Ken Paxton tops $9 million in a personal best fundraising quarter, campaign says

By Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune
July 8, 2026

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Ken Paxton raised over $9 million in the second quarter of 2026, according to his campaign, easily outpacing his prior fundraising hauls in a sign the GOP donor class is lining up behind their U.S. Senate nominee in Texas.

The majority of the $9 million, which was raised from April through June, came in after Paxton won the nomination in a May 26 runoff against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, his campaign said. The three-month total eclipsed the roughly $7.7 million Paxton had collectively raised up to that point in his campaign, a yearlong span dating back to his April 2025 launch.

Paxton lagged Cornyn in fundraising throughout the primary — a trend Cornyn and his allies in Washington framed as evidence that Paxton would need help from national GOP coffers to fund a general election campaign. Senate Republican leaders initially preferred Cornyn because they believed he could finance his own bid, though they have pivoted to supporting Paxton since his landslide win in May.

The Paxton campaign said his haul is the largest fundraising quarter for any non-incumbent Senate GOP nominee this cycle.

“These numbers reflect what we see on the campaign trail every day: Texans are energized to send a proven conservative fighter to the United States Senate,” a spokesperson for Paxton’s campaign said in a statement. “Ken Paxton is building a movement to defend the Lone Star State by uniting every Republican across the country to defeat James Talarico, the most radical and well-funded Democrat running in Texas history.”

While Paxton’s second-quarter total was a major increase for him, it amounted to less than one-third of the more than $30 million raised by Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee, over the same period.

Talarico’s campaign announced the monster sum hours after Paxton’s team put out his numbers. It is a record for a Senate campaign in the second quarter of an election year and comes on the heels of Talarico’s $27 million haul in the first three months of the year.

Talarico, an Austin state representative, was buoyed at the start of the year by his competitive primary against U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, as well as the fundraising bump that came from winning the nomination without a runoff in March. He spent much of the second quarter as the only confirmed major-party nominee in Texas, allowing him to focus on stockpiling his war chest without the need to burn cash on a contentious intra-party fight.

Specific data about Paxton’s donors, and how much he raised directly to his campaign versus through joint fundraising committees, will become available when he files his campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission. Those reports, which will also show how much cash on hand candidates had at the end of June, are due July 15.

Paxton’s report will shed further light on how the Washington establishment quickly embraced him after spending millions attempting to boost Cornyn and often bashing Paxton in highly personal terms. After the attorney general’s runoff win, the National Republican Senatorial Committee formed a joint fundraising committee with Paxton’s campaign — a key vehicle that the group had previously employed for Cornyn and which allowed him to raise larger sums.

And he came to Washington for a fundraiser hosted by multiple sitting Republican senators, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in early June.

Paxton could be further bolstered financially by a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing party committees to coordinate with candidates, allowing well-heeled groups like the Republican National Committee to spend unlimited sums on ads in coordination with Paxton’s campaign, if they so choose.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.