THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Americans’ concern with what they view as government corruption is defining midterm races across the country, as voters from both parties consistently rank the issue second only to the economy and high prices.
Corruption has particularly animated the crucial Senate battleground of Texas, where Republicans are scrambling to prevent the first Senate Democratic victory since 1988 as state Rep. James Talarico (D) pounds Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) with tens of millions of dollars in advertising calling him corrupt.
“I’m hopeful this November will be a wake-up call so we can get back to the business of electing conservative, qualified candidates of good character,” said John Huffman, a Republican and the former mayor of the affluent conservative Dallas suburb of Southlake. He said he left the Senate line on his ballot blank when he voted early.
Sarah Chamberlain, a strategist who works with moderate Republican lawmakers as president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said she saw voters across the ideological spectrum begin listing corruption as their number one or two issue in focus groups in September, expressing anger at what they see as politicians enriching themselves.
“Among MAGA voters, affordability and corruption are neck and neck these days,” she said. “They’re just mad about it in general.”
A Fox News poll in October found 88 percent of registered voters extremely or very concerned about government corruption. That was even higher than the 85 percent of voters who said they were very or extremely concerned about prices. And while a significant chunk of voters say both parties are corrupt, Republicans appear to be taking more of the heat. Nearly half of registered voters in a September AP-NORC poll said “corrupt” describes Republicans extremely or very well, compared with 37 percent saying the same of Democrats.
The data has flouted the conventional wisdom that voters had come to expect a level of self-dealing among politicians and that the issue would not resonate. President Donald Trump’s rapidly rising net worth while in office — plus a bevy of bad headlines including a Russian oligarch bankrolling Trump’s son’s wedding party — may have collided with Americans’ dour feelings on their own economic situations to elevate the issue, analysts say. Trump said his son repaid the wedding expenses, and a spokeswoman for the president said Trump has “launched an all-out war on fraud across the entire federal government, holding criminals accountable and saving taxpayers billions of dollars.”
Democrats have also been inundating voters with negative political ads across the map prosecuting the issue. Corruption ads were the second-most common topic after the economy, according to a Washington Post review of more than 8,000 political ads aired during the midterms. Democrats had poured $306 million into those ethics-focused ads as of earlier this month, significantly more than Republicans, who spent $187 million, according to AdImpact data.
Talarico’s campaign has spent more money on corruption-related ads than any other candidate and outside group across all competitive congressional and gubernatorial races, spending $59 million on these ads that aired around 182,000 times.
Paxton’s past makes him a rich target for the strategy. He was impeached by the GOP-controlled state House in 2023 on bribery and abuse of power charges, but was acquitted by the state senate. He has denied wrongdoing.
The corruption attacks in Texas predate the general election. During the bitter Republican primary between Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn, Cornyn and his allies rebranded Paxton as “Crooked Ken” and aired ads mentioning his alleged affairs, mortgage fraud and an accusation that he took a Montblanc pen from a lawyer, which Paxton had said he picked up by mistake. “Crooked Ken is corrupt to his core,” one Cornyn-funded ad said, saying his net worth has risen dramatically since taking office.
After emerging from the primary victorious, Talarico and his allies began calling Paxton the “most corrupt politician in Texas” and criticizing a plea deal his office brokered with an attorney accused of felony child sex abuse. The attacks appeared aimed at tamping down Republican enthusiasm and garnering a chunk of crossover conservative voters that any Democrat needs to win in a state as red as Texas.
Talarico borrowed many of the themes from Cornyn’s ads, while also vowing to push for anti-corruption laws if elected, including banning SuperPACs and partisan gerrymandering. “Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party for taking bribes from wealthy donors while blocking overtime pay for Texas workers and gutting our health care,” one of Talarico’s ads says. “We cannot afford Ken Paxton’s corruption.”
An October University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll found Talarico trusted more on corruption than Paxton by 10 percentage points. Eight percent of voters ranked it as their top voting issue, second only to affordability and other economic concerns.
Paxton, for his part, has highlighted his office’s tougher prosecutions for other sex crimes in ads and attacked Talarico’s past statement suggesting it is parental abuse not to recognize a child’s gender identity.
“Ken Paxton has taken on the federal bureaucrats and the corporations ripping off Texans, and he has beaten them,” Paxton spokeswoman Madison Cercy said in a statement. “Democrats have spent years trying to destroy him, just like they tried with President Trump, and every attack has come up empty.” She criticized Talarico for being paid for consulting work for an education firm that received state contracts. Talarico denies wrongdoing and did not vote on the contracts while in the statehouse.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s $158 million donation to a Senate SuperPAC has bankrolled many of the attack ads against Talarico. Talarico has responded with ads suggesting Musk “wants to buy” Paxton as his own “personal senator” — another corruption-related hit.
The deluge of corruption attacks and Paxton’s past legal woes appear to have peeled off or at least discouraged a chunk of Republican voters, who said in interviews with The Post they would either sit out the Senate race or vote for Talarico.
“It’s just confusing to me that people are willing to throw away their morals or what they would call their Republican morals, in order purely to support keeping a Republican majority in the Senate,” said Sam Clark, a Dallas Republican who works in real estate finance and plans to vote for Talarico this year after years supporting and volunteering for Republicans.
Other Texan conservatives are holding their nose and backing Paxton anyway. Staci Kuhlenschmidt, a retired government teacher in Spring, Texas, said she was clear-eyed about Paxton’s history.
“Paxton was a crook, is a crook, probably will continue to be a crook,” Kuhlenschmidt said during a recent outing to the Woodlands Mall.
Still, she said she would vote for Paxton because she was concerned that Talarico was too far to the left and would support a socialist agenda.
Tonya Gerloff, a 67-year-old retiree living in Victoria, Texas, attended a Paxton rally in Mission Valley last week and supports his message on cutting taxes.
As the costs of groceries and gas go up, Gerloff said she’s become more disgusted that so many politicians in D.C. get wealthier in office, she said. “They’re living in these mansions while every day people are being displaced,” she said.
Gerloff said she has questions about Trump too, but takes politicians’ corruption as a given. Instead of looking for ethical candidates, she votes strategically, looking for the candidates closest to her values, she said.
“I vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said.
Goodwin reported from Washington. Choi reported from The Woodlands. Herrera reported from Mission Valley, Texas. Lydia Sidhom contributed to this report.
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