On May 26, 2026, Texas Republicans picked their candidate for the U.S. Senate. They did not pick the four-term incumbent. They picked Ken Paxton.

And it was not close. Paxton took 63.8% of the vote and beat Sen. John Cornyn by 28 points. The Associated Press called the race about an hour after the polls closed. The Brookings Institution called the result a landslide that ended the Bush era of the Texas GOP.

So now Ken Paxton is one election away from the United States Senate. He faces Austin state Rep. James Talarico in November.

Before Texans vote again, it is worth being very clear about who Paxton is. Not the campaign ads. The record. Because this is a man who has spent more than a decade as the state's top law enforcement officer — and the public file on him reads like a rap sheet.

He was indicted, impeached, and reported to the FBI by his own staff

Start with the basics. Paxton was indicted on three felony securities fraud counts in 2015, seven months into his first term as attorney general. He was booked. He took a mug shot. Then he dragged the case out for nearly nine years until he finally cut a deal in 2024 — community service and restitution in exchange for the charges being dropped. There was no acquittal. The case never reached a jury.

Then there is the scandal that nearly ended his career. In 2020, eight of his own senior deputies reported him to the FBI. These were not enemies. They were conservative lawyers Paxton hired himself. They said he had abused the power of his office to help a friend and political donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul — and that Paul, in return, had given a job to a woman Paxton was having an affair with.

Within weeks, all eight whistleblowers were fired or forced out.

In 2023, the Texas House impeached Paxton 121 to 23. More than two-thirds of his fellow House Republicans voted to remove him. The Texas Senate later acquitted him — but acquittal is not innocence. A court looked at the same conduct and reached its own conclusion. In 2025, a judge ruled that Paxton's office broke the Texas Whistleblower Act and ordered the state to pay the fired aides $6.6 million. Paxton dropped his appeal, so Texas taxpayers are now paying that bill. You are paying for what he did.

He used the law as a weapon against people he disliked

Here is the part that should worry every Texan, no matter your politics. Paxton turned the consumer protection office — the office that is supposed to go after scam artists and predatory lenders — into a tool for hitting his political enemies.

A 2024 investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found that Paxton used consumer protection law more than a dozen times in two years to demand records from groups he disagreed with politically. Not one of those investigations was started by an actual consumer complaint. His office confirmed it.

Who did he target? A migrant shelter. A hospital that provided health care to transgender teens. A media watchdog group. These are not consumer scams. They are people Ken Paxton did not like. A Georgetown law professor told the reporters it looked like "a core violation" of what those laws exist to do.

That is the job he wants to take to Washington — except a U.S. Senator helps write the laws for the entire country, not just enforce them in one state.

He tried to overturn an election he lost

After the 2020 election, Paxton filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the certified votes of four states Donald Trump lost — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Other Republican attorneys general refused to put their names on it. Paxton filed it anyway. The Supreme Court tossed it out almost immediately.

Then he spoke at the January 6 rally that came right before the attack on the Capitol, telling the crowd "we will not quit fighting." He was the only state attorney general in the country who refused to condemn the riot. Instead he spread a false conspiracy theory that the rioters were really antifa. There was no evidence. It was a lie.

The man who tried to throw out millions of legal votes now wants Texans to send him to Washington to count theirs.

"Family values" — and two affairs

Paxton has built his whole brand on family values, traditional marriage, and Christian principles. His own life tells a different story. The affair tied to the Nate Paul scandal was only the start. In 2025, his wife of nearly 40 years — Texas state senator Angela Paxton — announced their separation, citing "biblical grounds". In his divorce response, Paxton asked that she receive nothing from their 38-year marriage.

This is a man who has spent years telling other Texans how they are allowed to live and love — and who called LGBTQ+ people and their allies "predators."

This is who Texas Republicans chose

None of this is hidden. Every fact above has been reported for years, by the Texas Tribune, by ProPublica, by CNN, by his own impeachment. Texas Republicans knew all of it. And in May, they did not just nominate him — they handed him a 28-point blowout.

That is the choice now in front of every Texan. The full case against Ken Paxton — the securities fraud, the bribery scandal, the abuse of office, the election lies, the donor money — is laid out on his report card below.

Source

This post was prompted by Judd Legum's A citizen's guide to Ken Paxton in Popular Information, which collects the documented record in one place.