Texas Senate race shifts to tossup as Talarico out-raises Paxton
The Republican National Committee is pricing a Sept. 9 roundtable with President Trump at $250,000 per attendee and a photo with the president at $88,600 during the party’s upcoming midterm convention in Dallas, according to invitations reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The pricing structure, sent to donors this week, sets the cost of a roundtable with Trump at a quarter-million dollars per attendee, with a separate $88,600 charge for a photo with the president. A second fundraiser on Sept. 10 features Vice President JD Vance, with roundtable seats priced at $75,000 per person and Vance photos at $35,000. An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both Vance and Trump are scheduled to deliver keynote addresses at the two-day convention. It is rare for a party to hold a midterm convention, but Republicans are betting the event will boost their prospects heading into a midterm election in which they face the prospect of losing control of Congress.
The president has said that he will campaign in support of Republican candidates this fall, but he has also acknowledged that midterm elections typically do not favor the party in power. “When you’re president, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or whether you’re a good president or a bad president, you lose the midterms, nobody knows why,” Trump said in an interview over the weekend with former Rep. Trey Gowdy. “Some people like me more than they like the party.”
Trump has proved to be a prolific fundraiser for his party. MAGA Inc., a super PAC aligned with the president, has more than $400 million cash on hand ahead of the midterm elections, though the group has yet to preview which battleground states it will focus on. MAGA Inc. recently spent more than $800,000 to boost Sen. Darline Graham in last week’s South Carolina runoff election, the first time the group had spent money on a race in months. Graham won the runoff.
The president attended another RNC fundraiser last week in Texas, where Republicans are hoping he will help their Senate candidate, Attorney General Ken Paxton. His Democratic opponent, James Talarico, has raised $68 million from both big and small donors, dwarfing Paxton’s $9 million. Race raters at Fox News, the Cook Political Report and the Center for Politics have all recently moved the contest from leaning Republican to a tossup.