Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton stood before a room of conservative women in Round Rock and urged voters to back Republicans, even if they were angry with one of them. She did not name her estranged husband or indicate whom she supported in the primary. Ken Paxton, the state's attorney general, is now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
A Pointed Message Without a Name
Angela Paxton told the crowd that voters should back GOP candidates “even if we're mad at them,” according to The Texas Tribune. She framed the choice in stark terms for the party faithful, telling the group, “It's not the people — it's the seat,” the outlet reported. The remarks were an appeal to vote for Republicans generally; she did not name Ken Paxton or indicate whom she supported in the primary. The remarks came at a ticketed meeting of the Texas Federation of Republican Women that drew more than 100 board members to Round Rock, per the same report; the organization counts more than 10,000 members statewide.
Angela Paxton has largely stayed silent on her husband's Senate campaign since filing for divorce, and Republican Party volunteer Cheryl Thompson-Draper, who posted a clip of the speech on Facebook, said Paxton did not mention Ken Paxton by name during her remarks. Thompson-Draper's post separately encouraged Republican women to vote for every Republican on their ballots.
The Divorce Filing and Adultery Allegation
Angela Paxton filed for divorce from Ken Paxton in Collin County in July 2025, according to KUT, with the petition accusing him of adultery. The filing came years after Angela Paxton sat through days of testimony during her husband's 2023 impeachment trial, a proceeding in which she was barred from voting because she was a sitting senator. Ken Paxton was ultimately acquitted by the Texas Senate on all the corruption-related charges brought against him in that impeachment, the Tribune's report notes.
Attorney Dan Cogdell, who helped lead Ken Paxton's defense during that impeachment trial, has since thrown his support behind Democratic nominee James Talarico instead, according to the dossier's sourcing on the case. The impeachment fight remains part of Ken Paxton's political history.
A Tight Race and a Divided Party Trying to Reunite
Ken Paxton secured the Republican nomination by defeating Sen. John Cornyn by a 28-percentage-point margin in the runoff, per the Tribune. He now faces Talarico, the Democratic nominee, in a contest that The New York Times describes as a test of whether Texas Republicans can unite after a bruising primary season, one in which the party rallied behind a slate of hard-line candidates with President Trump's hand firmly on the controls of the party apparatus.
Polling shows Talarico with a narrow average lead over Paxton within the margin of error, the Tribune reports. A former Paxton campaign consultant told the Times he believed the party would come together quickly regardless of internal wounds, arguing the alternative was simply Talarico. That dynamic reflects a broader shift documented by Houston Public Media, which describes the state party moving from the Bush-era coalition toward a more populist, Trump-aligned one, with the moderate wing's influence largely gone.
Why the Seat Still Matters to the GOP
Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, a streak Republicans are eager to protect regardless of the personal drama surrounding their nominee. Angela Paxton's message to the Federation of Republican Women essentially asked the party's most engaged volunteers to separate their frustration with an individual from their loyalty to the broader Republican cause. Her earlier public activity offers a contrast: in May, she posted on X urging Texans to participate in the state primary election, but that appeal made no mention of the Senate race itself.
The competitive November race will put a U.S. Senate seat at stake. Whether Republican voters heed Angela Paxton's call to look past personal anger toward the party's broader interests remains to be seen as the campaign heads into its final stretch.
