A Democratic win in Texas is a long shot – but Ken Paxton’s weakness is obvious

Republicans are resorting to childish taunts to defend an uncommonly dishonorable state attorney general

It’s a bit like Lucy with the football. Every few years, Democrats convince themselves that a Texas Senate seat might finally switch from red to blue. On paper, it makes sense. Texas is a large and urbanizing state with an increasingly educated – and increasingly non-white – population.

Other one-time Republican strongholds that have undergone similar demographic shifts have turned purple or even blueish – think Georgia, for example. The border counties along the Rio Grande valley, with their deep poverty and big Latino populations, were long thought to be fertile ground to nurture a kind of anti-Trump populism that could be converted into pro-Democratic sentiment. The state Democratic party is anemic there, but a few talented candidates have emerged.

Who else remembers Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas Democratic congressman and onetime presidential hopeful, who appeared on a 2019 cover of Vanity Fair, photographed in muted Annie Leibovitz tones along a desert dirt road, promising to deliver his home state, and a crucial Senate vote, from the clutches of Republican control?

Does that hope seem naive now? Even almost childish? Given what we know of O’Rourke’s subsequent success – or of the voting trends in the Rio Grande valley – does the past hope of a blue Texas begin to seem at all arrogant?

Forgive me, then, for harboring doubts about whether Texas will vote, as some pollsters and many hopeful Democrats now say it will, for James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee, over his Republican opponent, the odious state attorney general, Ken Paxton.

The excitement of Democrats in the Texas US Senate race this year carries with it the aftertaste of past disappointments. Lucy swears that this time, she’ll let Charlie Brown kick, and Charlie Brown – a slave to his own optimism – draws back his leg.

But if there was ever a cycle where optimism from Texas Democrats seemed reasonable, it might be this one. Polls have put Talarico, a former seminarian, at a steady, though narrowing, lead. And there is reason for his appeal: Talarico speaks in eloquently religious terms that are well-tailored to his Bible belt audience; at 37, his relative youth will probably appeal to voters fatigued by gerontocracy.

But the real deciding factor in the election may well be his opponent: Paxton is an uncommonly dishonorable man, even by the very low standards of a Republican Senate candidate. He’s been indicted on various fraud charges by Texas grand juries (he denied wrongdoing and eventually paid $300,000 in restitution).

He was sued over similar fraud claims, subjected to multiple whistleblower complaints, nearly disbarred, and impeached in his capacity as attorney general by members of his own Texas Republican party. (He was later acquitted.)

He is also going through a messy, public divorce after his wife of several decades, Angela, finally began proceedings against him after an alleged extramarital affair.

He subjects women to systematic mistreatment in public life, too: as Texas AG, he has presided over one of the most maximalist and sadistic abortion ban regimes, leading to one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the country. He is unlikable, and unliked. Republican Texans who would have come out to vote for another candidate are more likely to stay home rather than vote for him.

If winning a Texas Senate seat has long been a pipe dream for Democrats, the possibility that they might do so seems to be frightening Republicans.

A loss in Texas would not just be a strategic defeat for the GOP, but a psychic one – a failure to hang on to unified power in a state that is supposed to be both the geographical center and the cultural linchpin of conservatism. It presents a risk to the emotions and morale of the Republican party much more than other potential losses in states such as, say, Maine, Michigan or Alaska.

In a word, it would be emasculating. And in characteristic fashion, Republican power players have sought to assert masculinity as their central line of attack in the race.

Over and over, Republicans have sought to keep Texas by insinuating that Talarico is gay, a woman or a pedophile – sometimes all three – and persistently linking him to the issue of gender transition treatment for minors. They have implied that he’s weak, that he’s either asexual or sexually threatening, depending on the occasion, and, weirdly, that he’s vegan.

JD Vance, who has used the midterm cycle to informally launch his 2028 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, has seemingly decided to imitate Trump in vulgarity even where he lags him in charisma and humor. Like many, he’s been trying to get a 2016-style nickname for the Democrat to stick: “Talafreako.” It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

But Vance has also suggested that Talarico is gay – and that he would somehow be disqualified from the Senate if he was. At a rally in Tyler, Texas, Vance told a male audience member that he loved him. “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice-president, not James Talarico.” He paused and waited for the crowd to laugh.

Before that, he had insinuated that Talarico was a pedophile. “A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,” Vance said.

Elon Musk – nominally a resident of Texas, though billionaires don’t really “reside” anywhere – has looked to rescue Paxton’s candidacy with a massive infusion of cash, dumping $158m into the race late last month on the Republican’s behalf. On his social media platform, X, he has taken on a similar tone to Vance in attacking Talarico, alternating between casting vaguely sexual aspersions about Talarico’s character – Musk has repeatedly called him “creepy” – and making specific, incendiary and false claims about the Texas Democrat. “Talarico would vote to take away your kids and transition them,” Musk wrote. “Not just in Texas, but nationwide. Pure evil.”

These kinds of low-brow, sexualized smears are the kind of thing Republicans do to make themselves look tough. The name-calling is supposed to evoke the power of the schoolyard bully in the form of a man in a suit, to conjure the image of someone so powerful that rules, and decorum, don’t apply to him.

But I think that really, these kinds of juvenile taunts are a sign of the party’s weakness. Republicans have no answer to mainstream Americans’ economic pain; all they can offer are titillating little libidinal gratifications for their base.

They are betting that the grim satisfaction of dominance, of cruelty, will be more important to voters than $5 gasoline. They’re leaning into being mean, in short, because they don’t have anything else.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist