The Teflon Candidate

Ken Paxton's Record, Trump's Endorsement, and What It Tells Us About the Republican Party

Published May 22, 2026

The Republican primary runoff for the United States Senate seat in Texas takes place on Tuesday, May 26. The candidate now leading in polls, freshly endorsed by the President of the United States, has been indicted on felony charges, impeached by his own party, investigated by the FBI for four years, accused of bribery, accused of using his office to benefit a campaign donor in exchange for personal favors, and divorced by his wife — a Texas state senator — on grounds of adultery, with her citing "biblical grounds" and stating it would not honor God to remain in the marriage. None of it has ended his political career. Some of it appears to have helped it.

Ken Paxton has been the Attorney General of Texas since 2015. His record in that office is one of the most thoroughly documented chronicles of alleged misconduct in modern American politics, stretching back to before he was even sworn in.

The first trouble arrived during the 2014 Republican primary for Attorney General, when the Texas Securities Board reprimanded Paxton and fined him $1,000 for soliciting investment clients without being registered. He admitted wrongdoing and called it an administrative oversight. Less than a year into his first term, that administrative oversight became something considerably more serious — a grand jury indicted him on two counts of felony securities fraud and one count of failing to register as an investment adviser. The indictment sat unresolved for nearly a decade, with Paxton's legal team deploying every procedural tool available to delay trial. The charges were ultimately dismissed in 2023 as part of a broader legal settlement — not because a court found him innocent, but because the process had been exhausted.

Then came the whistleblowers. In 2020, seven senior employees of the Texas Attorney General's office filed complaints alleging that Paxton had abused his office to benefit Nate Paul, a campaign donor and Austin real estate developer. The allegations were specific: that Paxton had intervened in legal matters involving Paul's business interests in exchange for personal favors, including the employment of a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair. By the end of October 2020, all seven whistleblowers had left the office — three resigned, two were fired, and two were placed on leave. Four of them sued. The workplace they described was one in which personal loyalty to Paxton was valued above adherence to legal and ethical standards, and in which employees who asked questions faced retaliation.

Paxton settled the whistleblower lawsuit in February 2023, offering $3.3 million in taxpayer money to make it go away. He then asked the Texas Legislature to fund the settlement. The House's investigation into that request was what triggered the impeachment inquiry that followed. The Republican-controlled Texas House voted overwhelmingly to impeach him in May 2023 — only the third officeholder in Texas' nearly 200-year history to reach that threshold. The articles of impeachment covered bribery, abuse of office, obstruction, and a pattern of misconduct that the House committee said constituted numerous crimes. The Texas Senate acquitted him on all 16 articles in a party-line vote. His wife Angela, a state senator herself, sat as a non-voting member of the jury and did not participate in deliberations — having declined to vote to remove her husband. She filed for divorce in July 2025 on grounds of adultery, stating in her filing that she did not believe it honored God or was loving to herself or her children to remain in the marriage.

The FBI investigation ran parallel to all of this for four years, examining the same Nate Paul allegations. In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice declined to bring charges, ending the federal probe without indictment.

This is the man Donald Trump endorsed on May 19, 2026, calling him "a true MAGA Warrior" and declaring that "Ken Paxton has gone through a lot, in many cases, very unfairly, but he is a Fighter." The framing is precise and deliberate. Every legal challenge Paxton has faced is recast as persecution. The indictment, the impeachment, the FBI investigation, the whistleblowers — all of it becomes evidence not of misconduct but of courage in the face of a corrupt establishment. The scandals are not a liability. They are the credential.

Trump's decision to endorse Paxton over John Cornyn, a 24-year incumbent and former Senate Majority Whip who voted with Trump more than 99% of the time, was not made on policy grounds. Cornyn's sin was insufficient personal loyalty at moments Trump found difficult. "John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him," Trump wrote, "but he was not supportive of me when times were tough." Senate Republican leaders spent months pleading with Trump to back Cornyn, the institutionalist who could be counted on to govern. Trump chose Paxton, the loyalist who could be counted on to obey. Steve Bannon, who helped engineer the endorsement, described it plainly: "This is as much a vote of no confidence in John Thune as it is a vote of confidence in Ken Paxton."

The political consequences are already rattling Republican strategists. Cornyn was the safe general election candidate. Paxton is not. Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, and Republicans have treated the state as a permanent asset. Democrats are treating a Paxton nomination as their best opening in a generation. The Democratic nominee, state Representative James Talarico, is either the favorite or within the margin of error against Paxton in recent independent polling — a number that would have been unthinkable against Cornyn. One Republican strategist told The Hill that Trump had effectively surrendered his Senate leverage: "I guess the president figured he doesn't need a GOP Senate majority for the remainder of 2026 because he really no longer has one."

The runoff is Tuesday. A post-endorsement poll taken this week showed Paxton opening a large lead over Cornyn. The machinery of Trump's endorsement, demonstrated in Louisiana and Kentucky earlier this month, appears to be working again.

What is being decided on Tuesday in Texas is not simply a Senate primary. It is a referendum on whether the Republican Party will continue to nominate candidates whose primary qualification is personal fealty to one man, regardless of what that costs in November. In Louisiana, the cost was acceptable — the seat was safe either way. In Texas, the cost may be a Senate seat that Republicans have held for thirty years. The calculation Trump made is that loyalty matters more than the majority. The voters of Texas will decide whether his party agrees.

Sources: Texas Tribune, NBC News, Axios, The Hill, Washington Times, Lone Star Project, The Paxton Record. Securities fraud indictment details from Collin County court records. Impeachment details from Texas House Committee on General Investigating, May 2023.