside of San Antonio and like other major cities like Austin, it’s definitely going to be Paxton for Republican voting.”

If Latino voters switch from Republican to Democrat in the elections, Gonzalez says it will be driven by Trump’s handling of foreign affairs and ICE raids in Latino communities. “The current administration is overstepping its boundaries when it comes to the treatment of its citizens, especially those who recently immigrated and settled down here,” says Gonzalez.

The Texan student says the Iran war is “a useless war” and that the US “should not be spending money overseas in any foreign conflicts”.

He feels that way about other wars including Ukraine. I ask Gonzalez if he was disappointed when Trump started the war in Iran. “100%,” he says.

“I’d say we’re only doing it for other nations’ interests instead of our own.”

And is Gonzalez enthusiastic about voting for Paxton for Senate? “I mean, iffy, to be honest,” he replies.

Nursing student John Tobar, aged 29, has friends and family that vote Democrat. “We have disagreements all the time,” he says, adding that they “don’t see the vision that I guess we see in terms of the future”.

“No country can challenge us. They can’t take us down because we’re too powerful for them. But they can destroy us from the inside. They’re smart. That’s exactly what they’re trying to do.”

John Tobar, 29, at a rally for Ken Paxton in San Antonio on Sunday. Picture: Hannah McCarthy

Tobar says he and his family are Catholic and support the Republican Party’s position on social issues: “I don’t believe that abortion should be a thing because I think that if someone’s going to complain about mass genocide in Gaza, they’re gonna have to look in the mirror and say ‘what about the mass genocide in the in the womb?’”

Trump’s net approval is lower in every US state than it was when he took office in January 2025. According to polling conducted by the University of Houston, 54% of Texas voters have an unfavourable opinion of Trump and 46% have a favourable opinion.

The Texan ratings are, however, still more favourable for Trump than his national ratings: 36% of likely US voters said that they approved of Trump’s performance as president, while 59 percent said that they disapproved.

Standing outside The Angry Elephant after Paxton’s speech, Tobar says he remains an enthusiastic Trump supporter: “I think everything's going in the right direction. I think Paxton is going to win the Senate race,” he says. “I appreciate President Trump and what he's done."

The long-standing tradition that US presidents served no more than two terms became part of the US Constitution in 1951, but Tobar says he thinks it would be constitutional for Trump to seek a third term. He says: "We never really had a term limit when our nation was created.”