In private remarks, Ken Paxton said Trump’s midterm convention hurt his Senate campaign
By Kayla Guo and Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune
September 30, 2026
Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton last week privately disparaged President Donald Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas and said it hurt him politically, according to an audio recording published by The New York Times.
At a recent fundraiser before a small group of conservative lobbyists and donors, The Times reported, Paxton was asked, “Do you feel like he’s a little bit of a drag?” The recording does not make clear whether the question referred to Trump, though Paxton’s response suggested as much.
“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” Paxton responded in the recording. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”
The Texas Tribune did not independently verify The Times’ reporting.
Paxton’s remark comes as he faces mounting pressure to gain ground against Democratic nominee James Talarico, with early voting less than three weeks out and Paxton continuing to narrowly trail in most public polling. Trump, a longtime Paxton ally who has played a key role in boosting the attorney general’s campaign, did not immediately address the report Wednesday morning. The president’s own approval rating in Texas was underwater as of August, according to The Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Earlier this year, the president helped deliver Paxton the Republican nomination by endorsing him over U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. More recently, Trump has mobilized his political apparatus to help Paxton catch up on ad spending.
Trump pushed the GOP to host a first-of-its-kind midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month, urging voters to “pretend” he was on the ballot this year with the aim of juicing Republican turnout in November. On stage, the president ribbed Paxton for his looks and the way he speaks while praising him as the “greatest attorney general in America.”
“I think the fact that we had such a successful convention really helped Ken Paxton,” Trump told reporters earlier this month. “He was a big part of it.”
In a statement, Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux called the recording “more manipulated nonsense from the New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.”
“Every serious pollster will tell you that our numbers have improved since early September,” Maddux said. “Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump including when he comes to Texas this week.”
Paxton’s campaign on Tuesday released an internal poll, fielded two weeks after the convention, showing him up three percentage points over Talarico. The attorney general also planned to accompany Trump during a visit to a truck factory in Denton on Thursday.
Vice President JD Vance was also set to appear in Harlingen Wednesday as part of a fall push from the administration to boost Republican candidates in competitive races, including the handful of battleground U.S. House races anchored in South Texas.
With Paxton’s fundraising far lagging Talarico’s, Trump’s super PAC has deployed $22.2 million on a mix of pro-Paxton and anti-Talarico advertising since early September, when the president’s MAGA Inc. group delivered the first major round of outside spending. Texas PAC, a group associated with Senate Republican leadership, was up to $125 million on airtime, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.
Those outlays from national Republicans have helped tilt the spending balance firmly in Paxton’s favor and turned the contest into the ninth-most expensive Senate race on record, according to AdImpact. Talarico, meanwhile, has spent $63.4 million on advertising. Because of a lower rate on airtime offered to candidates, Talarico’s dollars go further than those of national groups and super PACs.
In addition to Paxton’s remarks about the convention, Democrats this week also seized on a clip of him defending his office’s handling of the case of Adam Hoffman, a Waco man who was charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy. Talarico has consistently attacked Paxton over the case, accusing him of offering an overly generous plea deal and labeling him in ads as a “pedophile protector.”
“The criticism has been that I let a child predator out having [served in jail] one day. Well, guess what? They served 60 days. It wasn’t what we wanted, but we did not control that situation,” Paxton said during a conversation with the United States Hispanic Business Council Monday. “We wanted to retry it, and we decided, you know what? We need to protect this kid.”
After Hoffman’s trial ended with a hung jury, and the child victim declined to testify in a second trial, Paxton’s office offered a plea deal that would have let Hoffman plead guilty to two misdemeanors and serve a total of one day in jail. The judge insisted on a 60-day sentence. Paxton’s comment went viral online this week, with critics homing in on the “60 days” snippet and arguing it was little better than a single day behind bars.
Paxton’s latest stumbles also come as Talarico has pressured him to stand for a debate. At The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin last week, Talarico challenged Paxton to a debate hosted by Fox News. He then posted a video on social media that showed him leaving Paxton a voicemail.
“I’ve accepted four local TV debates, but we haven’t heard from you, and we’re running out of time,” Talarico says in the message. “So if Fox News is where you’ll be most comfortable, I’ll be there, because I think it’s that important. Brett Baier can moderate. We can both take questions, and Texans can hear from us directly.”
A Fox News spokesperson suggested to the Huffington Post this week that the network would move forward with a debate if Paxton agreed. Paxton’s campaign previously said “of course” he would debate Talarico. But he has not yet agreed to any debates, with just over two weeks before the start of early voting.
Gabby Birenbaum contributed to this report.
Disclosure: The New York Times and The University of Texas at Austin have been major financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in our journalism. Find a complete list of them and more information about our financial and disclosure policies here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.