Thomas Massie<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/AP26063514703870-1779845468.jpg\")
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, left, in Dallas and Senator John Cornyn in Austin, Texas, on March 3, 2026 [Julio Cortez, Jack Myer\/AP]Controversies and midterm race<\/p>\n
Paxton has spent years facing legal, ethical and personal controversies, including a 2023 impeachment by the Republican-led Texas House of Representatives, allegations of bribery and misconduct, and a high-profile divorce.<\/p>\n
The 63-year-old was later acquitted by the Texas Senate and has repeatedly dismissed the allegations against him as politically motivated attacks.<\/p>\n
Paxton will now face Democratic state Representative James Talarico in a closely watched November race that could help decide control of the US Senate.<\/p>\n
Talarico, 37, has attracted moderate and independent voters, while some Republicans privately fear Paxton could struggle in a general election despite his popularity with Trump supporters.<\/p>\n
An internal Republican Senate campaign memo circulated last year warned that a Paxton nomination could give Democrats a rare opportunity to flip Texas and force Republicans to spend heavily defending a seat long considered safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout a shadow of a doubt, I will be the Democrats\u2019 number one target in November,\u201d Paxton said.<\/p>\n
The candidate also predicted that Talarico is \u201cgoing to raise more money than any Democrat in America\u201d, and urged his followers to donate to his campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Republicans lose this state, we lose the country,\u201d Paxton warned.<\/p>\n
Within minutes of Paxton being declared the winner of the Republican primary run-off for US Senate, the Democrat called him \u201cthe most corrupt politician in America\u201d in a social media post.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe embodies the broken system we\u2019re running against,\u201d Talarico wrote on X.<\/p>\n
In another post, he invited Cornyn\u2019s supporters to vote for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a place in our campaign,\u201d Talarico wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn in Texas race, setting up a November election that could decide control of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,288,223,287,27,29,28,464,100172],"class_list":["post-310363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-united-states","tag-us-midterm-elections-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}