James Talarico, the Democratic nominee running for the Senate in Texas against Ken Paxton, kicked off a 21-stop tour on Sunday that will take him across the state until the day before the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
Mr. Talarico started his tour at an amphitheater in Plano, a Dallas suburb in Collin County, where President Trump won by more than 11 percentage points in the 2024 election. The tour comes as polls have shown an increasingly close race, though some polls indicate that Mr. Talarico has a slight lead over Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general. No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.
Mr. Talarico’s trek around Texas has been called the Clear Eyes Full Hearts Tour, a reference to the TV series “Friday Night Lights.”
The show chronicles a fictional Texas high school football team with the signature rallying cry of “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” Three actors from the show appeared in a campaign video that Mr. Talarico posted on Sunday: Connie Britton, Jesse Plemons and Adrianne Palicki.
In a speech that lasted about 25 minutes, Mr. Talarico said that he liked the motto from “Friday Night Lights” because it emphasized the importance of closing out the campaign strong.
“We have to execute,” Mr. Talarico said. “We have to leave it all on the field. We have to win. Our fellow Texans are counting on us.”
The rally drew dozens of people who said they were attending their first campaign event for Mr. Talarico.
Tim Beahmer, 38, of Plano, said that while the rally on Sunday was his first event for Mr. Talarico, he had been following him for months. Mr. Beahmer said that one reason he wanted to support Mr. Talarico was because he thought the Senate candidate had not engaged much in culture wars.
“He just wants to put that aside and focus on the things that’ll actually help everybody,” Mr. Beahmer said.
Karen Malone, 67, of McKinney, said that the event on Sunday was her second time seeing Mr. Talarico. She said she voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election and had not planned to vote in the midterm elections until her children encouraged her to consider Mr. Talarico.
“I voted for Trump the first time, and then I said never again,” Ms. Malone said.
Mr. Talarico’s tour will wind through Texas, hitting Houston, Dallas and San Antonio as well as smaller cities like Lubbock in the Texas Panhandle and Galveston, a beach city southeast of Houston. The tour will end in Austin the day before the election.
Mr. Paxton began a dueling tour in North Texas on Saturday. He is expected to make more than 30 stops across the state before wrapping up the campaign in San Antonio on Nov. 2.
