LUBBOCK, Texas — On the day that a sitting president landed in their town for the first time in 34 years, people waited for hours in lines that stretched for blocks in this reliably red city.But this crowd on the east side of the city wasn’t waiting for President Donald Trump.
They wanted to see Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.“We’re all closet Democrats,” Tim Jones, a 66-year-old emergency room physician, said, laughing and gesturing to a sea of people around him in line before Talarico’s evening rally.“There are a lot of people who are finally upset at gas prices, diesel prices, inflation, lies, the war, all of it.
It’s the corruption, tearing down part of the White House to build this vanity ballroom.I mean, it’s just pathetic.
So people finally are deciding, ‘We’ll get out to vote.’” Trump gave out hats at his rally in Lubbock Tuesday.Kent Nishimura / AFP via GettyLess than three miles away, a similar scene unfolded for Trump, who held a rally at the expansive Lubbock Memorial Civic Center as he sought to boost the Senate Republican candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton.In a new move, Trump brought out his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who won one of the biggest rounds of applause of everyone Trump introduced.
The dueling rallies and fount of voter enthusiasm in this city of fewer than 300,000 underscored the high stakes in a Senate race that has drawn hundreds of millions of dollars in spending and presents the biggest threat in years to the Republican Party’s grip on bright-red Texas.With just a week until the election, Talarico has held a narrow lead in polling.
His trip to Republican turf is a sign he is attempting to win Republican crossover votes he needs for a victory.At their rally Tuesday, Democrats urged supporters to seize a once-in-a-generation chance to flip a statewide seat after three decades of Republican control.
They panned the economy, high gas prices and closure of rural hospitals.Talari...