DALLAS (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will find himself in an unfamiliar setting Monday night: Headlining his first campaign rally since the Republican announced his bid for the U.S. Senate 10 months ago.
Paxton’s scheduled appearance is part of his stepped-up campaign to unseat four-term Republican Sen. John Cornyn and add a MAGA devotee to the Senate, a bid that has created one of the most contentious GOP primaries this year.
Until Monday, Paxton ran a lower-powered campaign, spent relatively little money and drew attention primarily by pursuing conservative causes as the state’s attorney general. But with early voting set to begin Tuesday for the March 3 primary, Paxton is scheduled to make stops in Texas this week. He also began running ads linking him to President Donald Trump as he takes on Cornyn and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Despite being the target of millions of dollars in attack ads from Cornyn and his allies and opposition from Senate Republican leaders who say Cornyn is the strongest candidate in the general election, Paxton heads into the GOP primary looking like his party’s favorite.
“I wish they would stop sending money from Washington, DC,” Paxton told “Fox News Sunday.” “They’re sending money from DC and they’re helping John Cornyn. And there’s going to be…a lot of money spent, and he’s going to end up losing.”
Paxton’s political survival would seem to defy convention, as does Trump’s. Paxton beat fraud charges in 2023, and today is overshadowed by allegations of marital infidelity made by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.
The three-term attorney general is betting that his defiance of his own party’s leaders and aggressive litigation for conservative priorities will help him overcome ethical and personal questions that voters in the Republican-leaning state have forgiven, at least so far.
We’ve ramped up the campaign as early voting begins
Paxton is set to begin a four-day series of rallies Monday organized by Lone Star Liberty PAC, a super PAC that supports him, to remind people that early voting in Texas begins Tuesday.
His previous campaign stops were lower-profile events, including county GOP gatherings with other candidates. He traveled to five Texas college campuses in the fall to speak with Turning Point chapters across the U.S. after the conservative Christian group’s national founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated.
But until this week, that’s essentially been it for Paxton’s public campaign efforts, aside from a few podcasts with friendly hosts.
As of Friday, Paxton’s only television ad in Texas was one that cost $674,000 to run, according to ad tracking service AdImpact.
That seat attacked Hunt, a two-term House member from the Houston area, not Cornyn. Like Paxton, Hunt is trying to appeal to primary voters looking for an alternative to Cornyn. By criticizing Hunt, Paxton allies are trying to unstick some of his voters in hopes of winning 50 percent of the primary vote — the threshold needed to win the GOP nomination outright. If no candidate receives 50%, the top two finishers would advance to a May 26 runoff.
Paxton’s campaign began running an ad Friday that features videos of Trump praising Paxton and images of them together. As of Monday, Trump has not endorsed any of the three Republicans in the race.
Paxton’s office promotes conservative causes
Paxton relied on his Austin office to remain at the center of conservative efforts.
Last year, he sued doctors in Texas over claims they violated the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, asserting a key priority for social conservatives in their opposition to what they call gender ideology.
In October, just weeks after Trump repeatedly implored pregnant women, “Don’t take Tylenol,” Paxton sued the companies behind the drug, accusing them of misleadingly marketing it specifically to expectant women, making unproven claims that early exposure to its active ingredient increases the risk of autism.
Most notably, Paxton led numerous legal challenges against the previous Joe Biden administration over immigration and border policies, often succeeding and honing his credentials as a conservative crusader. Paxton, who was first elected attorney general in 2014, also regularly sued Barack Obama’s administration during the last two years of the two-term Democrat’s administration.
“I think Ken Paxton is a fighter,” said U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas. Nehls said Paxton prosecuted then-President Joe Biden more than any other U.S. attorney general.
Cornyn, allies spending over $50 million
The steady stream of litigation has kept Paxton in the headlines in Texas as Cornyn and his allies have spent heavily to try to burnish his image among Republican primary voters.
As of Friday, Cornyn’s campaign and allied super PACs had spent more than $54 million on television advertising last year, according to AdImpact. Most reminded voters of Paxton’s impeachment and his wife’s divorce filing on “biblical grounds,” alleging extramarital affairs. The groups spent millions more on digital ads, text messages and direct mail, also attacking Paxton.
In an ad sponsored by Texans for a conservative majority, a narrator says early on: “Ken Paxton isn’t just corrupt. He’s weird.”
Republican strategists unaffiliated with either campaign say the spending and months of warnings have not significantly hurt Paxton, who projects confidence. No senator in Texas political history has served more than four terms. And Paxton thinks he’s better known than almost any elected Republican in Texas, including Cornyn.
Speaking on a December podcast hosted by Tony Buzbee, an attorney who represented the attorney general during his impeachment trial, Paxton said “the only other people with ID” in the state are Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is seeking re-election, and Sen. Ted Cruz.
Senate GOP leaders are worried
Republican Senate leaders in Washington sounded the alarm Monday about Paxton. They say Paxton, as the GOP nominee, would need hundreds of millions more dollars to defend himself in the general election, given the expected attacks, than Cornyn. And they say that’s money the party shouldn’t be spending in Texas, a state Trump carried by more than 13 percentage points.
Democrats need to pick up a total of four seats to overcome the Republican majority in the Senate in November. The minority party is expressing renewed confidence in the battle for Republican-held seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio.
In Texas, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are seeking the Democratic nomination. Paxton would fare worse than Cornyn in the November election against any of the Democrats, strategists at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign group led by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said in an early February memo obtained by The Associated Press.
“Cornyn wins the general election,” the memo read. “Paxton puts the seat in jeopardy.”
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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed from Washington.