Lone star Trump believes he can bend Texas and midterm elections to his will

Not so long ago, the snub would have been unimaginable. On Wednesday afternoon, president Donald Trump boarded Air Force One and headed to San Antonio to rally for beleaguered senatorial candidate Ken Paxton. Conspicuous by his absence in the Freeman Coliseum was veteran Texas governor and Trump booster Greg Abbott.

After 11 years in office, Abbott is, sensationally, trailing Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa in the Texas gubernatorial race by four points, according to a New York Times/Siena poll released this week. Media inquiries as to why governor Abbott would not be in the Houston arena to receive the president were met with a terse response from his campaign team.

“The governor is running a re-election campaign and has other previously scheduled events with Texas voters.”

Or, like an increasing number of Republican politicians up for election, Abbott is seeking to place a subtle distance between himself and the president. Trump’s national disapproval rating is reflected even in Texas, with a Civiqs poll finding a 57 per cent disapproval of his job performance.

Polling of Latino voters, a demographic that swayed decisively towards Trump’s message of affordability two years ago, show they are deserting in droves, disenchanted by the brutal Ice approach to deportation of immigrants, and the national dismay at ongoing inflation.

Democratic strategists popping up on the television networks are visibly giddy at the deluge of data showing resurgent numbers in deep red states like Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma and even Mississippi, places that were for decades, as veteran Louisiana senator John Kennedy put it, “fat guy lay-ups” for the Republican Party.

Thom Tillis, the veteran Republican senator for North Carolina who decided to retire after repeated disputes with Trump, has predicted that the Republicans’ worst fears will materialise in the November midterms. The GOP has all but conceded that Democratic candidate and former governor Roy Cooper will take that seat.

“We have chosen the proverbial chainsaw shed time and time again, kowtowing to the White House’s every demand even when we know the end result is going to be a bloodbath,” Tillis wrote in one much-quoted section.

“As of this writing, it seems almost certain that this is what’s going to happen come November 2026.”

One of the speculations is that midway through his second term, Trump has been largely shielded from negative or, rather, realistic appraisals of his public standing by a White House staff eager to assuage his ego and moods. But it would be impossible for Trump to remain unaware of the siege mentality that has taken hold of the GOP as the midterm date of November 3rd approaches.

They are throwing millions of dollars into Paxton’s attempt to keep pace with the formidable fundraising campaign of James Talarico, and at least five million to shore up the seat formerly held by the late Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Graham’s sister Darline, running with little to no political experience, is holding a narrow lead over Democrat Annie Andrews. Talarico leads Paxton by 51 per cent to 45 per cent; in June, the candidates were neck and neck.

The political publication Axios released an audio recording of Paxton privately grumbling about the repercussions of the Iran war on his campaign.

“It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel. People are feeling the pinch. I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the, like, the campaign, and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming from DC. I don’t have the ability to change anything so I have to live with what I got.”

The conventional wisdom was that Trump has, through the months of the Iran war, become a disadvantage to Republican politicians on the campaign stump. But who was going to tell the president that? It would be like trying to convince Mick Jagger that Rolling Stones fans would rather see the concert without him.

No, having expressed indifference and even disinterest in the midterms throughout the year, Trump suddenly announced a barnstorming tour through late September and October. Visits to Alabama and Ohio preceded this, his third trip to Texas, within a month. His essential message to Maga voters has been the same: pretend I am on the ballot.

Abbott’s decision to skip last night’s event was a discourtesy that would have been unimaginable at the beginning of the year.

At the other end of the country, Susan Collins, the three-decade Republican senator facing a stiff battle to hold her Maine senate seat, equivocated when asked in a Tuesday night debate whether she would welcome Trump to her state.

“I have heard nothing from his office and I’m not exactly his favourite senator, I would say he is not coming to Maine.”

Don’t bet on it. Facing into the autumn storm, Trump is either embarking on a mad gamble or returning to his favourite theme of grievance and defiance – and his enduring belief in the limitless appeal of Donald J. Trump.

So in Ohio at the weekend, he promised supporters that “we are going to win” and “stuff it up their ass”.

“We are gonna have a great success and, John, [Husted, the Ohio candidate] nobody counted on the fact that Trump was going to go out and campaign for all these people. When I do, we win. When I don’t for some reason, we draw 44 per cent less people. So, what I’m gonna do is ask you to just pretend I am running. Everybody here tonight is part of the greatest political movement. This is, by the way, Maga, this is the greatest political movement in the history of our country.”

That has been his message that he is banking will reach the Maga masses. Ignore the stiffs that are on the ballot. Just pretend you are voting for me. Husted earned Trump’s passing admiration by virtue of being a college jock of distinction but here was what Trump had to say about Ken Paxton on a recent visit to Texas.

“You might not like the way he looks. He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly and he may not be the best lookin’ guy I’ve ever seen,” he said, before lauding the candidate as a Maga-disrupter who, as he repeated on Wednesday night, is “the greatest attorney general in the history of the state of Texas. He is tough and he is going to be with us all the way”.

But that’s what it’s like to have Trump bigging you up.

His message to Texans on Wednesday night was a reprise of the explicit warnings which propelled him to the presidency in 2024. Not only would a failure to prevent James Talarico winning the seat represent a betrayal of Texan traditions, he said, it would usher in a new era of lawlessness.

“If Talafreako and the Democrats get their way, all of that squalor and misery and homelessness ... you know, I said it the other day: when the Blues get in everything becomes dirty. The streets are dirty. The doorknobs going into stores are dirty. The sidewalks are dirty. Everything becomes dirty and has a bad smell. But we’re going to escape all that lawlessness and dysfunction that is coming to your beloved state if this guy ever gets in.”

Can this messaging cut through to an electorate dismayed by the shocking fuel prices and the inflation crisis that ultimately sunk the Biden/Harris campaign? Will the thought of sullied doorknobs at the grocery store rouse the masses? Notably, none of the conservative television networks carried Trump’s speech on Wednesday night. He was interrupted repeatedly over the first half-hour by hecklers and protesters sitting in the audience in San Antonio, another new departure for a Trump rally.

Trump’s rationale for the flatlining poll numbers is an acute failure of public relations by key members of administration, and by the lawmakers seeking votes in the upcoming election: a dismal inability to sell the message that in less than two years of the Trump administration, the border crisis has been ended, crime and murder rates are at their lowest in a century. The stock market – and therefore pensions – are at an all-time high. He has delivered tax cuts through the Big, Beautiful Bill. The soaring prices are a hangover from the Biden administration and if the war with Iran has forced higher fuel prices, well, it saved the world from nuclear annihilation.

He reminded them of other triumphs, like the raid on Venezuela. “It was a violent, incredible, beautiful raid. Not like past administrations where they had helicopters bumping into each other ... and just as I promised, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. And we’ll be out of there soon and you watch those oil prices come down like a rock.”

This is the message he will deliver for the next month. There is, as ever, a singular cunning logic to Trump’s gamble on himself. His appraisal of the GOP candidates seems shrewdly made. They are, in the main, underwhelming. And despite the startling momentum the Democrats have gained, the balance of power for Senate control remains precarious and may come down to a few thousand votes in a handful of toss-up states, including Texas, Michigan, Maine, Alaska and, as of late, Kansas.

Trump has repeatedly defied polling predictions. He is relying on animal instinct that his performances, familiar and routine as they frequently are, will still register more deeply with the disillusioned fan base than candidates for whom it didn’t much care about in the first place.

If the Republicans lose heavily in November, Trump can easily lay the blame on the sorry cast of candidates. If they hold on to the Senate, then the story becomes that Trump beat the Democrats – and the ‘fake news’ media machine – by himself. And if that happens, then watch the dangerous clamour for Trump 2028 take off again.

All indicators are that the administration is facing into a hard reality check from US voters early next month.

But in Texas, Trump is banking that he can bend reality to his will. The state has not elected a Democrat senator since 1988, and Ann Richards was the last Democratic governor, before losing out to George W. Bush in 1994. If Texas holds yet again, Trump will be back to take a victory lap – and nobody will be surprised if he singles out Gregg Abbott for a choice mention.

Remember the Alamo? Trump forgets nothing.