WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is headed to San Antonio next week for a rally featuring Ken Paxton, according to a Republican National Committee official — the president’s second Texas campaign stop in as many weeks.
Trump will speak Wednesday at the Freeman Coliseum, the east side venue that hosts the city’s popular stock show and rodeo, as part of his October push to turn out voters from his 2024 coalition in key states and House districts. Paxton, whom Trump has both embraced and poked fun at while campaigning in Texas, will speak at the rally, as will Republican congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz, the RNC official said.
The visit comes on the heels of the president’s Thursday visit to a truck manufacturing plant in Denton, where he urged Republicans to show up for Paxton in the midterm elections. Paxton attended the event, but Trump was the only elected official to speak.
Wednesday’s rally will be the president’s third trip to Texas in less than a month, underscoring how competitive the state has become this cycle just two years after Trump carried it by 14 points. Polling has consistently shown Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico with a narrow lead over Paxton, a sight both unsettling and unfamiliar for Texas Republicans, who have had unified control of the state for decades.
The threat has attracted nearly $175 million in outside ad spending to preserve GOP control of the Senate seat, much of it coming since early September. Texas Democrats last won a U.S. Senate election in 1988 and have gone since 1994 without a statewide election wins.
San Antonio is home to two of Texas’ most competitive U.S. House races — one in the 23rd Congressional District that Republicans are hoping to hold after the resignation of disgraced GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, and another in the newly formed 35th Congressional District. The latter was redrawn by the Texas Legislature last year as part of the White House-ordered redistricting to yield more House seats for the GOP. In both districts, the majority of eligible voters are Hispanic.
Trump’s campaign travel is all about mobilizing Republican voters in November. The GOP controls both chambers of Congress but risks losing its majorities amid the president’s lagging approval numbers and favorable polling for Democrats in numerous key races. Trump’s campaign operation has also poured tens of millions of dollars into Texas races through a network of super PACs, both in the U.S. Senate race and in U.S. House battlegrounds, nearly all of which are in South Texas.
Prior to Trump’s Denton stop, the RNC hosted a two-day midterm convention in Dallas, which put a political spotlight on Texas and featured the president alongside numerous Texas candidates.
Trump’s 14-point win in Texas, his largest margin in the state over his three presidential bids, was driven by massive gains with Hispanic voters, particularly in South Texas. But the president’s approval rating has dipped this year amid the unpopular Iran War and voters’ frustration with the state of the economy. Trump was 9 points underwater in the Lone Star State in the Texas Politics Project’s latest poll, fielded in August. Just 42% of voters gave him a favorable rating, the nadir of his second term thus far.
Paxton made headlines earlier this week for saying that his poll numbers had taken a hit from the convention, according to an audio recording from a fundraiser published by The New York Times. But he has continued to accompany Trump on his visits to Texas, joining him in Denton and now in San Antonio.
De La Cruz, the Republican nominee in a district Trump carried by 10 points, will address the crowd as well. The brother of Edinburg Rep. Monica De La Cruz and an Air Force veteran, Carlos De La Cruz is running against moderate Democrat Johnny Garcia, a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy sheriff. The seat is anchored in Bexar County, though it does not include the site of Wednesday’s rally.
In a competitive race to win the redrawn seat, De La Cruz has not shied away from Trump on the campaign trail. He spoke at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas and, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, dismissed as “hogwash” the idea that he should distance himself from the president.
Trump’s political operation has poured millions into the 35th District as well. No Going Back PAC, which has been linked to the Trump-affiliated MAGA Inc., has spent $4 million on ads boosting De La Cruz and bashing Garcia.
In a further display of South Texas’ weight this fall, Vice President JD Vance was in Harlingen Wednesday with congressional candidate Eric Flores, who is running to flip the 34th Congressional District in the Rio Grande Valley.
Trump has lost Bexar County all three times he’s been on the ballot in Texas, but posted his best result in 2024, winning 44.5% of the vote there.
Programming for next week’s rally will begin at 4:30 p.m. CT, and the president is slated to address the crowd at 6 p.m.
Disclosure: The New York Times has been a major financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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