The Texas attorney general tasked his daughter with damage control after a political rival put his alleged affairs on blast.
Ken Paxton, 63, released a new ad on Thursday featuring his daughter, Mattie Hayworth, singing his praises after Sen. John Cornyn labeled him a “wife cheater” in a blistering ad earlier this week. Cornyn, 74, is fighting to keep his seat in the hotly contested Texas Republican Senate primary against Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
“My kids know I’m running for Senate because I’m fighting for them and their children’s future,” Paxton wrote in an X post. “Unlike John Cornyn, who’s become a desperate shell of a man clinging to power, my campaign is not about attacking someone else’s family. It’s about protecting America.”
The 30-second ad showed Hayworth and her husband, Daniel, speaking from their living room as Paxton joined a FaceTime call with his four young grandkids.
“My dad is a really good guy. He loves God, he loves his family, and he loves this country,” Haworth said. “A lot of people may call him General Paxton, Ken Paxton, but our kids call him Poppop. He’ll, you know, take a FaceTime from them when he’s in a meeting.”
“He will tell us over and over, ‘This is why I’m doing what I’m doing,’” Daniel chimed in. “He wants his grandkids to grow up in an America that’s still recognizable.”
Hayworth also penned a lengthy essay for Texas Scorecard “setting the record straight” about her dad.
“When his opponent, unable to compete on record, on results, or on values, resorts to attacking my father’s character and personal life, I feel compelled to speak up. Not as a campaign surrogate. As his daughter,” she wrote. “Anyone who has spent real time with my dad knows that the attacks bear no resemblance to the man they claim to describe.”
The ad and op-ed came out after Cornyn needled Paxton over his alleged adulterous past. Paxton shares four children with his wife, Angela, who filed for divorce last summer.
“It’s voting time, so let’s cut through the bulls–t. Crooked Ken Paxton cheated on his wife. She’s divorcing him on biblical grounds,” Cornyn’s ad began. “So now, Paxton’s wrecking another home, sleeping around with a married mother of seven.”
In 2023, Paxton faced impeachment over allegations that he abused his office to benefit his friend, real estate investor Nate Paul. Though he was later acquitted by the State Senate, former staffers testified at his impeachment hearings that he confessed to having an affair with Laura Olson, a woman who worked for Paul, in a 2018 meeting. Olson was called to testify but backed out at the eleventh hour.
Tony Buzbee, Paxton’s lawyer, waved off the allegations. “Imagine if we impeached everybody here in Austin that had had an affair,” he said at the time. “We’d be impeaching for the next 100 years, wouldn’t we?”
Last July, Angela announced that she had filed for divorce “on biblical grounds.”
“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” she wrote on X. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”
Two months later, the Daily Mail reported that Paxton had a new paramour: Tracy Duhon, a married Christian influencer with seven kids. A spokesperson for Paxton dismissed the reporting from the “British trash blog.”
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