Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate from the Lone Star State, privately told conservative donors and lobbyists that the party’s heavily promoted midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month had hurt Republican polling numbers.
“To be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention, it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped,” Paxton said at the gathering last week, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “Right now, yeah, not good.”
Paxton is locked in a closely watched race against state Rep. James Talarico, who is seeking to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since 1988. Talarico leads Paxton by 2.9 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Paxton’s private assessment contrasts sharply with President Trump’s public comments about the convention’s impact. Speaking to reporters in Ireland on Sept. 13, Trump said: “I think the fact that we had such a successful convention really helped Ken Paxton. He was a big part of it. And look, I mean, he was a great attorney general. Ken Paxton was a great attorney general, and continues to be, and I think that counts for a lot … I hear that the convention helped Ken Paxton a lot.”
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Paxton campaign adviser Nick Maddux dismissed the report as “more manipulated nonsense from The New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.” He said the campaign’s latest poll, conducted last week, showed Paxton ahead by three points and argued that “every serious pollster” would say the candidate’s numbers have improved since early September. “Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump including when he comes to Texas this week,” Maddux said.
Trump is scheduled to appear Thursday at a Peterbil Motors facility in Denton, Texas, as part of a final campaign push aimed at helping Republican candidates win and preserving GOP control of the House and Senate.
Paxton, 63, defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in a bitter Republican primary runoff earlier this year. His campaign has unfolded against a backdrop of personal and political controversy, including the filing of divorce papers by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, on “biblical grounds.” She has since urged voters to keep the Senate seat in Republican hands. The attorney general was also impeached by the Texas Legislature in May 2023 on corruption charges, but was ultimately acquitted.
Over the weekend, The Post reported that the Senate Leadership Fund, an organization affiliated with Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has committed $100 million to support Paxton and plans to continue spending through Election Day.
“It’s a red wall kind of thing,” one source said, adding, “We only spend money where we think we can make a difference.”
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