# Texas PAC 53.9M Texas Senate IE On **September 14, 2026**, [[Texas PAC]] — the committee through which the [[Senate Leadership Fund]] entered the Texas Senate general election — disclosed **$53,862,227.68** of broadcast advertising in [[TX-Sen-2026]] in a single 24-hour independent-expenditure report. It is reported as **two line items**, and **each of them individually exceeds $10 million**, making this the first independent expenditure of the 2026 cycle to clear the Deals **§7.4** single-buy floor on a strict reading. ## Terms | Item | Detail | |---|---| | Spender | **TEXAS PAC**, FEC committee **C00960211** | | Disseminated from | **September 11, 2026** | | Disclosed | FEC **24-hour** independent-expenditure report (**Form 24, file 2011867**), received **2026-09-14**, signed the same day by treasurer **Cabell Hobbs** | | Structure | **Two expenditures**: **$26,982,612.80** *supporting* [[Ken Paxton]]; **$26,879,614.88** *opposing* [[James Talarico]] | | Vendor | **Flexpoint Media Inc**, PO Box 1051, New Albany, Ohio | | Media | Broadcast television — Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin | | Aggregate on the filing | **$60,500,527.19** election-to-date, i.e. this filing plus the $6,638,299.51 filed the previous day | | Coordination | Filing certifies no coordination with either campaign or a party committee | | Funding source | **Undisclosed.** Texas PAC is a quarterly filer and has reported no receipts; first disclosure **October 15, 2026** | > **On the threshold.** Deals design doc **§7.4** sets a **$10M single-buy** floor for a standalone > independent-expenditure Deal. Unlike the September 5 MAGA Inc buy, which had to be read as one $10M > campaign split across two $5M lines to clear the bar, this filing clears it **twice over on the line > items themselves** — $26.98M and $26.88M. > > *Updated 2026-09-27:* **§7.4a** now rules that a Form 24 notice whose lines sum to $10M or more is a > single buy, whatever the line structure, so the reading-as-one-campaign step is no longer needed for > either filing. See [[MAGA Inc 20M Texas Senate IE Program]]. The two lines are recorded as one Deal because they are one ad > campaign: same committee, same 24-hour report, same vendor, same dissemination date, same race, support > and oppose halves filed separately because IE reporting requires it. ## What the reservation showed first On **Friday, September 11**, the tracking firm AdImpact recorded Texas PAC booking roughly **$51.3 million** of broadcast time across the four largest Texas media markets — reported by the *Texas Tribune* that morning, three days before the FEC filing. Two creatives began airing Saturday, September 12: a positive spot on a sex-trafficking case [[Ken Paxton]] prosecuted as attorney general, and a negative spot recasting the line [[Donald Trump]] used in 2024, saying [[James Talarico]] is "for they/them, not you." **The reservation and the filing are the same money at two stages.** Broadcast time is bought and paid for in advance, which is exactly why a commercial tracker can see it before the disclosure system can. The sequence here — booked Friday, aired Saturday, disclosed Monday, donors disclosed October 15 — is the clearest single illustration in the vault of how far the disclosure regime trails the money it discloses. > [!warning] A same-day check of the FEC Schedule E index is not evidence of absence > When *The Hill* reported "$53.9 million … according to a Federal Election Commission filing submitted > Monday," a same-evening OpenFEC check found **zero** Schedule E > line items bearing a 2026-09-14 filing date — yet the filing existed. > File 2011867 was received > on September 14 and totals $53,862,227.68 to the cent; the line items simply had not propagated to the > `/schedules/schedule_e/` index that evening. The reliable same-day check is > `/committee/<id>/filings/` or `/filings/?min_receipt_date=`, which index on receipt rather than on > processed line items. ## Why it matters **Texas was not on the board.** [[Senate Leadership Fund]]'s April 2026 announcement committed $342 million across eight races — Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia, Maine, Iowa, Alaska, New Hampshire. Texas is not one of them. This spending is **additive to** the largest single-cycle SLF commitment on record, not drawn from it, and it went to a state Republicans have carried statewide for over thirty years. See [[SLF 342M Senate IE Reservation Program]]. **The party bailed out the nominee the party tried to stop.** Senate Republicans backed [[John Cornyn]] against Paxton through the primary and the May 26 runoff, arguing that Paxton's legal and ethical record would endanger the seat and make Texas expensive to defend. Fifty-four million dollars later, both halves of that argument have been conceded in cash. [[John Thune]] headlined a Dallas fundraiser for Paxton during the Republicans' September midterm convention; the first expenditures are dated four days after it. **It is a new committee, not a bigger program.** SLF did not expand an existing vehicle — it stood up a separate committee sixteen days before the first buy, with a suite-number address and a quarterly filing schedule that keeps its donors invisible until nineteen days before the election. That is a structural choice, and it is the reason the money arrived faster than the information about it. **Half of it is negative.** $26.88M of the $53.86M attacks Talarico. Talarico raised **$68 million** through the end of June against **$9 million** for Paxton and held the airwaves all summer; the broadcast split here is within one percent of even. ## Related money in this race As of **2026-09-21**, FEC-verified general-election independent expenditures in TX-Sen (expenditure dates from May 27, 2026 onward): - **[[Texas PAC]]** — **$63,809,077.89** across 17 lines and six Form 24s. This Deal is the largest filing within it. - **[[Lone Star Liberty PAC]]** — **$17,472,295.00** ($13,885,675 opposing Talarico + $3,586,620 supporting Paxton), via Armada Strategies. Largest single line $6,365,020. - **[[MAGA Inc]]** — **$20,000,000** as of 2026-09-26, via Del Ray Media LLC throughout: $10M on September 5, $5M on September 15 (filed September 19), and $5M on September 26 — the last of these entirely negative, with no pro-Paxton line. Split $7.5M supporting Paxton / $12.5M opposing Talarico. Recorded at [[MAGA Inc 20M Texas Senate IE Program]]. *(The $15,000,000 figure elsewhere on this page is the 2026-09-21 snapshot.)* - **[[America PAC]]** — **$5,174,007.32** across 22 lines. Notably lopsided: $4,661,719.79 opposing Talarico against only $512,287.53 supporting Paxton. - **No Going Back PAC** (C00960435) — **$1,871,976.96 verified**; see the caveat on [[TX-Sen-2026]] about three identically-valued pairs in the FEC index. ## See Also - [[Texas PAC]] · [[Senate Leadership Fund]] · [[One Nation]] - [[TX-Sen-2026]] · [[Ken Paxton]] · [[James Talarico]] · [[John Cornyn]] · [[John Thune]] - [[MAGA Inc 20M Texas Senate IE Program]] · [[SLF 342M Senate IE Reservation Program]] - [[MAGA Inc]] · [[Lone Star Liberty PAC]] · [[America PAC]] - [[Independent Expenditure]] · [[Super PACs]] · [[Dark Money]] - [[2026 Senate Races Hub]] - [[Deals Hub]]