The Texas Senate GOP primary race between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton is getting personal as the runoff election nears.
Cornyn’s campaign unveiled a new ad on Friday, comparing Paxton’s ethics to those of a strip club owner for having an extramarital affair.
“Ken Paxton cheated on the mother of his children,” the narrator said in the 30-second ad spot. “This man used a burner phone and fake alias to hide his adultery. Divorced on biblical grounds, Paxton is now sleeping around with another married woman, a mother of seven. Ken Paxton has the ethics of a strip club owner.”
The video ended with a pointed question for Texas mothers, two days before Mother’s Day: “Would you want your daughters to marry a man like Ken Paxton?”
Paxton’s ex-wife, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last year after it was discovered the Republican attorney general had a long-term affair with a former assistant who served as the basis for Paxton’s impeachment proceedings. In 2023, he was acquitted by the Texas Senate.
As a state senator, Angela Paxton was barred from voting due to the personal nature of her then-husband’s impeachment case.
After the divorce filing, reports of Ken Paxton having another affair circulated. He allegedly had a relationship with a married Christian influencer and mother of seven children following the end of the impeachment trial. In the fall, Cornyn’s campaign requested records under state law to determine whether Paxton used taxpayer funds to pay for trips to meet his alleged mistress.
The latest cheating scandal has not been confirmed, but Ken Paxton’s ex-wife cited “recent discoveries” as the reason to file for divorce. The timing suggests it was related to the second affair.
Neither Cornyn nor Ken Paxton won an outright majority in the Texas Republican primary for the Senate in March, paving the way for a May 26 runoff.
With less than three weeks to go until the runoff, President Donald Trump has not yet endorsed Cornyn or Ken Paxton, despite saying in March he would back one of them “soon.”
PAXTON AND CORNYN LOCKED IN TIGHT RUNOFF WITHOUT TRUMP ENDORSEMENT WEEKS AWAY FROM ELECTION DAY
Since the primary, Ken Paxton has increasingly framed himself as a Trump loyalist in his support for the SAVE America Act. Cornyn supports the voter ID legislation, but his primary opponent has accused him of not working hard enough to secure its passage. The bill remains stalled in the Senate.
Ken Paxton’s campaign attacked Cornyn over this issue in an AI-generated ad last month, accusing the incumbent of relaxing on spring break while Trump’s “agenda is on hold.”
