Fewer than 24 hours before Kamala Harris took the stage for her first live debate against Donald Trump, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz spent Monday afternoon in Dallas, telling attendees at his 30-minute address that voters should take Project 2025 seriously.
“They’re not kidding,” Walz said at the private fundraising event, according to The Dallas Morning News. “When someone writes out a plan, they’re going to do it.” The notorious, extremist conservative plan to radically alter the federal government has raised alarm bells from independents and Democrats alike, causing Trump to distance himself in public from the agenda — despite the fact that it was created by former Trump aides.
“Fear is a good short-term motivator. I used to supervise the lunch room,” Walz said, who was once a football coach and high school teacher. “It works for a short time, but it doesn’t inspire people.”
Among the people at Walz’s fundraising event included Roman Palomares, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who was the target of Ken Paxton’s voter fraud raids on the Latino community in Texas.
As Harris and Trump prepared to face each other in their first live presidential debate on Tuesday night at 8pm CST on ABC, the latest polling also showed Harris slowly narrowing the lead Trump has on her in Texas. Despite her narrowing deficit, Harris has yet to spend significantly in Texas, a sign that her campaign remains focused on other, more historically competitive states.
The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll showed that Trump still has a lead in our state, though Harris (in just a few short weeks) has narrowed the gap 49% to 44% in a head-to-head match-up. The same poll in June, when President Joe Biden was still the candidate, had Trump leading by 7 points, 46% to 39%.
The new poll also showed an overall 46% of Texans agreed Trump was too old to be president, though Texans trust him more on the economy, inflation, immigration, border security, crime, foreign policy, and infrastructure. Harris, meanwhile, had Texans’ trust on issues like climate change, gun violence, healthcare, and abortion. (Those are all topics you can expect to hear about during Tuesday’s debate.)
Despite the increase in poll numbers, neither Democrats nor Republicans were spending much on ads here. Many political analysts note that Texas has a long way to go before it’s a true battleground state (although others say Texas could easily be blue — if it weren’t for low voter turnout). Ad Impact projects $340 million to be spent in Texas ahead of the 2024 election, compared to an estimated $803 million in Arizona and $800 million in Pennsylvania.
