Shortly after MAGA favorite and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his plans to run for the Senate in 2026, he was hit with allegations about his personal life by his rival’s campaign.
Paxton will challenge fellow Republican, five-time incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the upcoming primary race.
"I am announcing that I am running for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn," Paxton said in an interview on Fox News show The Ingraham Angle.
"We have another great U.S. senator, Ted Cruz (from Texas), and it's time we have another great senator that will actually stand up and fight for Republican values, fight for the values of the people of Texas and also support ... Donald Trump in the areas that he's focused on in a very significant way."
Cornyn's campaign immediately highlighted the senator's support for Trump and called Paxton, 62, a fraud.
“He says he’s anti-woke, but he funnels millions of taxpayer dollars to lawyers who celebrate DEI. And Ken claims to be a man of faith but uses fake Uber accounts to meet his girlfriend and deceive his family.”
"Ken Paxton is a fraud," Cornyn's team said, touting that the senator has often voted in favor of Trump's agenda. Trump, a Republican, has previously expressed support for both Paxton and Cornyn, 73, who will be seeking a fifth term.
In 2023, Paxton narrowly survived an impeachment vote over alleged bribes he took from Austin developer Nate Paul.
“Uber records reflect drivers picked up Paxton under the alias of 'Dave P' a block from his home and ferried him to his lover's or Paul's properties more than a dozen times from August 6, 2020, until October 2, 2020,” officials wrote in impeachment documents.
The woman that Paxton was accused of having an affair with worked for Paul.
Paxton has four children with his wife, Angela, a Texas state representative. They are practicing evangelical Christians.
Democrats have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988.
“He talks tough on crime and then lets crooked progressive Lina Hidalgo off the hook. He says his impeachment trial was a sham but he didn’t contest the facts in legal filings which will cost the state millions,” Cornyn’s campaign also said.
Cornyn’s campaign also noted that the senator has voted in favor of Trump’s agenda 95 percent of the time.
Republican strategist Dave Carney told Fox News that the race would likely be “the most expensive primary in Texas.”
“It will be a brutal battle. [It also] opens up the attorney general’s race. There will probably be a very competitive primary for that and we’re going to have a lot of musical chairs down ballot,” Carney added.
Earlier this month, Paxton led attorney generals from 12 Republican-led states in demanding that 20 private companies shut down their DEI operations.
In January, just after Trump began his second term, an attorney discipline board dropped its misconduct case against Paxton after the state Supreme Court blocked related claims against one of his top deputies over their work on a failed lawsuit that challenged Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The commission had accused Paxton of professional misconduct for allegedly making dishonest statements in a lawsuit Texas filed in December 2020 at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block Biden’s victories over Donald Trump in four key states. Paxton denied violating attorney conduct rules and argued that the disciplinary commission lacked authority over his action as a state official.
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