Trouble magnet Ken Paxton.
Photo: Justin Lane/Bloomberg/Getty Images
One of the most remarkable aspects of Donald Trump’s rise to the White House was his ability to transcend an unsavory personal and professional history to become the favorite politician of the most moralistic religious conservative voters in the country. In Texas, we may be about to find out if Teflon Don’s immunity from even basic moral standards is communicable to one of his fiercest supporters, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton.
The Lone Star State’s attorney general has admitted to conducting an extended adulterous affair, to the pain and humiliation of his wife of more than three decades, Angela Paxton, herself a state senator. That has been the least of his problems. Paxton was credibly accused of corrupt dealings with a real-estate developer in order to cover up his affair and provide financial benefits to his lover. The allegations, along with a long-standing federal investigation into potential securities fraud by Paxton, led to his impeachment by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives in 2023.
After a lurid trial in which Paxton claimed persecution for his staunch conservatism by the RINO Establishment Republicans who then controlled the Texas House (a defense very much modeled on Trump’s responses to his own legal problems and impeachments), the attorney general was acquitted by the Texas Senate (with his own wife not voting). Soon thereafter the securities-fraud probe was shut down with felony charges dropped.
Since then Paxton’s star has risen as the MAGA lord of the state GOP, as the Texas Tribune reported in 2024:
The historic impeachment case against Paxton, which prominently aired his affair with a former Senate staffer, turned out to be a political boon for the attorney general.
The party’s rightmost flank rallied behind him, casting the effort as a witch hunt to distract from House leaders’ insufficiently conservative record, rather than the pattern of misconduct and questionable ethics alleged by the impeachment articles. A powerful and deep pocketed political action committee largely funded by a pair of West Texas oil tycoons — Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — promised political vengeance to House Republicans who crossed Paxton.
Paxton’s impeachment became a conservative litmus test in the primary election, which saw a number of powerful and long-tenured members fall to defeat or get forced into runoffs.
Paxton’s vengeance effort (another parallel with Trump) coincided with a right-wing purge of Republican legislators opposing Governor Greg Abbott’s sweeping school-voucher proposal, designed to end public education as we’ve known it in favor of lavish subsidies for private religious schools and homeschoolers. This is a state GOP lurching far rightward in a big hurry. Thus it’s no surprise that Paxton decided to launch a 2026 primary challenge to the senior U.S. senator from Texas, John Cornyn, shortly after Cornyn lost his bid to become majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
For all his juice in Washington, D.C., Cornyn has clearly failed to keep up with his state party’s descent into extremism. Paxton has handily led the incumbent in every public primary poll. The most recent, from a conservative group, showed him trouncing Cornyn by a 50 percent to 28 percent margin.
But now Paxton’s shadiness has come back to haunt him again, as this announcement from his wife indicates:
For the uninitiated, “on biblical grounds” generally means because of adultery or abandonment from a spouse (some would add domestic abuse as well). The more interesting phrase in the tweet is “in light of recent discoveries,” suggesting that the grievous offenses that drove her to this step weren’t necessarily those that occurred years ago.
Hilariously or offensively, defending on your perspective, Paxton quickly spun his wife’s decision as mutual:
It’s also noteworthy that he appears to be deflecting blame for the broken marriage onto media and his political enemies. His request for “privacy” means he won’t be answering any questions about it all.
Cornyn’s camp (including the National Republican Senate Committee, which backs all incumbents vociferously), however, didn’t let it lie for even an hour:
So the question remains this: Will being mega-MAGA cover the multitude of Ken Paxton’s sins? The increasingly vicious tone of the Paxton-Cornyn rivalry has to be upsetting for Republicans with no particular dog in the fight. Paxton is looking shaky in general-election polls, and Democrats definitely smell an opportunity to pick off a seat deemed safely Republican before Paxton jumped into the race. The possibility of a murder-suicide scenario could tempt a third candidate, GOP congressman Wesley Hunt, to enter the race as a Trump loyalist with fewer issues than Paxton.
The obvious arbiter of this situation is Trump himself, and it’s unclear what he’ll do. Senate Republicans are undoubtedly whispering into his ear to deep-six Paxton before things get out of hand. Trump would like Texas Republicans to stay united and concentrate on flipping a bunch of House seats (through a special legislative redistricting session he has fomented) instead of potentially giving Democrats fresh hopes for the very long shot of flipping the Senate. He’s been a big Paxton supporter in the past, particularly in 2022, when his endorsement helped lift the attorney general past two tough primary challengers. As Texas’s top law-enforcement official, Paxton launched a lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election as rigged, and spoke at Trump’s January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. And he’s been an avid backer of every extreme thing the second Trump administration has done. We’re told loyalty means a lot to the 47th president, and despite Paxton’s apparent problem with loyalty to his marriage vows, he has been very loyal to the boss.
What happens next is going to tell us a lot about both Paxton and Trump, and about a Republican Party that has more moral-relativism problems than liberals ever had.
