Paxton and Talarico Take Dueling Border Tours Through South Texas as Senate Race Tightens

Ken Paxton and James Talarico spent the past week fighting over the same stretch of Texas border, and they came away with completely different messages.

Paxton, the Republican Attorney General turned U.S. Senate nominee, held his first campaign rally Tuesday night in McAllen, a "Rally in the Valley" at a local brewery called University Draft House. He brought two GOP recruits with him: Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina and Army veteran and attorney Eric Flores, according to the Texas Tribune. Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council, endorsed Paxton at the event, CBS News reported.

Paxton's pitch was simple. He spent years suing the Biden administration over border policy, and he wants credit for it. He told supporters in McAllen, "So, my view on immigration is, we need a secure border. We need to protect our country, and we need to make sure that we take care of America first," according to CBS News. He also went after Talarico's record on taxes, saying he'd lower them while his opponent would raise them.

Talarico, a Democratic state representative from Austin, took a different route, literally. His "Frontera Tour" ran five days and roughly 750 miles, stopping in El Paso, Marfa, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo, McAllen and Edinburg, according to CBS News. In Big Bend, he stood with a bipartisan group of local officials to pitch what he called a "common sense border security plan," built around hiring more Border Patrol agents, more immigration judges and more surveillance technology.

"Most Texans don't want open borders. Most Texans don't want this corrupt border wall. What we want, what we need is common-sense border security, and we need it today," Talarico told reporters, per CBS News.

One notable moment came in Terrell County, where Republican Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, at a news conference in Sanderson, criticized the Trump administration's plan to install a four-foot vehicle barrier in parts of Big Bend. Cleveland endorsed Talarico's border plan but told CBS News Texas by phone he's not endorsing Talarico himself, and won't back Paxton either. A Republican sheriff distanced himself from his own party's federal barrier plan while still refusing to cross party lines on the Senate race. Border security opinions in these communities don't split neatly along party lines.

The Political Terrain Has Shifted

Both campaigns are operating in a different environment than the one that decided the 2024 election. Trump carried 14 of 18 counties within 20 miles of the border in 2024, flipping the historically Democratic Rio Grande Valley, according to the Texas Tribune and CBS News. Record illegal crossings under the Biden administration were a driving issue at the time.

That's largely gone now. Border crossings have dropped sharply, and immigration has slipped down the list of voter concerns, per the Tribune's reporting. Affordability and inflation have taken its place, particularly among Latino voters in Texas who have grown more skeptical of the GOP since 2024.

Clifford Young, a pollster and political science professor at Texas A&M's Bush School, told CBS News Texas the border stops from both candidates reflect how much is riding on South Texas. "It's critically important, obviously," Young said. "I see it as a canary in the coal mine. Indeed, in 2024, the critical issue was the border. Republicans and Trump took Texas, really carried Latinos much more strongly than in past races because of that issue." Young added the deciding question now is affordability, "affordability, affordability," though border concerns haven't disappeared entirely.

Talarico has also tried to tie Paxton to the Trump administration's deportation enforcement, which the Tribune reported has resulted in three deaths involving federal agents over a nine-day span. Talarico is using that to position himself as favoring enforcement paired with what he calls a more humane approach, distancing himself from the "open borders" label Republicans have tried to pin on Democrats.

Paxton, for his part, is leaning on his legal record. He sued the Biden administration repeatedly over border policy, and CBS News noted that Biden-era numbers showed record illegal immigration during that stretch. Paxton wants voters in South Texas to remember that fight, even as the underlying border numbers have dropped since Trump returned to office.

Polls show the race is neck and neck, according to CBS News Texas, leaving plenty open. Whether Talarico's affordability-forward messaging outweighs Paxton's law-and-order and tax-cut pitch among South Texas Latino voters is untested territory. So is whether Republican-aligned law enforcement figures like Sheriff Cleveland, willing to break with Trump's own barrier plans but not with their party on Senate, represent a broader pattern or a one-off. Both campaigns are expected to keep working the border corridor through the fall as they build toward November.