EL PASO, Texas — Ken Paxton will not hold his last planned El Paso rally of the U.S. Senate race. The Republican nominee and Texas attorney general had been set to appear Sunday, Nov. 1, and his campaign confirmed this week that the stop is off.
Supporters had been told to arrive at 3:30 p.m., when the doors were to open. The site was the Orca Event Venue, 11323 Rojas Drive, a room that holds roughly 130 people. Campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy pointed to scheduling changes and logistics as the reason for pulling it.
The campaign is weighing whether to put the rally back on the calendar. It said Paxton intends to come back to El Paso after the election, though no date has been set.
His opponent is James Talarico, a Democratic state representative, and their Senate contest has drawn attention well beyond Texas. Recent polls show the two within the margin of error, and no Democrat has won a statewide Texas office since 1994. Talarico campaigned in El Paso on Oct. 26, so the cancellation leaves only one of the two candidates with a late-October visit to the city on the books.
For El Paso voters, the calendar is now short. Early voting ends Friday, and Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3. Polling places across El Paso County will be open that day for voters who have not yet cast a ballot in the Senate race and the other contests on the ballot.
A canceled stop this late also changes the map for both campaigns in the final weekend. El Paso sits at the far western tip of the state, hundreds of miles from the large metro areas where both candidates have spent much of the fall, and the lost Sunday date gives Paxton time to work other parts of Texas before Tuesday.
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