Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) was on Fox News over the weekend sounding the alarm about the Texas Senate race, which pits Republican Ken Paxton against Democrat James Talarico, saying, "Money is an issue."

Kennedy appeared on Fox News’ The Sunday Briefing and host Jacqui Heinrich asked him about the Paxton-Talarico matchup. Heinrich noted that Talarico was beating Paxton in the all-important fundraising stakes and asked the senator if that worried him. 

In true Kennedy style, he responded, "Well, there’s no sense bubble-wrapping it. We’ve got a race in Texas. And Ken is going to have to run a good race." To do that, he said, "[Paxton's] going to have to point out the deficiencies of Mr. Talarico, and there are plenty of them. But you can’t win an election by saying the other guy’s worse than me."

Even more important, noted Sen. Kennedy, is the "money issue." After explaining that "all the beautiful people who partied with Harvey Weinstein" in Hollywood were pouring "bucket-loads of money" into Talarico's campaign coffers, Kennedy made an appeal to President Trump:

We in the Senate don’t have the money budgeted for Texas. We need help from the president. The president says he has $850 million in his campaign accounts. That’s a lot of jack.

I’m hoping that the president’s going to spend $100 or $200 million in Texas. But he hasn’t committed to it yet.

Here's video of his comments:

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“We in the Senate don't have the money budgeted for Texas. We need help from the President. The President says he has $850M in his campaign accounts. That's a lot of jack.”

And here's the transcript:

JACQUI HEINRICH: Senator, I want to ask you about Texas because Democrats are increasingly hopeful that they can flip that Senate seat. James Talarico has a major fundraising advantage over Ken Paxton. How worried are you about this race?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Well, there’s no sense bubble-wrapping it. We’ve got a race in Texas. And Ken is going to have to run a good race. He’s going to have to point out the deficiencies of Mr. Talarico, and there are plenty of them. But you can’t win an election by saying the other guy’s worse than me.

Money is an issue. Talarico is raising bucket-loads of money from California and Hollywood — all the beautiful people who partied with Harvey Weinstein.

We in the Senate don’t have the money budgeted for Texas. We need help from the president. The president says he has $850 million in his campaign accounts. That’s a lot of jack.

I’m hoping that the president’s going to spend $100 or $200 million in Texas. But he hasn’t committed to it yet.

But in the meantime, we’ve got a race, and I’m not going to play-act and say that we don’t.

Democrats have been trying to turn Texas blue for almost two decades now, and they may just be getting that foothold they wanted in the form of James Talarico. And Sen. Kennedy’s point here is hard to miss: Republicans can no longer treat Texas like a seat that will simply take care of itself.

If Talarico keeps piling up cash while Paxton struggles to keep pace, the GOP may be forced to spend heavily in a state it never expected to defend – and, remember, Republicans already spent gobs of money on the primary race between Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn – money that would otherwise be going to competitive races elsewhere.

That’s why Kennedy’s warning should be heeded and heeded quickly. Texas may still lean Republican, but as he put it, there’s no sense “play-acting” about what’s happening there. There’s a race now, and Republicans would be foolish to pretend otherwise.