Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate, missed Vice President JD Vance’s South Texas swing at the Harlingen Convention Center on Wednesday afternoon.
Vance visited Texas to boost Republican candidate Eric Flores in his race against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) over the state’s 34th Congressional District. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) was also not in attendance at the event, but Vance still praised the Republican leaders in his opening comments.
“First, I’ve got to send my best to a couple of patriots who could not be here with us today. One is your governor, the great Greg Abbott,” said Vance. “And second, of course, is the amazing Attorney General and your next senator, Ken Paxton.”
It was the only time Paxton’s name would be mentioned by Vance during the roughly half-hour event.
A spokesperson for Paxton said the attorney general could not attend due to a rally across the state in El Paso. Paxton will appear with President Donald Trump on Thursday during a campaign stop in Denton, according to the campaign.
Democrats are defending the 34th Congressional District in an area that has increasingly trended toward Republicans since 2016. Republican state legislators redrew the district’s boundaries in 2025 so that Trump would have carried it by double digits in 2024. Democrats are also seeking to defy history by flipping the state’s Senate seat. The scandal-plagued Paxton trails Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in the race by 3 points, according to aggregate survey data from RealClearPolling.
Paxton was also heard commenting that the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention earlier this month failed to boost his numbers, according to leaked audio.
“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” Paxton said in an audio recording reported by the New York Times. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”
Hispanic voters, particularly those in border states, have soured on the Trump administration over its aggressive deportation tactics. A New York Times/Siena College poll released this month showed 64% of Hispanic voters said they would vote for Democrats in a generic congressional race, while 28% opted for the Republican candidate. In a generic Senate race, 56% of Hispanic voters said they would vote for a Democrat, and 31% said they would vote for the Republican candidate.
But on Wednesday, Vance warned voters in the Rio Grande Valley, a majority-Hispanic area in South Texas, that Gonzalez was a Democrat who had voted overwhelmingly in line with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and voted against Republican legislation that eliminated taxes on tips for certain workers.
“It actually takes a special political talent to vote with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time,” said Vance. “But Gonzalez voted to continue giving your money to fraudsters rather than American citizens. He voted to raise taxes on Social Security and overtime, while we fought to get rid of them.”
Vance peppered much of his comments with high praise for Flores and portrayed him as a “fighter.”
“He’s a fighter for the people in this room, but he’s also a fighter for his country. He’s a former federal prosecutor, a person who locked up the bad guys and made our streets safer,” said Vance. “He is a former Army officer who will always defend law and order across the great state of Texas. In fact, he’s taking the fight directly to the cartels, leading security operations on the border to protect great American cities like the one that we’re standing in right here.”
The Texas Senate seat is a crucial contest that will determine control of the upper chamber, but the race was largely untouched during Vance’s speech. The vice president did take a moment during his speech to excoriate Talarico as a radical Democrat at odds with what voters want.
“James Talarico, ladies and gentlemen, is a completely, a profoundly unserious person,” said Vance. “He has said he wants to represent the great state of Texas, but very proudly, he believes that there are six genders. He has said that God is, and I quote, non-binary, whatever the hell that means.”
Talarico has since walked back his comments about there being six genders. “I missed the mark on some of my past statements; I’ll be the first to admit it,” Talarico told Fox News this month.
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The vice president, however, is not convinced Talarico’s comments were sincere. “Now Talarico sells himself as a new kind of Democrat, but ladies and gentlemen, he is the same old thing,” said Vance. “He is disdainful, disdainful of us, disdainful of our beliefs, disdainful of the things that give us purpose and meaning.”
Vance is also set to stump with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is running in Florida’s gubernatorial race, this week. It is part of the vice president’s increased role on the campaign trail.