Ken Paxton stood in front of a Dallas business audience on Monday and bragged that a man who repeatedly abused a young boy served 60 days in jail. The man actually served 29. Paxton’s own prosecutors had asked for one.
That moment, broadcast on C SPAN and now ricocheting across the internet, lands at the worst possible time for the Texas attorney general. He’s trailing Democrat James Talarico in three straight public polls, and both the Cook Political Report and Fox News now rate the race a toss up in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.
It also fits a pattern that stretches back more than a decade, through a felony indictment, an impeachment by his own party, a $6.6 million whistleblower judgment, a mortgage paper trail, and a stolen $1,000 pen. The loudest people saying so have been Republicans.
Even Republicans Called Him A Con Man
John Cornyn, the four term Republican senator Paxton knocked out of the primary, described the man now leading his party’s ticket as a known con man and fraud in front of Capitol reporters last year. He repeated versions of that warning for a year, telling Newsmax viewers there was an even chance Paxton would lose the seat and that saving him would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
At an Austin early voting rally, Cornyn predicted an “Election Day massacre” with Paxton at the top of the ticket. Senate Republican leaders reportedly spent more than $70 million trying to keep Paxton off the ballot, and when Donald Trump endorsed him anyway, Politico reported that furious Senate Republicans warned the seat was now in jeopardy.
The Republican Senate campaign arm’s own communications director called what Paxton put his family through “truly repulsive” after his wife Angela, a sitting state senator, filed for divorce on biblical grounds and accused him of adultery. This is the same party that already fears Trump is dragging them toward a midterm wipeout this November, and Texas is now part of that fear.
The Smears Against Talarico Keep Failing
Paxton’s answer has been invention. In his runoff victory speech he branded Talarico a radical running a vegan campaign, then rolled out nicknames including Tofu Talarico, Six Gender Jimmy, and Low T Talarico.
Talarico is not a vegan. The smear traces to a 2022 speech about his campaign buying vegan products from local businesses, and even Fox host Jesse Watters, after calling him a gay vegan on air, admitted in the same breath that he’s neither. Talarico’s response became the best line of the race: “I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.”
White House adviser Stephen Miller went further, calling Talarico the Democrats’ “first transgender Senate candidate” on Fox News. Talarico is not transgender, and Miller was describing a Talarico who does not exist on national television. The six genders clip Paxton keeps running was fact checked by the Dallas Observer, which found Talarico was relaying committee testimony and said outright that he’s not a scientist.
Voters appear unmoved. Texas Public Opinion Research found Talarico winning independents 43% to 23%, and Talarico is holding a one point edge over Paxton in the latest Texas Southern University survey, with Paxton’s unfavorable rating at 55%.
His Own Party Impeached Him
None of Paxton’s baggage is new. In October 2020, his own senior deputies went to the FBI and accused him of using the attorney general’s office to do favors for Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer and Paxton donor. Four of them were fired within weeks.
Texas House investigators later laid out that Paul paid for renovations on a home Paxton owned and employed the woman Paxton was having an affair with. When Paxton asked the Legislature for $3.3 million in taxpayer money to settle the whistleblower lawsuit, the Republican controlled House investigated instead and impeached him 121 to 23 in May 2023 on corruption and bribery charges.
The Texas Senate acquitted him after a two week trial, but the courts kept going. After Paxton stopped contesting the facts of the case, a judge ruled against his office, the whistleblowers’ attorneys said Texas’s top law enforcement officer had “admitted to violating the law,” and the state is now paying $6.6 million to whistleblowers he fired. Paul later pleaded guilty to making a false statement to a financial institution, and Paxton himself spent six hours under oath in a separate fraud lawsuit whose testimony Talarico wants unsealed.
The Money Never Added Up
A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation published this month counted more than a dozen Paxton properties across five states, nearly all acquired while he earned a $153,750 government salary. On the federal disclosure he filed in August, he reported a net worth of up to $27 million, when the bottom of the range he reported just one year earlier was negative $1.9 million.
The newsrooms found the spike came from soaring reported property values rather than new purchases, and found he left seven properties off entirely, worth about $5.2 million, including Utah golf resort condos with mortgages he never disclosed. He reported little or no rental income from seven different homes.
He also valued his stake in a piece of vacant land at up to $50,000 when his own business partner said it’s been worth about $1 million for years. A Public Citizen ethics expert said the filings reflect either sloppiness or “a deliberate effort to conceal” his holdings.
Three Homes, Three Primary Residences
Then there’s the mortgage paper trail. An Associated Press review of public records found Ken and Angela Paxton declared three houses as primary residences on mortgage paperwork, one outside Dallas and two in Austin, improperly locking in lower interest rates that legal experts said will save them tens of thousands of dollars.
The AP also found the couple collected a homestead tax break on two homes at the same time, which Texas doesn’t allow, and repeatedly violated lending terms on other properties. Knowingly making false statements on mortgage documents is a crime under both state and federal law.
The agency responsible for investigating mortgage fraud in Texas is the office Ken Paxton runs.
The Pen Texas Never Forgot
If the mortgage documents feel abstract, the pen is not. Courthouse security cameras in 2012 caught Paxton, then a state senator, picking up another lawyer’s $1,000 Montblanc from a security tray and walking off with it. He returned it after the sheriff’s office reviewed the footage and called him, and a spokesman waved it off as a simple mistake.
The pen’s owner, attorney Joe Joplin, endorsed Talarico on camera in August, in an ad built around that footage. Talarico’s campaign sold out more than 13,000 pens stamped Not Ken Paxton’s Pen, and within days of the ad’s release, Cook and Fox News both moved the race to toss up.
The pen was never the worst of it. Seven months into his first term as attorney general, Paxton was indicted on three felony securities fraud counts for recruiting investors, including friends and fellow lawmakers, into a tech company without disclosing he was being paid in its stock, and the charges were only dropped after he paid about $271,000 in restitution, completed community service, and took legal ethics classes without admitting guilt.
One Day In Jail For Abusing A Boy
The case that reignited this week comes out of Waco. Former attorney Adam Hoffman was charged with a first degree felony, carrying up to life in prison, for repeatedly abusing a young boy, and Paxton’s office took over the prosecution after the local district attorney recused himself.
After a hung jury, instead of retrying the case, Paxton’s prosecutors offered Hoffman one single day in jail as part of a misdemeanor plea. The Republican judge, Roy Sparkman, refused, saying he was troubled because he’d dealt with the attorney general’s office before, and after the boy’s mother told the court 30 days wasn’t enough, Sparkman raised the sentence to 60 days himself and made Hoffman surrender his law license.
Because the plea Paxton’s office wrote never specified the victim’s age, Hoffman will never appear on the sex offender registry. He was released after serving 29 of the 60 days. Mediaite has reported Hoffman has connections to a key Paxton donor, and the backlash in Waco came from Paxton’s own party, including the McLennan County district attorney and Republican state Rep. Pat Curry.
On Monday, Paxton brought the case up himself, and he defended the deal on camera at a United States Hispanic Business Council forum in Dallas. “They served 60 days,” Paxton said, offering it as proof he’s tough on crime.
The 60 days came from the judge who rejected his office’s one day offer, and the man served 29. The Democratic National Committee blasted Paxton for bragging about the deal, and national Democrats made the case the subject of their first ad of the Texas general election.
Cornyn called Ken Paxton a con man and a fraud, and the record he left behind keeps proving his own party right. Texans will render the final verdict on November 3, and Democratic Reporter will keep following the money, the mortgages, and the man until they do.
