There are so many races to watch in the battle for control of Congress. Here’s a look at some recent developments in three critical Senate races: Texas, Michigan and Maine, all of which polls show are very close.
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Texas
The controversial Republican Senate candidate in Texas, Ken Paxton, has a long trail of corruption allegations. Paxton is the state’s attorney general and has for years faced allegations, including from his staff, of accepting bribes. He was the subject of an FBI investigation and was impeached by the Texas House on corruption allegations — but acquitted by the state Senate. He has denied any wrongdoing and has never been convicted of a crime.
Now, as he runs for U.S. Senate, Paxton has accepted campaign contributions from organizations with legal matters before his office and has in several instances produced legal opinions aligning with the interests of his donors, The Washington Post reports, noting that the practice is not illegal.
The Democratic candidate, James Talarico, is trying to present a stark contrast to Paxton by weaving in faith and calls for bipartisanship (a must in a red state).
“He impresses me because he’s willing to take questions from all sides,” Glen Whitley, a retired judge and a Republican, recently told CNN of Talarico.
Republicans, especially billionaire Elon Musk, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to cast Talarico as too liberal and highlight what the Democrat acknowledges are some “cringey” comments from his past.
But even some Republican strategists say the right went too far recently when Musk elevated a conspiracy theory that Talarcio, whose campaign said he was sick with the flu, was checked into an Ohio mental facility. It was easily disproved. “I’ve never even been to Ohio,” Talarico posted on social media.
President Donald Trump was integral in getting Paxton nominated in the Republican primary, yet Trump recently posted on social media blaming “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks” if Paxton loses.
Michigan
Abdul El-Sayed is one of this election season’s highest-profile candidates — and perhaps Democrats’ most controversial. He’s trying to win the Senate race in this swing state with unapologetically liberal policies. Polls show that the race between him and Republican Mike Rogers is closer than it should be in a year when Democrats are otherwise competitive in conservative states.
Democrats say part of El-Sayed’s vulnerability is that he has struggled to keep his campaign focused on the core issues that matter to voters. He’s quick to respond to Republican attacks about his religion and name (El-Sayed would be the first Muslim senator if elected), he’s argued with Rogers over who peaked in high school, and he makes crude jokes about Vice President JD Vance.
Republicans are also happy to talk about El-Sayed. Trump and his allies have launched anti-Muslim, sometimes Islamophobic attacks directed at him.
“The Democrats desperately want this race to be about Trump rather than El-Sayed,” said Michigan-based Republican strategist Dennis Lennox.
Recently, El-Sayed has denied having family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic movement that started in Egypt and has some radical offshoots. The connection is the subject of a major attack by Rogers, but it’s tenuous, based on the publicly available facts: El-Sayed’s parents are Egyptian immigrants, and he grew up outside Detroit. El-Sayed’s mother, who didn’t raise him, was active in the Muslim Brotherhood in college in the 1970s, according to old social media posts by El-Sayed’s half sister.
Republicans say his flat denial of family involvement contradicts her statements. El-Sayed has tried to use this to rally Michigan’s large Arab American population.
“[Rogers’s] only strategy is to point to me and my name and my faith,” El-Sayed responded last week, “and to say that we’re different and that you should suspect people simply because they are different than you in how they pray.”
Maine
Former president Barack Obama is getting involved in this must-win Senate race for Democrats. He endorsed Troy Jackson, who has seemed to underwhelm Democratic voters since he was thrust into the campaign this summer after Democrats’ first candidate, Graham Platner, imploded. “Do not sit this one out,” Obama said in a video.
Jackson is Maine’s former state Senate president, and his low-key campaign style contrasts with how he governed the state legislature: with a well-known temper. But he may have reminded voters of that past when, in a debate Thursday night, he told Sen. Susan Collins (R) to “shut up.”
Collins is one of the last remaining Republican senators representing a state that votes for the opposite party. She is trying to distance herself from Trump: In a debate last week, she said she believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be reformed, including through the use of body-worn cameras.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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