Ken Paxton’s ‘Dangerous’ Midterms Strategy Could Backfire, Experts Warn - Newsweek

Ken Paxton’s low-profile strategy in the final days of the hotly contested U.S. Senate race in Texas could backfire, according to political experts, with one telling Newsweek that his approach was “dangerous” as he seeks a seat considered vital to Republicans’ hopes of maintaining control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm elections.

“Paxton has not only refused to debate, he increasingly has stopped speaking on the campaign trail,” Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Newsweek.

“He is appearing before sparse crowds and saying little,” he said. That’s a "dangerous strategy for a candidate trailing narrowly in the polls as Paxton seems to be.”

Newsweek has contacted the Paxton campaign for comment via email.

The race between Paxton, the state’s attorney general with a history of legal and political scandals, and Democrat James Talarico, has emerged as a huge test of Republican dominance in Texas, with Talarico giving Democrats their best shot in decades of winning a Senate seat there.

Recent polls have shown Talarico, a state lawmaker from Austin, narrowly ahead in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988 and one that President Donald Trump carried by nearly 14 points in 2024.

In a sign of the peril facing Paxton in the Lone Star state, Republicans have spent more money opposing Talarico than any other candidate. Meanwhile, Trump has visited four times since Labor Day in a bid to get his staunch supporters to vote for Paxton, even while repeatedly insulting his appearance and after Paxton privately complained that Trump’s midterm convention in September had hurt him politically.

In the closing days of the campaign, Paxton is keeping an unusually low profile for a candidate in a closely contested race.

He has only addressed larger crowds at rallies held with Trump and other Republicans and even then, his remarks have been notably brief. Trump spoke for well over an hour at rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock on Tuesday. Paxton, on the other hand, addressed the crowd at each event for no more than 15 minutes.

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance headlined a rally for Republican candidates in Weatherford that drew about 3,000 people, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Paxton addressed the crowd for less than five minutes, according to a livestream of the event.

Instead, Paxton has been speaking to voters at campaign stops at smaller venues across the state as part of his “Come and Take It” bus tour.

But even that has come with obstacles.

On Thursday, Paxton’s campaign confirmed it canceled the final stop of the tour. Paxton had been scheduled to appear at a rally at El Paso’s Orca Event Center, which seats about 130 people, on November 1. But a Paxton campaign spokesperson told the El Paso Times that it was being postponed due to schedule changes and logistics.

According to the Paxton campaign website, another date for that event has not been scheduled. The website says the tour will be stopping in Houston and Pearland on Friday, Fort Worth on Saturday. The final stop listed on the website is in Mission on Sunday.

Other stops on Paxton's tour have also been canceled, including an event in Tyler on Thursday, with officials saying it was so Paxton could campaign alongside Vance at the rally in Weatherford.

Talarico told CNN that Paxton was canceling events because “nobody is showing up." In a statement on Friday, he said Paxton has been canceling rallies this week after receiving "tepid applause" from small crowds even in the deep red parts of Texas.

“No one’s going to Ken Paxton’s rallies, so he’s canceling them and hoping Elon Musk will buy this seat for him," he said. "His only volunteers are AI robots. His only donor is Elon Musk. And his only rally attendees are reporters forced to cover an empty room."

The comments came after videos of Paxton’s stops circulated on social media on Wednesday, highlighting how few people were attending his events.

A video from his stop in Odessa showed Paxton thanking an audience member for “that one clap” after he touted his achievements as the state’s attorney general before an audience of a few dozen people. Videos showed a similar-sized audience at another stop on Wednesday, at the Arc Light Bar & Grill in San Angelo.

In contrast, Talarico has been addressing voters on a much bigger stage. The latest stop of his “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts” tour saw him address a crowd of about 2,600 people during a rally at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas on Thursday, according to the Christian Post.

Talarico also held a rally in Lubbock on Tuesday that drew thousands of supporters, a significant figure given Lubbock County is a longtime Republican stronghold that Trump carried by 40 points in 2024 and the president was campaigning for his opponent at the same time.

Talarico, who has repeatedly challenged Paxton to debate, also took part in a CNN town hall earlier in October that Paxton declined to attend.

Experts told Newsweek that Paxton’s strategy may be designed to turn the election into a straightforward partisan choice, rather than a choice between the individual candidates.

“Paxton probably wants to make this, as much as possible, a generic type of vote between a Republican and a Democrat with some Lefter-sounding rhetoric than what usually plays in Texas, rather than Paxton specifically versus Talarico specifically,” Grant Davis Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.

That comes as a series of Republicans have bucked their party to endorse Talarico, with some framing their opposition specifically to Paxton as the nominee. They include the Neil Bush, the brother of former Republican President George W. Bush, who said he voted for Talarico because character “matters more than party affiliation.”

Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said “less Paxton may be the strategy.”

“He is already well known, so the campaign may see more risk than reward in debates or long, high-profile appearances,” Rottinghaus told Newsweek.

That may also explain the central role Trump has assumed, he said.

“Trump can make the partisan case for him,” Rottinghaus said. “Paxton may be relying on Trump to energize Republicans and frame the race around control of the Senate rather than Paxton personally.”

Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University who studies political campaigns, said Paxton “may be trying to avoid saying anything that could rock the boat, so he's laying low.”

He added: “He may also realize he's not very likable, so he'd rather let surrogates make the case for him.”

The experts say the approach carries significant risks, particularly in a contest where even a small shift among voters could prove decisive.

Paxton’s approach “could have a marginal impact, and in a race this close, it could matter for the final, last-breaking voters,” Reeher said.

Panagopoulos said that his low profile could send voters a negative message.

“Many will perceive his relative silence on the campaign trail as weakness,” he said.

“At this stage of the campaign, he should be saying so much to rally support that he's losing his voice. Hiding may not help.”

Rottinghaus added: “It is a risky strategy in a close race. If Paxton wins, it will look disciplined; if he loses narrowly, avoiding debates and limiting his visibility will look like missed opportunities to persuade uncertain voters.”

Recent polls of the Texas Senate race have consistently put Talarico ahead.

A new CNN/SSRS poll, conducted among 923 likely voters between October 20 and 27, put Talarico six points head, 49 percent to Paxton’s 43 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Another recent poll, from Univision and conducted by YouGov, also saw Talarico ahead, with 50 percent support to Paxton’s 45 percent. The survey was conducted among 1,000 registered voters from October 13 to 21. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

An ActiVote poll found the race was tighter, with Talarico ahead of Paxton by two points, 51 percent to 49 percent. That survey was conducted among 400 likely voters from October 17 to 21, with an average expected error of 4.9 percent.

Verasight, polling for VoteHub from October 1 to 20, had Talarico leading 48 percent to 45 percent among 601 likely voters.

An Emerson College/Nexstar poll also found Talarico ahead, 48 percent to 46 percent, among 1,000 likely voters surveyed from October 17 to 19. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. When undecided voters were pressed to choose, Talarico’s lead narrowed to 49 percent to 48 percent, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 3 percent.