Thirty seconds in Texas costs $12,000 as politics dominates TV

(Bloomberg) -- Buying a 30-second television ad in Harlingen, Texas, typically cost political candidates less than $500 two years ago. These days the spots are going for the price of a serviceable used car in the small city near the Mexican border.

Last week, Democrat James Talarico's US Senate campaign shelled out $12,000 for a half-minute ad during a Major League Baseball game on the local Fox station. That's 26 times the cost of a similar commercial during the state's 2024 Senate race, according to Federal Communications Commission records.

And that's assuming a campaign can still get time. With Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton pouring unprecedented sums of money into the state, the candidates are struggling to book time on the air at all in places like Harlingen, according to GOP strategist Vinny Minchillo.

"You can't buy it," Minchillo said. "It's closed out."

It's a similar story around Texas, where Republicans and Democrats have poured more than $500 million into the state's Senate race. With early voting set to start Monday and a little more than two weeks to the election, the Paxton-Talarico contest is shaping up as one of the most expensive non-presidential contests ever as the two parties flood the airwaves and social media in a fight over a seat that could decide control of the Senate.

That spending is apparent every time a Texan turns on the television to watch a game or the news. The going rate for nightly news spots at a Houston NBC affiliate has almost doubled from 2024, and Paxton spent $60,000 for an ad on a Sunday Night Football broadcast scheduled for late October.

TikTok users are racking up hundreds of thousands of likes by poking fun at both sides' ubiquitous commercials. One omnipresent ad runs so frequently that it's turned a conservative activist from the Dallas area, Miriam Evans, into a familiar face.

The money is tilting towards Paxton, a conservative firebrand and Texas attorney general, fueled by an influx from the world's wealthiest person, Elon Musk. But Talarico, a 37-year-old state representative and seminarian, has amassed a formidable haul as well. He also has a slight edge in polling as he seeks to become the first Texas Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1988.