(WBAP/KLIF) — (AP) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will be in an unfamiliar setting Monday night: heading his first campaign rally since the Republican announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate 10 months ago.
Paxton’s scheduled appearance is part of his stepped-up campaign to unseat four-term Republican Sen. John Cornyn and add a MAGA devotee to the Senate, a bid that has set up one of this year’s most contentious GOP primaries.
Until Monday, Paxton waged a lower-wattage campaign, spent relatively little money and drew attention primarily by pursuing conservative causes as the state attorney general. But with early voting scheduled to start Tuesday for the March 3 primary, Paxton is scheduled to make stops across Texas this week. He also has begun airing ads linking him with President Donald Trump as he takes on Cornyn and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Despite being the target of millions of dollars in attack ads from Cornyn and his allies, and opposition from Senate Republican leaders who say Cornyn is the stronger candidate in a general election, Paxton is heading into the GOP primary with the look of his party’s front-runner.
“I wish they’d stop sending money from Washington, D.C.,” Paxton told “Fox News Sunday.” “They are sending the money from D.C., and they’re helping John Cornyn. And it’s going to be … a lot of money spent, and he’s going to end up losing.”
Paxton’s political survival would appear to defy convention, much like Trump’s did. Paxton beat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and today is shadowed by claims of marital infidelity made by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.
The three-term attorney general is betting that his defiance of his own party’s leaders and aggressive litigation for conservative priorities will help him overcome ethical and personal questions that voters in the Republican-leaning state have, at least until now, forgiven.
Stepped up campaigning as early voting begins
Paxton on Monday is set to kick off a four-day series of rallies put on by Lone Star Liberty PAC, a super PAC supporting him, to remind people that early voting in Texas begins Tuesday.
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