A fifteen-second clip of Senator Ted Cruz landed on Friday, four days before the midterms, and in it Cruz says out loud what the polls have been whispering for weeks. "By the way, Texas is excruciatingly close. Understand: We could lose Texas," Cruz says. "Let me repeat that: We could lose Texas. And, by the way, not just the Senate race. We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That's how close these numbers are."
The clip was released by FactPost, a social media account associated with the Democratic Party, and it came with nothing else — no word of where Cruz was speaking, when he was recorded, or who held the microphone. His office has put out no public response. But here is what the release leaves out: there is nothing in those fifteen seconds that Cruz has not already said in public, on the record, in his own name.
On his own podcast a week ago, Cruz told his listeners: "Texas is a tie right now. It is a dead heat. If you're in Texas, come out and vote." In August he called the Texas threat "a five-alarm fire," and a fundraising letter sent under his name this past weekend warned that "Texas could very well go BLUE for the first time this century." The same letter made the point Democrats never quote: "Every election cycle, the Democrats talk up their chances of flipping Texas and raise a bunch of money, only to end up falling short." Friday's clip is no private confession. It is a turnout alarm, rung by a senator who has been ringing it for months.
The race at the top of the ticket is the fight for the Senate seat held by John Cornyn. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who beat Cornyn for the nomination with President Trump's endorsement, faces Democratic state Representative James Talarico in what has become the most expensive nonpresidential race in American history, with more than $440 million spent. Below it, Governor Greg Abbott faces Democrat Gina Hinojosa, with some polling putting the governor's lead as low as five points. Every statewide office, from lieutenant governor to attorney general to the state supreme court, is on the ballot — and every one is held by a Republican.
The numbers behind Cruz's warning are real, and they deserve to be stated plainly. A University of Houston survey of 2,000 likely voters in mid-October put Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46, inside the margin of error. Another October poll put Paxton fractionally ahead, 47.2 to 46.7. An earlier survey conducted in part by the president's own longtime pollster put Talarico up four. Texas is genuinely close — close enough that Cruz's words are a fair reading of the polls, not a stunt.
Paxton answered the moment on Friday in his own words: "If we lose Texas, we lose the country." Republican turnout, he said, is catching up after a strong Democratic start to early voting, and the election will be decided in the final days. "We can win these elections if our people show up," he said, warning that Democrats want one-party control to reshape the Supreme Court and the election system itself: "They want one-party control, and once they have it, they are not going to relinquish it." Cruz, for his part, is spending the closing days campaigning beside Paxton at a string of events across the state.
So why the panic — and panic against whom? The Democratic Party has not won a single statewide race in Texas since 1994. Not one. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the United States Senate since 1988. Every cycle runs the same script: out-of-state money pours in, the polls tighten, the obituaries for the Texas GOP get drafted — and every November, Texas votes Republican. A party shut out of statewide power for more than three decades is many things, but a proven competitor in Texas is not one of them. Close polls are not the same as a competitive party.
The choice on Tuesday is not a vote on any man's manner. A Texan who dislikes President Trump's arrogance is not being asked to approve of it; he is being asked who governs America. On one side stands a president fighting for the country's future — its courts, its border, its energy, its working families. On the other stands the party of James Talarico, a candidate who defends abortion in the language of faith, who has mused about God as non-binary, and who tells wealthy audiences, in his own words, "if you are OK with getting taxed more... you are welcome to join this movement that we are building." That is the offer, and it does not improve in the first minute after the polls close: a promise to sell out the America working people built, and to call the selling progress.
What is at stake is larger than one seat. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, and Cruz counts Texas among the eight to ten races that will decide whether the majority survives — the majority that confirms the president's judges and carries his agenda. For Texas families, the statewide offices decide how their streets are policed, how their energy is produced and how their elections are run. Cruz's warning only comes true one way: if the people who agree with him stay home. Early voting has closed. Tuesday is the whole election now.
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