How Trump Helped Put a Texas Senate Seat In Play

—From left: Bill Clark—CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images; Samuel Corum—Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Antranik Tavitian—Bloomberg/Getty Images If the GOP squanders this fall’s U.S.

Senate race in Texas, some Republicans argue privately that President Donald Trump would bear part of the blame.

Trump’s sagging approval ratings, his handling of the GOP primary, and his early hesitance to use his enormous war chest to defend his preferred candidate, the scandal-scarred attorney general Ken Paxton, have boosted Democrats’ chances to win a statewide election in Texas for the first time in more than 30 years.

Paxton lags slightly behind his Democratic opponent, state representative James Talarico, in several recent polls.

More alarming to party strategists, Talarico has outraised Paxton by enormous margins, giving the Democrat the resources to compete in a huge and expensive state that the GOP did not plan to defend so fiercely.

Mark Jones, a Texas politics expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, describes the contest as a “perfect storm” for Democrats.

“You have a very unpopular Donald Trump in the White House,” Jones says.

“You also have an economy that is viewed negatively by a majority of Texans.

The most flawed major statewide candidate that the Republican Party has had in modern memory.

And we have a Democratic candidate who, while not ideal, is a very credible politician.” Trump has the resources to help rescue Paxton: his affiliated super PAC, MAGA Inc., was sitting on more than $400 million this summer as the Republican begged for help.

Initially, the President didn’t want to invest heavily in the race.

According to three sources familiar with Trump’s thinking, including a senior White House official, Trump harbors doubts about the GOP’s midterm outlook.

In private conversations, he has mused about how the money would simply be wasted, citing the history of a President’s party suffering defeats in midterm elections.

A senior Trump adviser tells TIME that the President’s political operation has plans to spend tens of millions in the coming election cycle but won’t telegraph their strategy to the press and the opposition.