The midterm elections are still 29 days away, but Republican Ken Paxton is preemptively blaming others if he loses Texas’ Senate race to Democrat James Talarico.
Paxton lamented that the messaging in his race is being orchestrated by party operatives in the nation’s capital and that he has no control over what is being said in ads, according to audio obtained by Politico from a closed-door fundraiser Paxton held in Washington, D.C., last month. It was an obvious attempt to lay the groundwork to dodge the blame if Talarico wins.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming—you know—from D.C.,” Paxton told the fundraiser attendees, one of whom does not support Paxton and leaked recordings of Paxton’s pitch to media outlets.
“I don’t control [the] message or what we’re doing,” Paxton said, adding, “I don’t have the ability to change anything. So I have to live with whatever I’ve got. So it is a challenge.”
NEW in @playbookdc: Ken Paxton in leaked audio vents over his campaign being run by DC:
“I don’t control message or what we’re doing”
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign…it’s all coming — you know — from DC” pic.twitter.com/mnpUWMm6Y2
— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) October 5, 2026
Talarico’s campaign is already pushing out the audio to paint Paxton as a “puppet” of establishment Republicans.
What’s more, Paxton’s comments are unlikely to please President Donald Trump. A super PAC linked to the president is dumping tens of millions into the race and is one of the groups Paxton had to be referring to in his fundraiser comments. And this represents the second clip to emerge from a closed-door fundraiser, with the first one featuring Paxton telling donors that Trump’s midterm convention was a dud.
Indeed, Trump already seemed pissed at Paxton during a rally he held in the state last week.
James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, shown in March.AP
“He can be a pain in the ass sometimes, I’ll be honest,” Trump said at a rally on Oct. 1. “Is he here, by the way? Oh, there he is. I didn’t even know if he was here! I don’t care.”
Ultimately, if Paxton weren’t a generationally bad candidate, he wouldn’t be in this situation.
Paxton has been unable to raise enough money to run an ad campaign of his own, though his home state of Texas is where Republican Party and GOP candidates from across the country often go to raise the lion’s share of their dollars.
In the 2024 cycle, the Republican Party raised the most money from the state, with Texan donors giving more than $142 million to the GOP, according to data from Open Secrets.
“Texas has largely been considered the ATM for Republican Party politics,” University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus told Houston Public Media last month. “There’s no other state where there’s such a convergence of ideology and money as Texas.”
The fact that Paxton can’t raise money from his own constituents shows how odious he is, as the genteel class of Texas donors find Paxton’s corruption and alleged adultery so repugnant they refuse to support his candidacy.
It’s part of the reason why Paxton is struggling to win a state Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
Polling shows Paxton trailing Talarico by more than 3 percentage points, according to FiftyPlusOne’s average, with a large chunk of self-identified Republicans saying they are defecting and supporting Talarico this cycle.
Even more concerning for Paxton is that his bad predicament is virtually unchanged from September, when the same national Republican groups Paxton has criticized began dumping hundreds of millions into the contest to save Paxton’s sorry excuse for a campaign.
With early voting in the state set to begin on Oct. 19, Paxton and the GOP have almost no time left to change the trajectory of this contest. It’s probably why Paxton was distancing himself from the ad campaign national Republicans are running.
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