Angela Paxton wants to clear the air.
Mrs. Paxton, the estranged wife of Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand locked in a fierce battle for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, is urging voters in a new ad to back the entire Republican ticket when they go to the polls next month.
While Mrs. Paxton doesn’t mention her husband — whom she is divorcing, alleging adultery — by name in the ad, she addresses “the elephant in the room” by telling voters they should look past their qualms with any single candidate and think about the future of the Republican Party.
“In a general election, it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line,” she said. “Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team.”
Mr. Paxton is trailing James Talarico, his Democratic opponent, in every recent poll, including one released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday. While Democrats have not won a statewide election in Texas in more than 30 years, Republicans have warned that the Senate race, and others, are more competitive now than in recent memory.
The ad, funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee affiliated with the main super PAC for Senate Republican leaders, could be a further indication of concern about Mr. Paxton’s chances in the race — especially among women. It also indicates that Mrs. Paxton is now part of a broader strategy to bolster the ticket.
She recently gave a speech to a women’s club in Texas where she made similar remarks.
“The reality is, while we are the party of values, we have some vulnerabilities on our ballot,” Mrs. Paxton told the club, the Texas Federation of Republican Women on Sept. 18. “And I’ll be honest with you, I think Republican women will decide this election, because some of those vulnerabilities, I think, have been particularly alienating to women that hold our values.”
She then added, “But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back.”
Yesterday, Mr. Paxton’s campaign touted a new ad featuring his daughter Mattie.
A spokesman for Mrs. Paxton, a Republican state senator who is not up for re-election this year, previously declined to tell The New York Times whether she would vote for her husband. The divorce proceedings are ongoing, her spokesman confirmed Saturday.
Over his more than 20 years in elected office, Mr. Paxton has weathered multiple scandals, including a fraud indictment, accusations of one other affair, and impeachment on bribery and abuse of office charges. None have resulted in a criminal conviction, and Mr. Paxton has denied any wrongdoing, saying the cases were witch hunts perpetrated by enemies within his own party.
But the incidents have provided plenty of fodder for his political opponents, including Senator John Cornyn. Mr. Paxton trounced Mr. Cornyn in the May primary, besting him by more than 25 percentage points.
For months after his primary win, national Republican groups withheld their funding from the race. In the past few weeks, they have begun funneling tens of millions of dollars to ads backing Mr. Paxton.
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