Everyone is Sick of Texas Political Ads

Why you are seeing all these Ken Paxton ads and why this is a sign of the GOP's Texas demise

If you watched football on television this weekend, you couldn't escape the Ken Paxton ads. There were two ads in particular that played all weekend: a misleading ad claiming that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico supports trans surgeries (we debunked this ad a few weeks ago) or an ad featuring Ken Paxton's ex-wife, Texas State Senator Angela Paxton, imploring voters to choose the whole Republican party ticket.

You couldn't escape these ads this weekend, even if you don't live in Texas. It's getting to the point where out of state normies are getting annoyed with it all. It's also likely backfiring on the entire Republican Party.

Typically, political ads are limited to local ad breaks. Typically there is one commercial break in a typical national tv block that is completely dedicated to local ads. So in non-election years, this is where you would see ads for your local tire or furniture stores. In election years, this is when you would see political ads for your state and local candidates.

But this year, the Texas Senate race has gone national. My guess is that the PACs running these ads got cheaper ad rates on national television broadcasts than the local slots, which is highly unusual. So if you live in Chicago, or Boston, you are just as likely to see a Ken Paxton ad as someone who lives in Houston or Dallas.

This is an incredibly inefficient use of campaign ad spends, and is probably a big part of the reason why Talarico is maintaining his polling lead over Paxton despite being incredibly outspent in overall campaign ad dollars.

Texas is a financial trap for Republicans this cycle. They're not used to Republicans trailing this late in the cycle and the Lone Star State features two of the biggest (read: most expensive) media markets in the country, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. Only California (LA and San Francisco) can say the same.

It's very expensive to run ads in Texas generally, and it gets even more expensive come election year.

This is why you're seeing Texas ads in Philly and Atlanta this year.

All of this has a big impact on both the Texas Senate race and the midterm elections nationally. Firstly, as mentioned before, Paxton is failing to close the gap with Talarico despite tens of millions more in ad spend. Talarico might be buying fewer ads, but they're more targeted, meaning he is hitting Texans with his own message more efficiently than the pro-Paxton PACs.

Secondly, every dollar spent by Republicans trying to hold Texas is a dollar not able to be spent in Ohio, Maine, Alaska, or even a place like Kansas. With gas prices where they are, the Democratic party suddenly finds itself with chances at winning races in even traditionally deep red places and the party has jumped at the chance to expand the map.

Just this week, Democrats began targeting six new ruby red House districts where their candidates are polling closely. By expanding the map, they're forcing Republicans to spend in more places. This is not a bad way to even out the money advantage that Republicans are enjoying this cycle.

Some online have proposed that the GOP should abandon Texas this cycle and focus on other races in other states where they can get more bang for the advertising buck, but ideologically, Republicans can't do that.

Texas is the spiritual home in many ways of conservatism. It is the largest red state and the anchor in the GOP's political power base. Not only that, but many conservative influencers have flocked to Texas in the Trump years, and Elon Musk, who is the GOP's biggest financial backer this cycle, also calls Texas home. They are quite literally defending home turf.

Giving up on Texas would deliver a tremendous psychological blow to conservative morale in an already hopeless electoral cycle.

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One side effect of this literal nationalization of this Texas race is that the country is being showed just how obsessed the GOP is with trans issues. It's always been the case that Republicans were way more focused on trans issues than Democrats, but a handful of credulous media outlets were able to convince the masses that it was actually liberals who wouldn't stop talking about it.

That era is over. The national public is getting a shotgun blast of Texas style transphobic bigotry and like none of this stuff matters to regular voters right now? Like dawg have you seen how much we're spending at the pump? Who cares about what some trans kid is doing somewhere?

I continue to hold out hope that the voting public is finally seeing this issue for what is: conservative culture war red meat.

And it's all they have this cycle. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, who was expelled from congress for having sex with a minor, tweeted recently:

Some Republican PACs have begun ever so slightly pulling back on their anti-trans ad spends and even centrist think tanks like Third Way, traditionally one of the loudest advocates for Democrats abandoning trans rights, have begun advising that Democrats should opt for defending trans rights.

It's interesting to watch all of this play out across the country and I hold out hope that we are seeing the high water mark of the electoral effectiveness of anti-trans advertising. We only have a few more weekends of football game transphobia to go until we are free from it all.

The first Tuesday in November can't come soon enough for me.

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