US midterms: Race narrows between a ‘radical Democrat’ and ‘the most corrupt politician in Texas’

Murn’s Cafe, directly across the street from The Spur Hotel, closes at three on Saturday and after that, Archer City is in wind-down mode for the weekend. Often, a forlorn wind comes whistling through its wide boulevard, dusty in summer, unforgivably cutting in winter but on this Halloween weekend, the afternoon is balmy. For decades, the four-way traffic light suspended from a cable at the centre of the crossing point between Center and East Main was Archer City’s symbol of timelessness. It was one of the many artefacts and buildings immortalised on celluloid in 1971 when Peter Bogdanovich filmed The Last Picture Show, an account of small-town restlessness, hopes dashed and love mislaid, shot in magnificent noir, earning eight Oscar nominations and delivering to cinemas across the world a searing portrait of an obscure Texan town. The Royal Theater – the picture house in the title – was later destroyed in a fire but its facade, across the street from the American Legion, has been restored. That film, half a century old now, conferred a kind of Hollywood immortality on what is a farming and oil heartland, while Archer City local Larry McMurtry, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, spent decades writing fictive accounts of Texas life that are beloved across the world. A booth in The Dairy Queen, on the edge of town, was his unofficial office. After McMurtry died in 2021, he left behind an extraordinary collection of books, estimated at 400,000, in a series of stores he had commandeered in the town, determined to change the perception of the region as a books desert. For a while, the books languished behind locked doors but a year ago, a group of volunteers got together to open Booked Up Inc. They host local writing groups and at weekends continue to sort through the vast trove. News of the reopening has attracted book collectors from throughout the state and country.READ MORE“A customer from Lubbock, Reese Sawyer, finds a book he’s been hunting for months: a first edition of Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux,” wrote George Getschow, the director of the Larry McMurtry Center, in the October edition of Texas Highways.Larry McMurtry and his wife Faye Kesey walk out of the Royal Theater after a screening of The Last Picture Show on August 9th, 2012, in Archer City. Photograph: Michael Paulsen/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images “With a limited first printing of only 5,000 copies in 1981, the novel has developed a cult following. Scoring a $600 collectible for just $25 reveals why book hunters are still swarming Larry’s legendary bookshop. On a bottom shelf in Larry’s Africana section, I discover a literary gem worth more than $10,000 underneath a forgotten stack of South African government bulletins: one of 300 signed and numbered copies of Congo by Irma Stern, a famous South African artist. The book contains black-and-white prints and drawings the artist made while traveling through the Congo in 1942. There are only a few book dealers in the world who possess what one auction house calls ‘The Collector’s Holy Grail’.”It’s another of Archer City’s distinguishing curiosities: a farming town (pop 1,600) has, on its main street, one of the biggest and most eclectic book shops in the entire United States. When we call in on Saturday afternoon, Getschow is in the shop, along with other volunteers. They’re beyond friendly and escort us through what is an overwhelming city of books.What are the US midterms?midterms stock image donald trump Our visual guide brings you through who is being elected, the states to watch, what the opinion polls say and what it all means for US president Donald Trump. “I look back very fondly on living here,” Jason Scheller tells me when we talk about Archer City. He lives half an hour away in Wichita Falls (pop 100,000) now but is among the group of people helping out each weekend.“Everybody knows everyone. I grew up here in the 80s and we’d get on our bikes and ride around town and when the street lights came on, you came home. But you could call around to anyone’s house, and they’d have food for you. It was a very tight community, and I don’t think that has changed much. At the the Larry McMurtry Literary Center in Archer City, Texas. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni/The Irish Times “This town has literally not changed since Larry’s movie came out. You see the same stuff now that is in the opening scene. Most of these buildings are the exact same buildings that were here. It’s a town that’s sort of stuck in time.”It is precisely that vision of Texas which Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee in a Senate election race that won’t quickly be forgotten, has placed at the epicentre of his campaign to defeat James Talarico, the progressive Democratic candidate from Austin. On Saturday morning, Paxton held a rally in Cullen Yards, on the fringes of Fort Worth. For over an hour, a series of state legislators gave short, punchy speeches that presented the Texas Senate election, on course to become the most expensive non-presidential political race in US history, as an elemental battle to preserve the soul and values of Texas. A crowd of several hundred sat or stood around the room and listened as Paxton asked them to compare his record as an aggressively conservative state attorney general who had successfully sued the Biden administration over one hundred times to Talarico: “the most radical Democrat to run for state office in Texas”.Republican US Senate candidate Ken Paxton speaks during a campaign event at Cullen Yards on October 31st, 2026, in Fort Worth, Texas. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni/The Irish Times “James Talarico has a plan for your money,” he told them. “It just doesn’t include you. He is a radical who never met a tax increase he didn’t love. He wants to tax your tips, your overtime and he wants to tax your social security. He is a Democratic socialist just like AOC and New York mayor Mamdani. He said that Mamdani is a template for future American politicians. Can you believe that? James Talarico is a vegan who hates meat cos – guess what – meat consumption supposedly causes climate change. In Texas that’s not a campaign, that’s a cry for help.”Paxton is, in many ways, an outlier in the contemporary American political era of performative polish – creased in appearance and almost anti-performative in his delivery, with a soft, flat speaking voice, in a land teeming with richly accented baritone. Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton over John Cornyn, the incumbent senator with two decades of experience, has unquestionably complicated this crucial seat for the Republicans. Talarico, a state congressman and Presbyterian seminarian, is slight of stature, has an angelic expression and a persuasive, unflinching speaking style. He is also a formidable and canny fundraiser and not afraid to mix it. He repeatedly refers to Paxton as “the most corrupt politician in Texas history”. Among the Austinites Talarico would represent is part-time Lone Star State resident, Trump ally and trillionaire Elon Musk, who has spent $168 million in boosting Paxton’s campaign. Musk regularly assails Talarico on X, the social media platform he owns. “Talarico will vote to trans your kids,” he wrote on Sunday, his latest observation. The attacks, and Musk’s limitless financial muscle, has helped Talarico to frame the election in biblical terms.How we’re covering the US midtermsFollow Irish Times Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan and video journalist Chris Maddaloni in the final week of the campaign as they report from key battlegrounds and gauge the mood of voters across the US. More US midterm election coverage here.“We are going up against our own Goliaths: those billionaire mega-donors, those corporate special interests, the entire Washington, DC, establishment,” he said at a recent rally.But to Paxton’s supporters, Talarico is himself a manifestation of that establishment: a socialist masquerading as a centrist – and a threat to traditional Texan values.“Death”, Kim Carter, who is attending the rally, tells me when asked what she believes a Talarico win would mean.“Death to Texas. There’s nothing to him. There is no reality to him. He is a puppet for the Democrats, and he is just doing what they are telling him to do. There is no substance to him and what he is coming out with is not what Texas, or America, is about. When you talk about a six-gender God and he’s for all this mutilation of children and the things he stands for: there is no way. The only reason he has gotten as far as he has is that the Dems are putting hundreds of millions into his race.”Kim Carter has known Paxton since he started out in law in Collin County and is dismissive of the adverts run by Talarico boosters that feature a state impeachment charge over bribery allegations, infidelity allegations and a bizarre episode involving the pocketing of an expensive Mont Blanc pen belonging to a colleague.“It’s mudslinging. Everybody is going to pull out nasty whatever about a political personality. He’s not perfect. We are well aware about the situations in his personal life. But that is his personal life. And if we really want to pick out politicians who don’t have that, you are not going to find too many. When it comes down to character and really having a proven track record of what he has done as a politician for Texas, it’s hands down [Paxton].”It has been an extraordinary race, with $573 million already spent, according to Ad Impact, and some 7.8 million Texans casting their votes in the early voting period. Much of that money has gone on television advertising as the respective campaigns seek to reach across the vast land mass encompassing the Democratic urban strongholds in Texan cities as well as the less-penetrable constituents in central and west Texas. Democratic candidate James Talarico takes to the stage during a midterm campaign rally in Dallas, Texas, on October 29th, 2026. Photograph: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times The border, the inflated cost of living, gas prices at the stations are all surface talking points in an election in which the Democrats believe could bring about the long-awaited bluing of the state. When it comes to politics, Archer – city and county – conforms with the identity of rural Texas. It sits snugly in the vast blanket of Republican redness that stretches across the north of the state. In 2016, 88 per cent of Archer County’s votes went to Donald Trump. In 2020, it was 89.5 per cent. In 2024, the vote edged into 90 per cent favourability for Trump. Archer was Republican before Donald Trump and will remain so after he is gone.The drive across from Dallas to Archer City takes just two hours. But they are worlds apart.In summertime, when the sky is dazzling, the countryside can look breathtaking. On this subdued overcast weekend when October is giving way, the abiding impression is of a tough, reticent land. Field after field of livestock, of oil pumps, of lonesome ranches interspersed with small, quiet towns. Many polls had Talarico leading by anything up to six points, but that has narrowed in recent days, with a Texas Southern University release showing a 49 per cent to 47 per cent lead. And over the weekend, the Talarico campaign reported that its internal polling may not have fully absorbed the immovable sentiments of traditional Texan Republicans who support Trump. In other words, the Talarico campaign has no way of guessing how many voters here in the Texan interior will mosey down to the local polling booths on election day and, with no drama and fewer words, vote as they have always voted.In Archer City, a few people were happy to speak informally about the election but shied away from the idea of being quoted in a newspaper and were absolutely against being named. The common view was that they would be voting Republican, because their part of the state is Red and that the Democratic manifesto runs contrary to everything that Texas means to them. One rancher said that he believes these midterms to be more consequential than the presidential elections because of the ramifications for Texas if the Republican Party loses control.Kim Carter attends Republican Ken Paxton’s rally at Cullen Yards in Fort Worth, Texas. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni/The Irish Times “There are a lot of people who say: ‘Don’t California my Texas,’” Jason Scheller said in explaining the general view in this part of the state.“People come from all around to live here. And it’s partly because the economy tends to do better here. People tend to look out for each other, there’s more of a focus on family and traditional values and ways of doing things which appeal to a lot of people. My wife, for instance, is from Michigan, she came down here for a job and we got married. Many of our friends are from Texas but also as far away as the Philippines. “Texas appeals to many people – it’s cheaper to live here, it is safer. So, I think when people around here vote, that’s what they are trying to preserve. As someone who is from here, you want to try and protect that. They vote on their beliefs. They are often religious. They are good people. It’s an incredibly friendly place. And that, I think, is what we don’t want to lose.”