LONELY STAR STATE

Must-Win MAGA Candidate Throws in Towel as Crowds Vanish

After acknowledging a crowd for a single clap, Ken Paxton has canceled three stops in his final push to save his Texas campaign.

It’s not just Donald Trump with crowd-size anxiety; our must-read guide to the midterm stories the candidates don’t want you to know reveals them.

Welcome to Midterms Meltdown, a special pop-up newsletter from The Swamp—bringing you up to the minute with the secrets the politicians don’t want you to know about the race to November 3.

It is the most consequential election campaign since 2024, and the nooze will be oozing around the nation to shape D.C. for the next two years and beyond. Our David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice are getting down and dirty with the inside stories from the battlefields every Monday and Friday.

Melting down in The Swamp today are: Elon Musk, Ken Paxton, Teddy Roosevelt, Dan Sullivan, Mary Peltola, Dan Sullivan, James Talarico, JD Vance, Leslie Martes, Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, Kochina Rude, and Pope Leo XIV.

Paxton’s Texas Hold ‘Em as He Abandons Events in Final Push Over

Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican whose dying days of the midterm campaign have turned into a problem. As the aging president pulled the plug on rallies in Iowa and Kansas, then changed his mind the next morning, his embattled Texas Senate hopeful Ken Paxton canceled three more stops on his statewide bus tour: a rally in El Paso, a meet-and-greet in Texarkana, and an appearance at 1836 Texas Kitchen in Tyler.

The cancellations leave some conspicuous holes in Paxton’s final push to win over voters before Nov. 3, even for a candidate already struggling to fill a room.

In fact, the name of the tour—“Come and Take It”—may have become somewhat literal: Please, turn up, you’ll easily be able to take a seat.

In Amarillo on Oct. 26, Paxton was caught literally having to bus people into his rally—only for the crowd to remain laughably small.

On Oct. 28, video showing just a few dozen people at his campaign stop at the Arc Light Bar & Grill in San Angelo prompted widespread mockery.

NO PRODIGY HERE

MAGA’s Vilest Candidate Busted Making Up Claim of Prowess

Sarah-Jane Collins

And at Mama’s Kitchen in Odessa on Wednesday, things were even more awkward when only one person applauded for the Senate wannabe.

“Thank you. Thank you for that one clap,” he graciously acknowledged.

Paxton’s campaign blamed “logistics” for postponing the El Paso event, while the Tyler stop was scrapped after JD Vance announced competing appearances in Texas.

Not surprisingly, Democratic rival James Talarico took a different view.

“No one’s going to Ken Paxton’s rallies, so he’s canceling them and hoping Elon Musk will buy this seat for him,” Talarico said. “His only volunteers are AI robots. His only donor is Elon Musk. And his only rally attendees are reporters forced to cover an empty room.”

The final stop on the tour, on Monday, is still scheduled (so far). It’s a last stand at the Alamo, and it sure looks like there are plenty of seats available!

Early Voting Wraps Up With Record Numbers

More than 47 million people have already cast their ballots as of Friday in the midterms as early voting wraps up in places including Texas and Georgia, but early voting has already smashed a series of records as voters scramble to make their voices heard before Election Day. And speaking of Texas… early voting in multiple counties has already surpassed the entire voting totals from the 2022 midterms, notably in largely Hispanic counties as well as major cities and surrounding suburbs. Harris County, which is home to Houston, has already had more early voting than during any other midterm ever.

It beat the previous record set in 2018 when more than 855,000 people participated in early voting but was also on track on Friday to have its biggest day of early voting there ever, topping the daily record from 2024. The whopping numbers may explain why the state attorney general’s office, led by none other than Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, sued the county clerk for “racially discriminatory” ads for targeting certain voters, namely African-American, Asian, and Latino voters while allegedly leaving out “European ethnicities,” AKA white people. Meanwhile, heavily Hispanic Hidalgo and Reeves Counties have already surpassed their entire 2022 turnout.

Play Video

Election Night Could Be a Rag

Forget the traditional election night gathering with a few beers and cable news blaring in the background. Americans are getting considerably more creative about how they watch democracy unfold on Tuesday night. At D.C.’s Teddy & The Bully Bar, a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator will be there from 6 p.m. to pose for photographs, alongside four big screens, T-shirt giveaways and a ballot-box prediction contest. The QED Astoria in Queens, New York, is holding a Steve Kornacki lookalike competition, complete with democracy bingo, political trivia and live T-shirt printing. San Francisco’s The Chapel is bringing in drag performer Kochina Rude to host election bingo, while Hook & Ladder in Minneapolis is turning election night into a full-blown rock concert with live bands, tacos, and a giant screen for the results. Whether you’re commiserating, celebrating or drowning your sorrows, there’s something for everyone.

MIDTERM MADNESS

Bettors Make Bold Prediction Ahead of Election Day

Erkki Forster

All Roads Lead to Rome

JD Vance is closing out his barnstorming election campaign with a rally in New York on Monday. Before you think he has the chutzpah to head into the mouth of the beast and face a potentially hostile Big Apple crowd, it’s Rome, New York. Upstate. Way Upstate, and (formerly?) deep, deep red. And if you’re postal voter Pope Leo XIV, you can breathe a sigh of relief that Vance isn’t coming to campaign for your vote…

Democrats’ Longtime Downballot Woes Are Still Giving Them Heartburn

While many Democrats are focused on flipping the House and Senate seats in Congress in four days, one group is thinking local. Forward Majority is aiming to secure state legislature trifectas in a series of battleground states, which could then redraw maps for the next election with dramatic consequences. Republicans sparked a race to gerrymander states to pick up seats this year. While it may not play out as they hoped, it could spark an ongoing mid-decade push to redraw districts at the state legislative level. “While we may win Congress this fall, and then have a good victory, it’s really a short-term rental and just an Airbnb, if we aren’t thinking ahead about where can we pick up more seats in Congress next year,” warned Forward Majority CEO Leslie Martes.

KIND OF BLUE

Karoline Leavitt Pushes Bonkers Post-Election SCOTUS Theory

David Gardner

The group, which launched a $30 million campaign, has been focused on flipping 21 seats to secure trifectas—meaning both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion—in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona. Democrats may appear to have the momentum, but Democrats have long underinvested down-ballot, which could have major implications ahead of the next presidential election year. “It keeps me up at night that there’s a lot of Democratic enthusiasm out there, but that people then are going to go in the polls and vote for their U.S. Senate race, or with the key congressionals, but when they come to state leg, they’re not going to know what to do,” she told The Swamp. “You can’t just rely on the top of the ticket,” she warned. Republicans monopolized that attitude throughout the 2000s, leaving Democrats playing catch-up for more than a decade.

What Trump Is Saying:

“She’s got problems. She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers.” Talking about Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia (who is male) after he was fired by Pentagon Pete Hegseth amid allegations that he leaked information about the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

What the Dems are saying:

“I just want to clear the air. I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.” Mary Peltola, the Democratic Party Senate candidate in Alaska after a sketchy plot to find another Dan Sullivan to go up against the incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan as an independent, was revealed by The New York Times.

What the Republicans are saying:

“This is a scandal at the highest order. She and her team, and at the highest levels of the DSCC, spent over a year scheming in a secret operation to trick Alaskans to get them to throw away their vote. It’s remarkable. The Democrats will do anything to gain power.” Sen. Dan Sullivan (the incumbent, not Daniel J. Sullivan, the other one.)

BLUE MOVES

Democrat Hopes for Massive Blue Wave Surge in Final Stretch

Sarah Ewall-Wice

And Finally…Place Your Bets:

Midterms Congress Balance of Power?

What they’re saying on Kalshi:

Democrats sweep - 69 percent

D-House, R-Senate - 27 percent

Republicans sweep - 5.6 percent

R-House, D-Senate - 0.7 percent

What they’re saying on Polymarket:

Democrats sweep - 70 percent

D-House, R-Senate - 25 percent

Republicans sweep - 7 percent

R-House, D-Senate - 2 percent

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