Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico declined to identify himself as the “frontrunner” when CBS Texas asked Friday about his sustained lead in both fundraising and polls in the race against GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton:

JACK FINK, CBS NEWS: You’ve raised a lot of money for your campaign. You’ve been out advertising all summer on the airwaves. Paxton’s not been on the airwaves. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows you leading by an average of nearly two percentage points over Paxton in a Republican state. Are you the front-runner? And what is your biggest concern going forward about your campaign? JAMES TALARICO, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE: We are going to be the underdogs until the last vote is counted. FINK: Why? TALARICO: Because we are fighting for working people. We’re going up against some of the biggest special interests, some of the biggest billionaire mega-donors in the country, and we’re always going to be the underdog if we’re fighting for working people against those entrenched special interests. And so, yes, we have momentum. Yes, we are building a true movement. Yes, we’ve had thousands of people showing up at our events. We have 59,000 volunteers. And that’s great. It’s why I’m so confident that we’ll be successful in the end. But we are still the underdogs, and we’re going to keep campaigning like we’re five points behind, because if we’re going to go up against those at the top, we’ve got to be ready for that fight.

Here is Talarico’s full interview, where he also discusses the name Paxton has given him, “Tala-freak-o,” and the RNC midterm convention happening this week in Dallas. “A lot of people in our state voted for President Trump in the last election because they thought he was going to lower prices,” Talarico said. “They thought he was going to end the forever wars. They thought he was going to release the Epstein files. They thought he was going to drain the swamp. It’s why a lot of people in my family voted for President Trump.” “But just a year into this administration, prices are up because of these crazy tariffs. There’s a new forever war in Iran. The Epstein files have not fully been released, and the swamp is bigger than it’s ever been before. So, there are a lot of people in our state, including a lot of the president’s former supporters, who are feeling disillusioned. And my job is to extend an open hand to those voters and invite them to join this movement that we’re building, a movement of working people coming together to take on the billionaire mega-donors and the corrupt politicians that are screwing us over.” “So, that’s what I’m going to stay focused on,” he said. “These nicknames don’t lower the price of groceries. These nicknames don’t lower the price of gas or utilities or healthcare. These nicknames don’t actually improve any of our lives.”
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