Paxton's divorce adds another wrinkle to a chaotic Texas race that could decide control of the Senate
The Texas senator received a shot of adrenaline on Thursday. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, his Republican primary challenger, announced a separation and impending divorce from his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, who cited 'biblical grounds' for their differences.
It was a development that was as expected as it was laden with potential political opportunity for Cornyn, who is running behind his opponent even in a survey commissioned by the McConnell and John Thune-tied PAC, Senate Leadership Fund (SLF). Paxton went through a messy impeachment fight in 2023; he survived, but in documents published as part of the process, Uber records showing him traveling to the residence of an affair partner were made public.
Make no mistake: this is going to get ugly. Even if Cornyn himself doesn't jump into the gutter, the groups tied to him and his allies happily will, as they try to use Paxton's long history of personal and political scandals to weigh down and ultimately defeat the attorney general and would-be senator. The Texas Senate race is one (though not the easiest) of the avenues for Democrats to win back majority control of the Senate next year, a crucial step in halting the president's legislative agenda.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) was the first dive in on Thursday. Like SLF, the NRSC is closely tied to GOP leadership and works to protect incumbent senators as well as back challengers to Democrats.
'What Ken Paxton has put his family through is truly repulsive and disgusting,' said Joanna Rodriguez, the NRSC's comms director, on Thursday. 'No one should have to endure what Angela Paxton has, and we pray for her as she chooses to stand up for herself and her family in this difficult time.'
And if Angela Paxton's own statement is any indication, Thursday's development stemmed from an as yet unreported conflict between the couple, given that she tweeted that her decision came 'in light of recent discoveries' and her husband's affair has been in the public eye for two years.
Yes, the seemingly obvious issue of 'candidate quality' is rearing its ugly head again for the Republican Party's far-right wing. Paxton, who is running a MAGA-aligned campaign against 'RINO' Cornyn (without President Donald Trump's endorsement, so far) is just the latest example of an ultra-conservative Republican who could be bogged down by personal scandal and whiff an otherwise winnable election. McConnell, retiring next year, has worked for much of his career to keep such candidates from his party out of general election contests, though not always with success.
In 2022, McConnell, then minority leader, famously downplayed his party's chances of winning the Senate in that year's midterm contests in an interview over the summer, months before the elections. He cited 'candidate quality' as a key factor. Months later, after the election, he unloaded on Trump for being the source of that problem as he sought out Republicans who would put loyalty to him and his false claims about the 2020 election over other factors when awarding his endorsement.
'We ended up having a candidate quality test,' McConnell said in December of 2022, pointing to the defeats of Kari Lake in Arizona and Herschel Walker in Georgia.
He added: 'Our ability to control the primary outcome was quite limited in '22 because the support of the former president proved to be very decisive in these primaries.'
Trump appeared to learn his lesson, at least somewhat, and in 2024 his party retook the Senate on the back of several of his endorsed candidates, such as Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Tim Sheehy in Montana. The party still ran Royce White, who got busted spending his previous campaign's money at a strip club in Florida, in a race against Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota.
Cornyn, for his part, made clear earlier this year that he believes that a win for Paxton in next year's primary would mean defeat for their party in the general election.
"I'm absolutely determined to run and to win — if I didn't think I could win, I wouldn't run," he said in late June, according to Houston Public Media. "I've simply labored too long in Texas Republican politics to turn the seat over to Democrats in November. ... Any suggestion that I'm thinking about dropping out of the race is false."
Democrats have not settled on a candidate yet, either. Colin Allred, a former congressman, is running again after losing to Ted Cruz in 2024. A recent poll conducted by the NRSC also tested the popularity of Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Rep. Joaquin Castro, and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke against Allred's, though none of the three have announced an intent to run.
Were any of the three to jump in the race it could set up two hyper-competitive primaries for the same seat next year.
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The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Mike Johnson says Ghislaine Maxwell coming clean on Epstein case would be ‘a great service to the country'
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From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion And this is the time for artists to speak out, to disembed themselves from a fascist system, to place principles over profit and self-advancement. To be what Viet Thanh Nguyen calls 'disagreeable'. Yes, of course there are risks. But at this moment, with the jackboots in the streets and at our door, when each hour another liberty is being erased, and those who speak truth to power are being removed from TV, from universities, from cultural centers, when the cultural platforms are being removed themselves, speaking out is not just an obligation, it's survival. And there are artists beginning to organize. The poet Michael Klein is creating a new podcast calling writers 'to take our language back in writing a way through the various veils of deceit–an act, which in itself, has always been a form of resistance'. 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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Women in legislatures across the US fight for ‘potty parity'
For female state lawmakers in Kentucky, choosing when to go to the bathroom has long required careful calculation. There are only two bathroom stalls for women on the third floor of the Kentucky Statehouse, where the House and Senate chambers are located. Female legislators — 41 of the 138 member Legislature — needing a reprieve during a lengthy floor session have to weigh the risk of missing an important debate or a critical vote. None of their male colleagues face the same dilemma because, of course, multiple men's bathrooms are available. The Legislature even installed speakers in the men's bathrooms to broadcast the chamber's events so they don't miss anything important. In a pinch, House Speaker David Osborne allows women to use his single stall bathroom in the chamber, but even that attracts long lines. 'You get the message very quickly: This place was not really built for us,' said Rep. Lisa Willner, a Democrat from Louisville, reflecting on the photos of former lawmakers, predominantly male, that line her office. The issue of potty parity may seem comic, but its impact runs deeper than uncomfortably full bladders, said Kathryn Anthony, professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's School of Architecture. 'It's absolutely critical because the built environment reflects our culture and reflects our population,' said Anthony, who has testified on the issue before Congress. 'And if you have an environment that is designed for half the population but forgets about the other half, you have a group of disenfranchised people and disadvantaged people.' There is hope for Kentucky's lady legislators seeking more chamber potties. A $300 million renovation of the 155-year-old Capitol — scheduled for completion by 2028 at the soonest — aims to create more women's restrooms and end Kentucky's bathroom disparity. The Bluegrass State is among the last to add bathrooms to aging statehouses that were built when female legislators were not a consideration. In the $392 million renovation of the Georgia Capitol, expanding bathroom access is a priority, said Gerald Pilgrim, chief of staff with the state's Building Authority. It will introduce female facilities on the building's fourth floor, where the public galleries are located, and will add more bathrooms throughout to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 'We know there are not enough bathrooms,' he said. Evolving equality in statehouses There's no federal law requiring bathroom access for all genders in public buildings. Some 20 states have statutes prescribing how many washrooms buildings must have, but historical buildings — such as statehouses — are often exempt. Over the years, as the makeup of state governments has changed, statehouses have added bathrooms for women. When Tennessee's Capitol opened in 1859, the architects designed only one restroom — for men only — situated on the ground floor. According to legislative librarian Eddie Weeks, the toilet could only be "flushed' when enough rainwater had been collected. 'The room was famously described as 'a stench in the nostrils of decency,'' Weeks said in an email. Today, Tennessee's Capitol has a female bathroom located between the Senate and House chambers. It's in a cramped hall under a staircase, sparking comparisons to Harry Potter's cupboard bedroom, and it contains just two stalls. The men also just have one bathroom on the same floor, but it has three urinals and three stalls. Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn, who was elected in 2023, said she wasn't aware of the disparity in facilities until contacted by The Associated Press. 'I've apparently accepted that waiting in line for a two-stall closet under the Senate balcony is just part of the job,' she said. 'I had to fight to get elected to a legislature that ranks dead last for female representation, and now I get to squeeze into a space that feels like it was designed by someone who thought women didn't exist -- or at least didn't have bladders,' Behn said. The Maryland State House is the country's oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, operational since the late 1700s. Archivists say its bathroom facilities were initially intended for white men only because desegregation laws were still in place. Women's restrooms were added after 1922, but they were insufficient for the rising number of women elected to office. Delegate Pauline Menes complained about the issue so much that House Speaker Thomas Lowe appointed her chair of the 'Ladies Rest Room Committee,' and presented her with a fur covered toilet seat in front of her colleagues in 1972. She launched the women's caucus the following year. It wasn't until 2019 that House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, the first woman to secure the top position, ordered the addition of more women's restrooms along with a gender-neutral bathroom and a nursing room for mothers in the Lowe House Office Building. 'No longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic' As more women were elected nationwide in the 20th century, some found creative workarounds. In Nebraska's unicameral Legislature, female senators didn't get a dedicated restroom until 1988, when a facility was added in the chamber's cloakroom. There had previously been a single restroom in the senate lounge, and Sen. Shirley Marsh, who served for some 16 years, would ask a State Patrol trooper to guard the door while she used it, said Brandon Metzler, the Legislature's clerk. In Colorado, female House representatives and staff were so happy to have a restroom added in the chamber's hallway in 1987 that they hung a plaque to honor then-state Rep. Arie Taylor, the state's first Black woman legislator, who pushed for the facility. The plaque, now inside a women's bathroom in the Capitol, reads: 'Once here beneath the golden dome if nature made a call, we'd have to scramble from our seats and dash across the hall ... Then Arie took the mike once more to push an urge organic, no longer do we fret and squirm or cross our legs in panic.' The poem concludes: 'In mem'ry of you, Arie (may you never be forgot), from this day forth we'll call that room the Taylor Chamber Pot.' New Mexico Democratic state Rep. Liz Thomson recalled missing votes in the House during her first year in office in 2013 because there was no women's restroom in the chamber's lounge. An increase in female lawmakers — New Mexico elected the largest female majority Legislature in U.S. history in 2024 — helped raise awareness of the issue, she said. 'It seems kind of like fluff, but it really isn't,' she said. 'To me, it really talks about respect and inclusion.' The issue is not exclusive to statehouses. In the U.S. Capitol, the first restroom for congresswomen didn't open until 1962. While a facility was made available for female U.S. Senators in 1992, it wasn't until 2011 that the House chamber opened a bathroom to women lawmakers. Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to a congressional seat. That happened in 1916. Willner insists that knowing the Kentucky Capitol wasn't designed for women gives her extra impetus to stand up and make herself heard. 'This building was not designed for me," she said. "Well, guess what? I'm here.' ___ Associated Press writer Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed. ____ The Associated Press' women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
