Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton in Conroe, Texas, U.S., January 29, 2022. REUTERS/Go Nakamura
President Donald Trump's choice for US senator from Texas, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, made dismissive comments about the 21 innocent people slaughtered during the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.
"There's always a plan," Paxton said in recently-uncovered footage. "I believe God always has a plan. Life is short, no matter what it is."
The audio clip is only likely to hurt a candidate who is already trailing Democratic State Sen. James Talarico despite the two men running against each other in a solidly red state. On Wednesday CNN reported that one of Paxton's fellow Republicans, former state Rep. Glenn Rogers, released an ad saying that he would never endorse the embattled fellow partisan.
"The ad will run statewide on digital and streaming platforms as part of the group’s eight-figure effort in the general election," CNN reported through a spokesperson at the political action committee running the Rogers ad. "It comes as Democrats confront a spike in outside GOP spending in recent days, suddenly giving Paxton’s side a huge advertising advantage in the closing weeks of the tight race."
Even though the incumbent in the Senate seat is Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican who has loyally supported Trump, Trump shocked the political world by instead endorsing Paxton. The political consensus is that Talarico will be far more competitive against Paxton than he would have been against the popular Cornyn.
"At the exact same moment, Trump casually ended Sen. John Cornyn's political career with a single endorsement of the far more MAGA-coded Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas," Douglas Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times in May. "Ironically, Trump helping Paxton win the primary delivers his MAGA faithful a short-term win while putting the seat itself in real jeopardy. Democratic nominee James Talarico is a much more plausible threat to Paxton than he would have been to Cornyn, and a Republican Senate majority that looked safe a week ago no longer does."
MS NOW's Chris Hayes also pointed out at the time that Trump's betrayal of Cornyn for Paxton betrays political weakness rather than the strength he likely intended to project.
“If you looked just at the percentages of last night’s Senate runoff in Starr County, you would say Trump is still dominating,” wrote MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Thursday. “His candidate beat Cornyn there by nearly 50 points. But what’s that percentage based on? How many Republicans actually voted in that runoff? The answer: virtually none.”
Hayes continued, “Only 90 votes were cast out of more than 36,000 registered voters in the county, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. In that same county, in a single Democratic primary for a local judge back in March, more than 13,000 Democrats turned out to vote.”