Democrats gathered in Dallas on Wednesday to try to turn the GOP's midterm convention into a split-screen moment, partly by holding a major food drive instead of delivering speeches in an arena. At a South Dallas community center, US Senate nominee James Talarico stood beside roughly 20,000 pounds of donated groceries and cast the convention as a party for "billionaire megadonors," accusing Republicans of celebrating "their own corruption" while his supporters served local families, the New York Times reports. His opponent in November, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was on the program at the downtown Republican event with President Trump.
Talarico's event was part of a broader Democratic push to answer the GOP show of strength, with state and congressional candidates staging nearby appearances and the Texas Democratic Party rolling out a mobile billboard accusing Paxton of "protecting pedos" over a child sex case his office handled. Paxton's team says the matter was resolved in the child's best interest and accuses Talarico of "retraumatizing" the victim. The race is tight, and Paxton also has lately leaned into cost-of-living issues, highlighting a price-fixing settlement that will send more than 5 million eggs to Texas food pantries.
Other Democrats have arrived in town. "This bizarre Republican midterm convention here can't paper over the fact that Republicans have done nothing to earn your vote," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Wednesday. Texas Democratic Chairman Kendall Scudder criticized Trump's "trickle-up economics" as shifting money to the wealthy, per the AP, though he said Democrats will do more than rip Trump. "This party has stood in modern history on the side of working-class people," he said. "We're recapturing that narrative." But Talarico did mock the idea of Republicans having to pay to have their photo taken with the president. "If you want a picture with me," he said, "it's free."
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