Nick Allison

For the past couple of weeks of early voting and leading up to tomorrow’s election, I’ve been wearing one of my two Veterans for Talarico shirts just about everywhere (and doing more laundry than usual). The goal, of course, is to start conversations and give myself an opening to remind people to vote, to not take the positive polls and the “blue wave” hype as an excuse to get complacent, and that this is an all hands on deck moment.

Being in deep red Texas, I always expect at least a few folks to have something negative or shitty to say, but to my pleasant surprise, about 95% of the reactions and interactions I’ve had have been positive. And when someone says something like “Hey, I like your shirt,” my natural follow-up is “thanks… have you had a chance to vote yet?” Almost every single person has said yes, they voted early, and the few that haven’t promised they’d be turning up on Election Day.

I’m well aware there is absolutely nothing scientific about any of this. Wearing a T-shirt around town and talking to strangers is not collecting polling data. And I know that Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties aren’t representative of the entire state, let alone the country. But even two years ago, wearing a shirt supporting anything remotely anti-MAGA would have produced a lot more eye rolls, middle fingers, and shitty comments. Ask me how I know…

But in late 2026, things feel different here, though I also hesitate to put much stock in feelings. In Texas, we’ve learned over the past 30 years, and especially the last 10, not to huff the hopium. We’ve been somewhere near here before, thinking this was finally the year, finally the candidate people were going to rally behind to show that, despite our conservative leanings, Texans don’t actually support the kind of authoritarian politics and bootlicking sycophancy of the past decade. But while I remain cautious of the hopium and hype, I just can’t help but recognize it does feel different this time around.

Talarico is a genuinely good candidate, and his message has been refreshingly different from other candidates’ from the start. As he puts it, “The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them.” That’s a message that should resonate with everyone, regardless of which direction you typically lean. Whatever your thoughts on actual conservative versus progressive policy debates, I think you’d be hard pressed to find many voters who say, “Actually, I love the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and I think people who have more money than God should be able to buy politicians and influence elections while I get one vote and don’t have enough cash to fill up my gas tank or pay my electric bill, let alone dump into super PACs.”

Elon Musk, who has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to help Trump and other MAGA politicians, has decided to call Texas home, and it’s hard not to notice the gap between what the average working-class voter can do to influence an election and what folks like Elon, Tim Dunn, and Farris Wilks get to do. Those last two still aren’t household names for most Texans, but they should be. They’re a pair of West Texas oil billionaires (and part-time preachers, naturally) who have spent years bankrolling the state’s hard turn to the right, funding primary challenges against Republicans who weren’t extreme enough for them, pushing school vouchers, and of course backing nobody’s favorite candidate, Ken Paxton.

That’s another reason this year feels different in the Texas Senate race. It’s not just that Talarico is a good candidate who keeps pointing out that we have more in common with our neighbors than with the oligarchs who work to divide us, while pushing their own personal profit agenda. He also happens to be running against one of the worst candidates to ever run for office in Texas. Most unlikable too, and that’s saying something for the state that gave you Ted “Cancun” Cruz. I’ve met plenty of folks who have voted for Ted over the years, but I’ve yet to meet one who had anything pleasant to say about him beyond “he’s a Republican, and so am I.”

I thought it would be next to impossible to find a politician who fits the slimy, dishonest, self-interested stereotype better than Mr. Cruz, but then Ken Paxton showed up, said hold my beer, and proceeded to jet-set around Europe and ring in the new year in Dubai with his mistress and two federally indicted fugitives, one of whom, Anosh Ahmed, had given his campaign $190,000, all while begging Christian voters to support him. And just to make sure we all knew his scumbaggery extended beyond his personal life, he also spoke at the January 6th rally before the crowd stormed the Capitol, and then in 2023 got himself impeached by his own party on 20 articles, including bribery, abuse of public trust, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice, making false statements in official records, and being unfit for office.

This is a guy so ethically challenged he avoids the debate stage the way a man with something to hide might avoid a subpoena, like, say, ducking into his garage and then leaping into the back seat of the idling getaway truck driven by his wife. Can you imagine a Republican candidate for Senate, in Texas, being that afraid to debate a Democrat like James Talarico? Lucky you, you don’t have to imagine it. What could you possibly have to lose in a state with an electorate like Texas? Apparently a lot. Even after Ken Paxton’s true lord and savior, Donald Trump, publicly demanded a debate, Paxton still couldn’t have found his way to a podium if someone drew him a map. The one thing that would hurt Ken Paxton’s chances more than anything in this election is Ken Paxton opening his mouth on a stage next to someone who has the facts on his side and isn’t afraid to use them.

So maybe it’s not completely fanciful and unrealistic to think things might actually change tomorrow. Who knows, though. Like most Texans my age, I’ve been told for most of my life that a Democrat or independent simply can’t win statewide or federal office in Texas, and we have three decades of data to back that up. But if there was ever a year to actually believe the polling here, this might be it.

And even if we don’t trust the polls, I think it’s still reasonable to be optimistic based on recent history instead. Back in the 2018 midterms, with a booming economy and no new war in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s party lost the national House vote by about eight and a half points. This time around the economy is in the dumps, prices keep outrunning paychecks, and we’re entangled in yet another Middle East war that Trump campaigned on staying out of, one that has pushed gas past four dollars and diesel to a record high while his tariffs have made pretty much everything else more expensive. Set aside the polling data and approval numbers, and it still stands to reason the margin should be at least as big as 2018 and probably much bigger. And as far as the polls being wrong goes, being the eternal political pessimists we are, we always imagine them being wrong in the direction we don’t want. But the margin of error exists for a reason, and it could break in Democrats’ favor too.

So if you say you don’t trust the polls, the approval ratings, or the history of midterm elections, that’s fine. And if you do trust them and think this year’s predicted “blue wave” is a sure thing, that’s fine too. But regardless of where you fall, there’s only one thing to do tomorrow. Show up and vote anyway. If the polls are wrong and the actual vote goes more in MAGA’s direction than predicted, the only counter is to show up in numbers big enough to win. And if the polls are right, and Americans really are as exhausted with the lies and corruption and depravity of the Trump regime as it seems, it’s still important that we show up in numbers big enough that there’s no doubt the American people have been heard. Because one thing we know for certain is that in any close election, the Trump administration will cry foul, scream about election interference, and try to twist the narrative. Maybe even encourage a violent mob to ransack a government building or two. Trump is a narcissist of epic proportions, and he honestly believes he couldn’t possibly lose an election.

In a piece I wrote last week about the blatant corruption and the ways the Trump family has profited to the tune of billions off his office, I found myself doing something I rarely do: agreeing with Donald Trump. He’s been saying for months that people should vote as if he were on the ballot in the midterms, and I think that’s actually pretty good advice for all of us. Tomorrow, November 3, we need to remember the corruption and the lies and the sycophancy of Republicans like Ken Paxton who have rubber-stamped everything he’s done, pretend he’s on the ballot, and show up in numbers big enough to leave no doubt. Not just in Texas, but everywhere.

It would be nice to wake up Wednesday and find out that all the thumbs-ups and friendly words I’ve been getting for my Veterans for Talarico shirt weren’t just a reflection of the people I happened to cross paths with in Central Texas, but a pretty good sign of how fed up the rest of the country is with all of it.

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Nick Allison is a writer and editor based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost, The Fulcrum, and elsewhere. He does his level best to avoid all things social media, but you can follow his decidedly nonpolitical Substack, if you’re into that sort of thing. An Army infantry veteran and college dropout, he is in no way a qualified political pollster, and his entire operation consists of a T-shirt, a washing machine, and a willingness to chat with people in line at H-E-B. Come Wednesday, he plans to retire the Talarico campaign shirts and return to his regular rotation of various Deport Elon designs. Also, he secretly enjoys writing his own bio in the third person, probably because it makes him feel a little smarter and more important than he actually is.

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