Governor Avoids Trump SA Rally that Paxton
Attending Despite Iran and Gas Price Lament
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
October 7, 2026
Governor Greg Abbott is taking a dramatic turn that doesn't lead to San Antonio after announcing that he plans to skip a rally that President Donald Trump is leading there on Wednesday in a move that appears designed to save a re-election campaign that's been sinking fast.
The Republican who's leading the GOP ticket in Texas - Ken Paxton - does plan to appear with Trump at the event in the Alamo City despite the release of an audio this morning that has him blaming the war in Iran, gas prices and the president's decision-making for his struggles as a U.S. Senate candidate.
While Abbott seeks to distance himself from Trump as a no-show today in SA, Paxton and other Republicans like Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick are prepared to go down with the ship rather than trying to run from the most unpopular president in modern American history like the governor is doing now.
The third-term governor's camp says he won't be on hand for Trump's third trip to Texas in Texas in the past month because he already had plans to campaign in other places today. “The governor is running a reelection campaign and has other previously scheduled events with Texas voters,” the Abbott campaign said in a statement on his expected absence in San Antonio.
With 27 days left before the midterm election, Abbott could find the attempted break from Trump's long shadow to be all but impossible after wrapping himself eagerly in the president throughout his current term until now. Abbott decided to forego the San Antonio rally after Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa seized the lead in polls that YouGov and the New York Times conducted and made public this week.
But after riding a Trump endorsement to a primary runoff win over longtime incumbent John Cornyn in the spring, Paxton looks willing and ready to die by the sword after admitting in a separate but related recording that the president set his Senate bid back with a midterm convention he had the GOP stage in Dallas a month ago.
The audio that Axios obtained and made public on Wednesday features Paxton ticking off a list of the ways the president is having an adverse on his bid for the Texas Senate seat in a race that Democrat James Talarico has been leading since the outset of summer. Paxton says in the recording that he doesn't understand "what's behind some of the decisions" that the White House has been making.
"It's the war. It's gas prices. It's diesel," Paxton says. "That drives the food prices up and everything else."
Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has been the biggest benefactor from three trips that Trump has made to Texas in the past month. The two most recent polls on the Senate contest found Talarico up on Paxton by 6 points. The Democrat has been ahead of Paxton by a half-dozen points in three of the six latest surveys on the Texas Senate race. Talarico has been on top in the 18 most recent independent polls on the Senate race.
After being rated as a 58 percent favorite in August, Paxton's probability of victory has plunged on the prediction markets - hitting new lows of 33 percent on Kalshi and 34 percent on Polymarket this week. Abbott's odds hit a record low on Polymarket on Wednesday at 72 percent while Kalshi listed him as a favorite over Democrat Gina Hinojosa at 74 percent.
The governor had been a prohibitive favorite for months before his lead in the polling began to evaporate in the past month or two before Hinojosa seized the lead in three of nine most recent surveys on the fight for the state's top job.
The YouGov poll that was released on Tuesday found that 11 percent of Trump's Texas voters from 2024 are backing Talarico for the Senate seat. Not a single one of the Kamala Harris voters in the YouGov sample expressed an intent to vote for Paxton in the Texas Senate fight this fall.
Talarico lead Paxton by 27 points among Hispanic voters in the YouGov survey. Trump made history in 2024 when he won a majority of the Hispanic votes in the Lone Star State.
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