Ken Paxton’s low-profile strategy in the final days of the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Texas could backfire, according to political experts, with one telling Newsweek that his approach was “dangerous” as he seeks a seat considered vital to Republicans’ hopes of maintaining control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections.
That’s a "dangerous strategy for a candidate trailing narrowly in the polls as Paxton seems to be.” Newsweek has contacted the Paxton campaign for comment via email. The race between Paxton, the state’s attorney general with a history of legal and political scandals, and Democrat James Talarico, has emerged as a huge test of Republican dominance in Texas, with Talarico giving Democrats their best shot in decades of winning a Senate seat there. Recent polls have shown Talarico, a state lawmaker from Austin, narrowly ahead in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988 and one that President Donald Trump carried by nearly 14 points in 2024.
In a sign of the peril facing Paxton in the Lone Star state, Republicans have spent more money opposing Talarico than any other candidate. Meanwhile, Trump has visited four times since Labor Day in a bid to get his staunch supporters to vote for Paxton, even while repeatedly insulting his appearance and after Paxton privately complained that Trump’s midterm convention in September had hurt him politically. In the closing days of the campaign, Paxton is keeping an unusually low profile for a candidate in a closely contested race.
He has only addressed larger crowds at rallies held with Trump and other Republicans and even then, his remarks have been notably brief. Trump spoke for well over an hour at rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock on Tuesday. Paxton, on the other hand, addressed the crowd at each event for no more than 15 minutes.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance headlined a rally for Republican candidates in Weatherford that drew about 3,000 people, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Paxton addressed the crowd for less than five minutes, according to a livestream of the event. Instead, Paxton has been speaking to voters at campaign stops at smaller venues across the state as part of his “Come and Take It” bus tour.
On Thursday, Paxton’s campaign confirmed it canceled the final stop of the tour. Paxton had been scheduled to appear at a rally at El Paso’s Orca Event Center, which seats about 130 people, on November 1. But a Paxton campaign spokesperson told the El Paso Times that it was being postponed due to schedule changes and logistics.
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