Texas hasn’t sent a Democrat to the US Senate since 1988.

Fox News put a number on the screen that left one of its own hosts asking how any of it was possible.

And the answer traces back to a grudge the Republican establishment has nursed against Donald Trump since the spring.

Ainsley Earhardt Asked the Question Nobody on Set Wanted to Answer

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt put the network’s new Texas poll in front of OutKick founder Clay Travis and told viewers that Democrat James Talarico led Republican Ken Paxton by seven points.

“How is that possible?” Earhardt asked.

Fox’s published likely-voter numbers came in tighter, at 51% to 49%, inside the survey’s three-point margin of error. But either figure describes the same problem in a state Republicans have carried for a generation.

Travis blamed complacency. “Texans have to wake up,” he said, before offering a theory about the money: “I think that Republicans have held their proverbial, you know, cash until the last moment, and they now are delivering overwhelming amounts of dollars into the playing field.”

Earhardt then read off the figures that explain the poll better than any pundit could. She cited a $122 million Republican ad blitz, and she said Talarico had $68.6 million back in June compared to $9.2 million for Paxton.

That gap let Talarico own Texas television all summer, in her words, “because he essentially was unopposed at that point.”

Travis also went at how Talarico sells himself. “He’s telling all the left-wingers who are giving him money that he’s their guy,” Travis said. “He’s tellin’ all the Texans, ‘Oh, I am just a moderate voice here.'”

Fox’s own pollsters backed him up on that one. The survey found 100% of Democrats who identify with the Democratic Socialists of America lining up behind the self-described moderate.

The $90 Million Attack Campaign That Came Before the Rescue

So why did a Republican nominee in Texas spend a whole summer with nobody defending him on the air?

Start with the primary. Paxton beat US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in the 2026 runoff by 28 points, according to the Texas Tribune, after President Trump endorsed him.

Cornyn was the lead Republican negotiator on Joe Biden’s 2022 gun control bill. And he spent years floating deals that would hand amnesty to illegal aliens covered by DACA.

Republican voters fired him. But the party’s Washington wing did not take it well.

Punchbowl News reported that Senate Republican allies spent $90 million across the primary and runoff telling Texans about Paxton’s ethics, with ads calling him a crook, a thief, and an adulterer. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called Paxton “scandal-plagued,” according to The Texan, and stuck with Cornyn even after Trump made his pick.

Then the same people needed those same voters to turn around and support the man they had just spent nine figures tearing down.

And for months, the cavalry stayed home. Punchbowl reported the National Republican Senatorial Committee isn’t running coordinated ads with Paxton. The Texan reported that Senate Republicans close to Thune hesitated to back him financially.

Cornyn, for his part, has mostly talked about what the race costs everybody else. “The money that is being spent there means it can’t be spent in New Hampshire or Michigan or Alaska or Maine or Ohio,” he told Punchbowl.

MAGA donors moved first. The Washington Times reported that Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc, put $10 million into Texas television and digital ads, and that Elon Musk’s PAC reported $1.6 million in early spending.

It would be easy to say the establishment simply prefers a Democrat in that seat over a MAGA senator. But that gets ahead of the facts. Texas PAC, the group tied to Thune, has now spent $131 million, according to the Texas Tribune.

The trouble is the calendar. Money that shows up in September can’t buy back June, July, and August.

Chuck Schumer Handled His Own Primary Upset Very Differently

Look at Michigan. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recruited US Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI) for the open Senate seat there, CBS News reported, and left-wing challenger Abdul El-Sayed beat her anyway.

El-Sayed backs single-payer healthcare and the Green New Deal. He is about as far from Schumer’s preferred candidate as a Democrat gets.

Schumer praised him within hours. Stevens offered her support the next morning. Nobody held a grudge fundraiser, and nobody spent the summer telling reporters the seat was a waste of money.

Democrats closed ranks around their insurgent. Republicans in Washington made theirs wait.

And the Fox poll shows what the waiting cost. The network found 96% of MAGA Republicans backing Paxton, but 22% of non-MAGA Republicans siding with Talarico. Those are the voters who sat through $90 million of Republican-funded ads calling their own nominee a crook.

There’s a longer game here too. The Thune wing of the party has never hidden its wish to get back to the Republican Party that existed before Trump, and 2028 is the first real chance to try. A Trump-endorsed nominee struggling in Texas makes a handy exhibit for that argument, whoever built the struggle.

Earhardt asked how a Democrat could lead in Texas. The Republican establishment paid for most of the answer before the general election even started.

Sources: Mediaite, “Fox Host Stunned By Network Poll In Texas Senate Race, Asks ‘How is That Possible?'”; Fox News, “Fox News Poll: It’s a Lone Star Senate showdown between Talarico, Paxton”; Texas Tribune, “Thune, Senate GOP rain cash on Texas to boost Ken Paxton”; Punchbowl News, “Texas PAC pours even more cash into the Lone Star State”; The Texan, “National Republican Spending Pours In to Support Paxton in Tight U.S. Senate Race”; Washington Times, “Trump’s PAC unleashes first wave of general election spending with $10M ad buy in Texas”; CBS News, “Abdul El-Sayed projected to win Michigan Democratic Senate primary, defeating Haley Stevens”