Ken Paxton spent America's 250th birthday not in Texas, not at a parade, and not on the campaign trail, but in England, photographed alongside a woman his own wife has accused him of adultery with. Now prominent Republicans are warning that the Texas attorney general's U.S. Senate campaign is in serious trouble, and the numbers back them up.
A New York Times/Siena poll published June 30 showed Paxton locked in a virtual tie with Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. A separate survey from the University of Texas at Austin's Texas Politics Project confirmed the same picture: a neck-and-neck race in a state Republicans cannot afford to lose.
Then came a rapid-fire sequence of bad news for Paxton. On July 7, the Texas Tribune and ProPublica reported that Paxton may have committed voter fraud by registering at an address where he no longer lives, a particularly damaging allegation for an attorney general who has built his brand on prosecuting election irregularities. The next day, the Texas Tribune reported that Talarico hauled in a record-setting $30 million in second-quarter fundraising, dwarfing Paxton's $9 million over the same period.
And hanging over all of it: photographs from Independence Day weekend showing Paxton in England with Tracy Duhon, a Christian influencer described as his purported mistress, while the rest of the country celebrated the nation's semiquincentennial.
Sen. Ted Cruz, appearing on Sean Hannity's radio show around the week of July 9, did not sugarcoat the situation. Cruz acknowledged that Texas Democrats have a "real chance" this cycle, a remarkable concession from the state's senior Republican senator.
"I think this is a real race. I think it's going to be close. I think we're going to win, I think we're going to keep Texas red, but the polling right now shows this is a 1- or 2-point race."
That was the diplomatic version. Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett, a former Trump State Department appointee, was considerably less restrained in comments to MS Now over the weekend preceding the article's July 16 publication.
"Texas is a mess. We're kind of lucky more people aren't paying attention."
Bartlett zeroed in on the England trip with particular force, contrasting Paxton's absence from America 250 celebrations with his overseas jaunt. "America 250, a huge celebration in DC and across the country. Where is Ken Paxton? In a parade? No, he's in London with the new girl he's dating?" Bartlett said. "What is going on there? He has more baggage than a [Boeing] 747."
That baggage is by now well documented. Paxton's wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on what she described as "biblical grounds," alleging adultery. The filing came after what the Washington Examiner reported were "recent discoveries", suggesting the relationship with Duhon, a married mother of seven, was a second extramarital affair following the one that became central to Paxton's 2023 impeachment proceedings.
Paxton's personal conduct has been a live political issue for years. He was impeached by a Republican-led Texas House on 20 articles related to allegations he used his office to benefit a wealthy political donor. A woman was called to publicly testify about her affair with Paxton during the trial, though she ultimately never took the witness stand. His wife attended all two weeks of the proceedings, as AP News reported at the time.
Paxton was acquitted by a 16-14 vote in the Texas Senate, and he declared afterward that "the truth prevailed." But the acquittal did not erase the record. He had also been indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though those were later dismissed.
None of this was a secret when Texas Republicans chose their nominee. Paxton defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary runoff after securing President Trump's endorsement, part of Trump's dominant streak of primary endorsements this cycle. But Cornyn himself warned at the time that Paxton's "flaws and baggage" would be "exploited to the fullest" by Democrats in the general election, as National Review reported.
That prediction is now playing out in real time.
Of all the problems stacking up for Paxton, the voter fraud allegation may carry the sharpest political edge. Paxton has made frequent accusations about voter fraud throughout his career, and he has positioned himself as a champion of election integrity. The Texas Tribune and ProPublica report that he may have registered to vote at an address where he no longer resides puts him on the wrong side of the very laws he has claimed to defend.
Paxton's campaign has not publicly commented on the voter fraud allegations. It also did not respond to a request for comment about his England trip from the San Antonio Current. The silence itself speaks to the difficulty of the situation: there is no obvious answer that resolves both the personal conduct questions and the legal ones simultaneously.
The contrast between Paxton's public posture on election law and his alleged private conduct echoes a broader tension that has dogged some Republican candidates, the gap between the values platform and the personal record. It is the kind of contradiction that even sympathetic voices within the party have warned about.
Fundraising numbers tell their own story. Talarico's $30 million second-quarter haul was more than three times Paxton's $9 million. In a state as large and expensive as Texas, that kind of disparity can translate directly into airwave dominance, ground-game infrastructure, and the ability to define an opponent before he defines himself.
The New York Post noted after Paxton's primary runoff victory that his history of scandal had some Republicans worried about a more difficult general election race. Those worries are now materializing in concrete terms, not just in polls, but in dollars.
Meanwhile, the Stop Talarico PAC, formed by Republicans to counter the Democratic challenger, reportedly raised zero dollars during its first quarter of operation. That is not a typo. Zero.
Democrats, for their part, are pressing the advantage. Texas Democratic Party spokesman Ryan Martin issued a statement tying together the travel controversy and the legal questions.
"Voters are sick of puppet politicians like Ken Paxton who put lavish vacations before working families and break the very laws they are meant to enforce. Paxton is the embodiment of the corrupt system and politics that Texans despise, and [they] will be holding him accountable this November."
That is standard opposition rhetoric, and it should be read as such. But the uncomfortable reality for Republicans is that the facts Martin is working with, the trip, the photographs, the voter registration questions, the fundraising deficit, are not Democratic inventions. They are self-inflicted problems.
The question now is whether Texas Republicans can rally around a nominee whose personal conduct keeps generating headlines that drown out whatever policy message he might otherwise deliver. Paxton has survived impeachment, indictment, and divorce proceedings. Political resilience is not something he lacks.
But resilience in a primary, where base voters reward defiance and loyalty to the party standard-bearer, is a different thing than resilience in a general election, where swing voters in suburban Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin decide outcomes. The polling already suggests those voters are not giving Paxton the benefit of the doubt.
Talarico, for his part, has made Paxton's scandals a centerpiece of his campaign. As Breitbart reported, the Democrat has pivoted from his primary's sunnier tone to a direct assault on Paxton's record, calling him "the most corrupt politician in America" and noting that the characterization originated with Paxton's own fellow Republicans.
Republican Senate leaders reportedly feared that Paxton's scandals made him a weaker general election candidate. That fear is no longer hypothetical. It is the race.
This is not a story about a politician being unfairly targeted. Paxton was previously filmed traveling overseas with the same woman accused of being his mistress. His wife cited adultery in divorce papers. He registered to vote at a questionable address while championing voter fraud prosecutions. His campaign PAC raised nothing. His opponent is outspending him three to one.
At some point, a pattern of conduct this consistent stops being bad luck and starts being a character problem. And character problems in a one-to-two-point race are not abstractions. They are the margin.
Republicans chose their nominee. Now they own the consequences, and the clock is ticking toward November.