EDINBURG, Texas — Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general and its Republican Senate nominee, is homing in on the ultraconservative voters who have long powered his political career in his final push to win the grueling race.
Paxton has largely leaned into familiar conservative messages — like attacking transgender people and aligning himself with President Donald Trump — betting that the Republican base will be enough to carry him to victory in November. The approach reflects a political calculation that has long worked for Republicans in Texas, which is to energize conservative voters and capitalize on the state’s conservative bent.
It’s a risky strategy for a general election that presupposes Texas is not the battleground just about everyone else — including some Republicans — think it is.
“Politics is about addition, not subtraction. Winners broaden their appeal. Losers run primaries in generals,” said a Republican strategist familiar with Texas politics, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of the race. They argued that Paxton’s approach could prove costly.
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“When Ken loses, this will be a big reason why.”
Paxton has been a longtime ally of Trump, whose endorsement of him over Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary helped propel him to victory. Trump carried Texas by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024, a data point that shows the considerable advantage Republicans have enjoyed in statewide elections.
In the months since Paxton won the primary, though, it’s become an expensive race that both parties see as a priority. In a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in decades, polls show an unexpectedly competitive race between Paxton and his opponent, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
“Paxton’s only conceivable path to victory is to get Republicans to rally around the Trump standard and run up the score. Paxton is hoping that party loyalty will overcome voters’ reservations about him,” said Dennis Lennox, a Republican strategist based in Michigan. “The bigger question for Republicans: How many Senate races around the country will they lose because hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to save Paxton in Texas?”
Paxton’s campaign has continued to emphasize his conservative credentials while attacking Talarico over his positions on culture war issues. His ads have sought to portray Talarico as too liberal for Texas.
“He wants to transition our kids. He wants to transition Texas off of oil and gas. How about we transition him and his crazy ideas right out of Texas?” Paxton said recently at a rally in Edinburg, Texas.
Talarico’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Talarico is presenting himself as a candidate willing to engage with Texans who disagree with him and leaning heavily on his Christian faith, seeking to challenge the Republican Party’s long-standing advantage among religious voters.
Paxton has also sought to mobilize religious conservatives in an effort to win the seat, including through a group called Pastors for Paxton that recently announced endorsements from dozens of Houston-area pastors, underscoring his appeal to Texas Evangelical voters.
“Talarico believes that God is nonbinary,” Paxton has said on the stump. “If someone can show me where that is in the scriptures, I’d love to see it.”
The Paxton campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Paxton presents his own unique challenges as a candidate, given that his political career has been marked by controversy and he needs to win over voters who have reservations about him.
In 2023, he was impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House on more than a dozen articles, including bribery and unfitness for office, but was acquitted by the state Senate in a high-profile trial. Since then, he’s faced a messy public divorce from state Sen. Angela Paxton, though she has urged voters to cast their ballots for the Republican ticket (without naming Paxton).
Earlier this year, Cornyn summarized what it could mean to have Paxton at the top of the ticket as “dead weight.” He has not campaigned for Paxton in the general and has become outspoken about some Trump administration goals as his retirement nears.
“I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn said when the polls for the Senate primary closed in March. “There is simply too much at stake in this midterm election for our state and for our country.”
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