Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) at AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2024 (Image: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons)
How do you solve a problem like Ken Paxton? It's a question that The Hill's politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, can't help but mock as entirely of the GOP's own making.
For the first time in decades, a Texas U.S. Senate seat could go blue because the candidate is so uniquely flawed that even Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned his party it wasn't a smart move.
Stirewalt quoted the adage that success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan.
"If Paxton really does manage to lose his Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, naming the father of what would be an epochal defeat for Texas Republicans will be a Maury Povich-level meltdown," he said.
Stirewalt described the baggage Paxton drags with him as enough "to fill the cargo hold of the Titanic."
The Texas Republican Party just dropped $54 million in an effort to save Paxton's faltering campaign, campaign finance records show. It's the largest independent expenditure in the 2026 campaign cycle thus far.
It doesn't only come from the GOP's desperation; it comes as a direct result of what Cornyn called a "lazy" candidate.
“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Texas Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it — we are where we are.”
In fact, Paxton spent a key campaigning time, July Fourth weekend, in Iceland and London with his mistress-turned-girlfriend.
So, it isn't surprising that Stirewalt places the blame at Paxton's feet if he loses. After all, he said, Paxton "brings the verve and energy of a coroner’s inquest to the campaign trail."
Still, Stirewalt said that Cornyn is to blame as he enjoys "his I-told-you-so moment." Stirewalt thinks that if the two men came together in a joint effort after the bloody primary, Cornyn could be out there saving Paxton's skin.
Both Paxton and President Donald Trump made that fairly difficult by turning Cornyn into an enemy, however. Still, Stirewalt includes Cornyn in those who will bear the blame for focusing on Senate races other than Paxton's.
Stirewalt assumes that Paxton's pride got in the way of even asking Cornyn for his endorsement and his help.
The other person to blame, he said, is the president, who picked Paxton over Cornyn in the primary.
Now that he's in the general election, Paxton's close association with the president will only make things worse, even in ruby red Texas. Trump continues to lose ground with independent voters, but now it appears he's dropping with Republicans too, who believed him when he promised "no more wars."
Currently, that war is driving up costs for groceries and gas. The only solution came during his 2026 convention, which Stirewalt called an outright "infomercial for Paxton": Trump's pledge to deliver $5,000 checks to Americans if they ensured Republicans kept the House and Senate.
Trump made the same promise for the DOGE cuts, which were supposed to hit bank accounts in February. It never happened. Trump's $2,000 tariff rebate is another that didn't appear. Trump even promised a $500 rebate check, saying that the Affordable Care Act Americans were overcharged and he'd make it right. Thus far, none of those checks have arrived, adding to Trump's total of $12,500 he hasn't paid Americans but promised.
Even his pledge of support for Paxton was lackluster. It was akin to a roast where he blasted Paxton as dressing poorly and not knowing how to speak in public.
"He got a massive cash infusion and a new persona from Trump as a kind of pitiful figure, which is an improvement over his conventional image as calculating and aloof," wrote Stirewalt.
Still, if Paxton loses, "he will mostly have himself to blame."
