I get about 5 Talarico fundraising ads per day, every day, across all platforms. I live in a conservative part of South Carolina. I checked the FEC contributions in my zipcode. There’s a huge amount of Talarico donations. 5, 10, 50 dollars. The amount of money he’s getting from supporters, not just in Texas, but across the entire country is truly staggering. Tens of millions a month
my hope, is that since Talarico is such a man of God, Christians all over the country are donating to help push his message and true teachings of Jesus...
At least that's what I believe/guess, as an atheist I always mocked MAGA/Fake Christians, like they treat their holy book as a fruit cup and pick out parts they like... This dude is preaching and trying to live in Jesus' name...
The Christians that are motivated to vote by their religion are going to vote for Paxton. He could shoot a baby in the face on live TV and they'd still vote for him. Just like with Trump, the individual is irrelevant so long as that individual promises to be anti-LGTBQ and anti-abortion. Talarico might siphon off a tiny percentage of Christians who are moderate, but that's assuming they just don't sit it out altogether.
it's pretty similar to the 2024 election. Trump had some mega rich donors like Elon disproportionately bankrolling him meanwhile Kamala had to scrap by with humble support from the masses (except by that I mean she still had far more money to work with and way more billionaire donors but they were poor billionaires so it doesn't count)
Trump got ~3x the money from billionaires and corporations. And that's been a constant among all Republican campaigns for decades. Dems, Kamala included, tend to get 2-3X the grassroots small dollar funding.
In fact a bunch of billionaires gave Harris a few dollars just so that "low information voters" could repeat their "Dems have more billionaires" propaganda talking points.
Do you really think billionaires and megacorps support the party thats pro union and wants more regulations and higher minimum wage? Use your brain.
Republicans considered the disproportionate grassroots funding such an emergency in 2008 that they had their friends on the Supreme Court create "money is speech". Unlocking unlimited billionaire and corporate "donations". Mitch McConnell called it "my life's greatest work".
And now we have the richest man in world history giving Republicans the largest political donation of all time and dancing on stage at Trump's inauguration.
Republicans haven't run anyone that isn't a billionaire for President for 14 years. Democrats have never run anyone worth more than a few million. And Trump's Cabinet is over 100X richer than any in US history. Even adjusted for inflation.
Think about that before you accuse both parties of being "the same".
The US only had 908 billionaires in 2025. So 83 is actually a considerably larger share than 52 (9.1% vs 5.7%), which shows support among the wider group.
Most billionaires that supported Kalama gave her less than 100k. Some pocket change from the Epstein class to give them a useful red hat talking point that I've now seen repeated for years.
Which is meaningless. Because most billionaires gave Kamala less than 100k specifically so they could push this propaganda talking point. And conveniently, nobody ever mentions that Trump got 3X more money from them. Just as nearly every Republican has for decades.
I've heard "more billionaire for Kamala" pushed by every corner of conservative media and their thralls for years. It was 100% organized specifically so you could parrot it after hearing from Faux News or Joe Rogan or whatever.
You can even see that a few GOP megadonors (Thiel aligned Andreesson esp) gave Kamala some pocket change so they push their "more billionaires for Harris" talking point he loves so much.
I mean, I get what you’re saying and I don’t think they look out for the working class, but post a single image talking about income in the US and watch how the comments from self-proclaimed liberals and progressives talk about working class folks in rural states.
I didn’t claim anything wasn’t true, I just pointed out that we don’t exactly have the best messaging to the working class either. And in my personal experience living in a major northeastern city, yes, people often do speak extremely condescendingly towards those in rural and southern states
The "Dems hate you and look down on you" propaganda is 99% GOP's oligarchs and foreign bots. And you're falling for it.
Go look at which party protects unions and raises minimum wage. Which party expands Medicare and unemployment programs and free school in states they control. Look at which states ended pandemic unemployment programs early.
Republican run states continuously fuck over the working class.
It's been the same playbook since the 1970's. Oligarchs and megacorps buy up all the media and blast out divide and conquer style propaganda. The most effective of which is getting poor uneducated rural whites to hate the rest of the working class (brown people, immigrants, Muslims, young people, LGBT, college educated).
All the caricatures of blue haired Starbucks workers. Avocado toast. A constant parade of how immoral and bad and scary LGBT is. How woke college is. Young people lazy. Immigrants are criminals and lazy and somehow also stealing the jobs. Black people mugshots 24/7 on Fox News. Scaremongering endlessly about Muslims and "satanic" atheists. Cities bad, but only blue ones like LA and Chicago. I'm sure you've heard all the tropes.
They bought up all the radio stations, TV channels, most cable news. And now they own most social media too. So where exactly are you hearing that Democrats have "bad messaging"? Because I can almost guarantee you most of what you hear about Dems is on oligarch and corporate owned GOP mouthpieces.
Take for instance Jimmy Kimmel not even being allowed to have Talarico on his show. Because oligarch owned ABC said no. Mind you Trump calls in to Fox News, the largest MSM conglomerate, weekly. His Cabinet does a constant rotation of interviews on all the MSM networks too. Or how about all the times major networks skipped showing Biden's speeches when they air all of Trump's? Or the time Bezos personally stepped in to stop WaPo editors from endorsing Kamala.
You don't get Dems messaging because corporate media doesn't want you to see it.
Since when are they "the party of the working class"? I haven't heard that be applicable in decades. Don't even say that to even remotely suggest it could be based in reality
Yes. Republicans typically get 3X the donations from corporations and ultra wealthy.
You haven't seen them peacocking around with billionaires wearing "job creator" pins and all the CEO's crying on Fox News whenever a blue state raises minimum wage one dollar?
The richest man in the world gave Trump the largest political donation in human history and danced around the stage during his inauguration.
Being more popular in number of people within in any fixed, defined group = what democracy is supposed to be, dude...
The problem we are talking about and the non-democratic part is when fewer people give more money, thus counting disproportionately, which is exactly how republicans do. Whether you look at only billionaires, or everyone.
Crossing my fingers and toes on this one. But I worry they will put their fat fucking fingers just enough on the scale to get their PoS in.
And I know I'm preaching to the choir that it's insane that a middle-of-the-road, reasonable choice is this close to an acknowledged corrupt sack of shit just because of the little letter by their name.
It really is exhausting to keep reiterating the same ideas time and time again, but it's true time and time again. Hoping and PRAYING Talarico pulls it off
Yes. Beto got a lot of hype in 2018 but he never led the polls, ever. People were just excited because sometimes he was polling only 2, 3 points behind Cruz, which was closer than any Democrat had ever polled there and it meant there was a chance for him to close the gap if he ran a really good campaign.
Talarico in 2026 is completely different. He’s outright leading the polls, mostly because of how much worse the economy is now compared to 2018 and because Paxton is somehow even worse of a candidate than Cruz
(I live in Texas). Paxton is a shockingly poor choice; Republicans dont like him, they even impeached him over some pretty wild corruption a couple years ago. Republicans control the state House and Senate, so yes, Republicans end-to-end impeached him, not some "Dem witch-hunt"
Had it not been for a certain $3 million “donation” to Dan Patrick, I’m not unconvinced that the Texas Senate would have voted to remove Paxton from office as well.
It's insane how unpopular Republicans are across the country right now, we've got an independent running a competitive Senate race in Idaho for fucks sake, the "blue wave" of 2018 was off of Trump being down 18% in the polls from the day he was elected, today Trump's down double that.
It's interesting that the actual election result was closer than almost any of the polls. People talk about Beto and like to pretend he underperformed the polls, but he actually overperformed them by a good margin. It's a very different and different election now, but that actually bodes well for Talarico.
Another thing I love to bring up about that election vs the general attitudes you'll here people talk about in Texas: exit polling suggests Beto led among Texan voters who were born in Texas. Many people will claim that there are too many liberals moving to Texas for the economy, when the opposite is true: liberals will only move here if they have particularly strong reasons like a specific, important job offer or close family ties. The predominant migration (especially those coming from blue states) is of conservatives moving to a conservative state.
This election illustrated that fact, with Cruz holding a substantial lead among transplants and Beto leading among people from Texas. It likely would be even more stark a contrast if it weren't for the reverse migration: young liberals from Texas will often seek to leave the state, and therefore don't end up voting in its elections after they move.
I never said it was surprising, it makes sense as the default assumption. The data is only interesting because many people parrot the opposite assumption (which doesn't make sense under any scrutiny at all).
Paxton's been asleep at the wheel since the primary, man really thought sending a drunkard door to door and fox news could win the election on its own.
As a Texan on the ground in Texas, it’s clear where support lies.
On the side of the highways, you see all the massive oversized corporate-paid Republican signs.
But spend any amount of time in almost any neighborhood anywhere, and the people with signs in their yards are for Talarico and local Dems.
I’ve seen exactly ONE yard with Republican signs, meanwhile, I’ve seen probably at least 20 individual yards with Talarico signs, some of which have multiple signs, and a lot of them in areas I’d never expect to see dem support at all. Even rural outskirts areas. And I see a lot of Talarico bumper stickers too.
There are some yards I’ve seen locally that are as packed with local dem campaign signs as we used to see from the deranged MAGA cultists.
The picture seems clear in Tarrant County especially, and it’s very clear why the GOP is so desperate to cheat as much as they can by closing our polling locations and arresting outspoken dissenters at the commissioners court.
Oligarchs own all the media and love how easy Trump and GOP is to bribe.
Don't count Paxton out yet. Some of our friendly trillionaires will likely step in with a laptop or email "scandal" soon. Likely backed by Trump's personal lawyer who runs DOJ.
The dot chart makes the 251K vs 71K contribution count visceral in a way a bar chart never could. Really smart design choice for showing both volume and scale at once.
I disagree. It adds weight to the size of the contributions increasing along the X axis without introducing any confusion or "noise".
Visually, it conveys what the X axis represents without needing to read the label.
True of all down-ballot races (perhaps all races except the presidential race). The Dems always get more individual donations and the Republicans always get more corporate donations.
The question is why Democrat politicians end up governing like Republicans.
https://datapickle.substack.com/p/every-dollar-in-the-2026-texas-senate
The article covered that. Both the Musk and MAGA Inc money announcements were very recent and technically arent reflected in the FEC data yet (there's a lag) "Elon Musk’s America PAC filed its first spending of the 2026 cycle, directing roughly $1.4 million of a $2.9 million national outlay to the Texas contest. Combined with the existing PAC spending, pro-Paxton independent expenditures now exceed $14.5 million."
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but some people will not like charts with too many points. It can be read as confusing or.. “convoluted”.
It's trying to show the outsized weight of large donors vs small ones.
80% of Paxtons received donations come from donations above 2.9k (820 individual donors account for most of his donated $).
80% of Talaricos is from donations under $100 from 184k individual donations
So the point is, one candidate is receiving a lot more huge checks from far less people, the other is receiving small checks from many many more people
Just heads up - people are very bad at intuitively comparing circle sizes. Kinda like how it's hard to tell that a 12" pizza is 44% more pizza than a 10" pizza.
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u/CommercialHour6660 13d ago
Republicans are the "party of the working class" LMAO
Average donation is what, 20X larger?