Texas AG Ken Paxton officially joins U.S. Senate race challenging John Cornyn

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Source: Texas Tribune

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he will challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections, setting up a barnburner clash of two Republican titans that is sure to reverberate across state and national politics.

The contest, teased by Paxton for months, promises to be among the most heated and expensive Republican primaries in the country and in recent Texas history. It also marks the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the Texas GOP’s hardline, socially conservative wing — which views Paxton as a standard-bearer — and the Cornyn-aligned, business-minded Republican old guard.

Appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show, Paxton said it was “time for a change in Texas” as he announced his Senate bid and blasted Cornyn’s “lack of production” over his 22 years in the upper chamber.

“We have another great U.S. senator, Ted Cruz, 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,” Paxton said. “And that's what I plan on doing.”

Paxton’s candidacy poses the most serious threat to Cornyn’s political career in decades. It would mark a watershed moment in the Texas GOP’s factional struggle if Paxton — not long removed from an array of career-threatening legal battles and impeachment by his own party — managed to topple Cornyn, a mainstay of Texas politics who had an early hand in the state’s Republican takeover and reached the upper rungs of Senate GOP leadership.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/08/ken-paxton-john-cornyn-us-senate-texas-republican-primary/

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[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Judge awards $6.7M to whistleblowers who reported Attorney General Ken Paxton to FBI

This rumor has been floating around for a while. Paxton is a major league asshole who should had been impeached but for the games that the Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick, pulled. Paxton just got found guilty and liable for $6.7 million in a whistleblower lawsuit. I think that Paxton is probably a weaker candidate than Coryn in the 2026 general if the Democrats get their best candidate on the ticket.

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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/ken-paxton-whistleblower-lawsuit-20260002.php

A Travis County judge has awarded $6.7 million to four whistleblowers who were fired after they reported Attorney General Ken Paxton to the FBI for alleged corruption.

In a judgment late Friday, Judge Catherine Mauzy ruled that a “preponderance of the evidence” showed Paxton had violated the Texas Whistleblower Act by firing the employees in retaliation for their allegations that he had abused the office to help a campaign donor.

Attorneys Tom Nesbitt and TJ Turner, who represent two of the whistleblowers, said in a statement Friday that state lawmakers now need to “do the honorable thing and fund the judgment so these brave public servants can be compensated.”

Paxton’s office in a statement said it planned to appeal the “bogus” ruling.

The whistleblowers’ claims, made in late 2020, triggered an FBI investigation into Paxton and spurred the Texas House to impeach the Republican official. The Texas Senate acquitted him and federal prosecutors reportedly decided last year not to file charges.

[JMCKUSICK]

2. Please win Paxton

Sort of the Kris Kobach of Texas. Might turn a winable GOP seat blue

[LudwigPastorius]

3. Choosing between Cornyn or Paxton is like...

choosing between ebola or anal cancer.

[FakeNoose]

4. Paxton should resign his current job if he wants to run for the Senate

Just sayin'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. MaddowBlog-Texas' Ken Paxton hopes to parlay multiple scandals into a GOP Senate campaign

Ken Paxton’s career as Texas attorney general has been marred by corruption allegations and impeachment. He's running for the U.S. Senate anyway.
https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3lmf3rkwhhc2o

Texas AG Ken Paxton parlaying corruption allegations and criminal charges into a US Senate campaign is a timely reminder:

The Republican Party has become a post-scandal party.

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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/texas-ken-paxton-hopes-parlay-multiple-scandals-gop-senate-campaign-rcna200385

Five years into Ken Paxton’s career as Texas attorney general, the far-right Republican faced devastating allegations from members of his own team. Indeed, high-level aides from Paxton’s own staff came forward to accuse him of a variety of crimes and abuses, including bribery.

When the state attorney general retaliated against his team, his accusers filed suit. Over the weekend, they won: A Texas judge awarded a total of $6.6 million to the four whistleblowers from Paxton’s office......

Instead, just three days after whistleblowers from his office were awarded $6.6 million, Paxton launched a U.S. Senate campaign. NBC News reported:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a primary challenge against longtime Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday night, setting the stage for a battle between two politicians representing different parts of the Republican Party.

It’s too soon to say with confidence who has the advantage in this GOP fight, but the fact that Paxton has launched such a candidacy is emblematic of a larger phenomenon in Republican politics.......

What’s more, the Republican’s securities fraud allegations were also unrelated to the corruption allegations raised by his former aides, which led to a state House investigation, which concluded that the state attorney general repeatedly broke the law by, among other things, abusing his office to hide an extramarital affair, doing special favors for a donor, and retaliating against perceived foes.

Though he continued to insist that he'd done nothing wrong, the scandal led to Paxton’s impeachment. He would've been removed from office were it not for the fact that he was acquitted by his partisan allies in the state Senate.

The idea that such a figure would try to parlay these controversies into a Senate campaign — which might very well prove effective — is a reminder of the degree to which the Republican Party has become a post-scandal party.

As for the White House’s possible intervention in the Texas primary, Donald Trump hasn’t yet commented on the Cornyn-Paxton race. That said, the president has been critical of Cornyn on multiple occasions, while Paxton led “Lawyers for Trump” in the 2020 race. Watch this space.

I have a feeling that Rachel will be taking about Ken tonight.