Did Trump Just Hand the Senate to Democrats?
It's Texas, so don't count on it quite yet, but...
When we last left our Texas antihero, Ken Paxton, he was escaping the clutches of yet another in a long list of process servers, this one named Ernesto, in a scene that was part Monty Python and part Taylor Sheridan. Catch up if you missed it:
Paxton, who just beat long-time Senator John Cornyn in last night’s Texas primary, is a Stephen Kingesque villain. It is very possible, although I have no direct evidence, that he squirrels away the brains of children and keeps them in a freezer.
He’s that bad a guy. You can assume, based on existing public revelations, that his entire life is a basement of sordid activity that would force King into a 2100 page book were he to take on Paxton’s biography.
When you Google “Paxton,” Google’s Gemini dries up large portions of the Columbia River Gorge to accumulate all the stories about his corruption. You can check out the footnotes to see a summary of official charges brought against him pulled together by Google’s Gemini (official advertising slogan: “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses.”)1
The mad king puffed out a last-minute endorsement for Paxton, which resulted in last night’s victory over 74-year-old-old John Cornyn, who has been a U.S. Senator in Texas since right around the time the Civil War theoretically ended.
What did Cornyn do to earn trump’s wrath? He said something about trump’s electability several years ago. The grievance machine that twists and turns inside trump’s toxic brain matter pushed Cornyn’s foolish statement into the forefront of trump’s otherwise biologically empty hippocampus, then lodged it there permanently like a gold-plated engraving.
Cornyn repeatedly voted for everything the mad king wanted in legislative votes, but it wasn’t enough to appease trump’s broken mind. Cornyn also probably would have trounced the Democratic candidate for the Senate, James Talarico, in the general election.
While Cornyn was dutifully servicing the madman’s every need, Ken Paxton whiled away his time with repeated efforts to turn Texas into a Christian version of a Taliban state through his role as, believe it or not, the state’s Attorney General.
He also spent his time ruining his very Christian marriage by cheating on his wife in daylight brighter than a Texas afternoon.
That’s where the fun stuff with Ernesto comes in. And, yes, I’m linking to my own post twice in the same story, because I think it’s that important that people understand who this guy is :
Why Texas’s Senate seat may go to Democrats
We can fumble around all day with hysterical reasons why trump might have sacrificed the Texas U.S. Senate seat to Democrats. It doesn’t matter, really. What matters are numbers. Take a look:
James Talarico: 1,103,371
Jasmine Crockett: 943,168
Those are the numbers of voters who voted in the Texas Democratic Primary for James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett.
Now, let’s look at Republican numbers:
Ken Paxton: 885,949
John Cornyn: 501,725
I’m not great at math, and my vision is so bad that I’ve been known to mistake orange-ish humans for orangutans, but when I scan those totals, I sense a ton of enthusiasm on the Democratic side and not so much on the Republican side.
Calculator time:
Democrat vote total: 2,046,539. Add in Ahmad Hassan’s 27,211 votes just for grins, and you get 2,073,750 votes.
Republican vote total: 1,387,674
(With 95% of the vote counted as I write this.)
I lived in Texas long enough to sort of understand some of its Republican voters. It’s not possible to live there long enough to understand Paxton voters, but that’s not really necessary. Nor is it healthy to dwell upon.
Cornyn is very Texas. Very conservative. Very religious, but not really in your face. He had a reliable voting block that vanished this time around, but he’s 74. People had zero enthusiasm for him.
Paxton, despite his corruption, has built a rabid, but still relatively small, in electoral terms, following, but it’s not because of his personality. It’s because of his relentless gnawing away at democracy, an endless number of state-funded lawsuits against Democratic presidential administrations, and, especially, his zealous anti-abortion and anti-immigration stands.
But he has also faced steady opposition from more moderate and/or honest Republicans in Texas, and there are a lot of them. There were enough of them for one of them to become Speaker of the state house, who drove an effort to impeach Paxton.
This effort failed, but just barely. Politically, Paxton emerged stronger than ever, but the opposition remains. There are powerful Texas Republicans who truly hate the man.
This opposition is reflected in statements like this from a 2023 opinion piece from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:2
Attorney General Ken Paxton enjoys a fervent base of voters who have stuck with him for a decade, no matter what he’s done to disgrace his office. Even as most House Republicans voted Saturday to impeach him, seeing strong evidence of bribery and other crimes that merit a Senate trial, his fans vow to fight for him until the end.
The shorthand for why they do so is that the (now suspended) attorney general is a “true conservative.” But it looks a lot like the cult of personality that surrounds Donald Trump. In other words, they support Paxton because he “fights” and he makes the right people mad. Substantively, they’re wrong. But politically, they’re powerful.
Take just a second to unpack that passage. The people who have lifted Paxton high enough to rise above his mountain of corruption are not so powerful that they can overcome his corruption and personal flaws, flaws that grievously insult the typical, quiet, church-going Texan who isn’t as impressed by power as much as she is by simple, silent faith.
Enter James Talarico.
Born in Round Rock, Texas, a conservative but somewhat diverse northern Austin suburb. Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.
In other words, he’s a Longhorn. You’d be shocked at how much weight that alone carries in some parts of Texas (except, of course, among Aggies).
He won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, but then he entered another Texas power structure by earning a Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary while serving in the Texas House. His grandfather was a Baptist preacher.
It’s impossible for Paxton to fight that kind of religious street cred. One of Paxton’s supporters (doesn’t matter who) said immediately after Paxton smothered Cornyn in the primary, “Talarico is a commie.”
That kind of sentiment might work on 885,949 Magabots. But not on the rest of Texas citizens, many of whom probably woke up this morning saying, after shaking the dust off their chaps and slapping the dirt off their palms in the middle of a long morning on the ranch, “Holy shit, there was a primary last night? And Cornyn lost? To that idiot?”
Let me just say this one more time:
2,046,539 Democratic votes to 1,387,674 Republican votes.
A corrupt asshole versus a Texas-born seminarian with Baptist roots. In an environment that is threatening to destroy the livelihood of Texas ranchers.
Who you got?
Notes
I’m old enough to remember Beto O’Rourke being the great blue hope, too, but Talarico feels different. I watched Beto do a crazy (in a good way) meet-and-greet throughout Texas via his daily Facebook road trip streams and was excited about his prospects. He lost to Ted Cruz anyway, but it was close, 50.9% to 48.3%.
But this, my friends, feels different. IF the Texas Democratic Party pulls its weight on the Get Out the Vote (GOTV) front.
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Footnotes
Here is Google Gemini’s response when I asked it to list official charges levied against Paxton. I lived in Texas long enough to know that these answers look about right, so I didn’t check Gemini’s work. It’s rather frightening that it lists Facebook as one of its sources, though. What a world. Anyway, here is its answer:
Ken Paxton—the Texas Attorney General and candidate for the U.S. Senate—has faced multiple high-profile criminal charges, civil accusations, and ethical investigations over the past decade. While he has never been convicted of a crime, his legal history spans four primary categories of accusations.
1. State Felony Securities Fraud Charges (2015–2025)
Paxton was indicted by a Collin County grand jury in July 2015, less than a year after taking office.
The Accusations: He faced two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of failing to register as an investment adviser. Prosecutors alleged that he convinced colleagues and friends to invest in a tech startup, Servergy Inc., without disclosing that he was receiving a financial commission.
Resolution: Paxton maintained his innocence. The case was delayed for nearly a decade until he reached a pretrial diversion agreement in March 2024. The state officially dismissed all charges in June 2025 after Paxton completed 100 hours of community service, 30 hours of ethics training, and paid roughly $300,000 in restitution with no admission of guilt.
2. Federal Corruption and Bribery Investigation (2020–2025)
In late 2020, seven high-level aides in the Texas Attorney General’s office reported Paxton to the FBI, setting off a multi-year federal criminal investigation.
The Accusations: Top deputies accused Paxton of bribery, abuse of office, and using state resources to improperly benefit real estate developer and political donor Nate Paul. The aides alleged that in exchange for favors, Paul hired a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair and funded major home renovations for Paxton.
Resolution: In April 2025, the U.S. Justice Department quietly decided to decline prosecution, officially closing the federal criminal probe without bringing charges.
3. Texas Legislative Impeachment (2023)
The same whistleblower accusations sparked a historic political trial in the Texas Legislature.
The Accusations: The Republican-controlled Texas House voted 121–23 to impeach Paxton on 20 articles. The articles spanned bribery, constitutional corruption, obstruction of justice, and misapplication of public resources.
Resolution: Following a high-profile trial in September 2023, the Texas Senate voted to acquit Paxton on all impeachment articles, fully restoring him to office.
4. Civil and Administrative Misconduct Claims
Beyond criminal and impeachment proceedings, Paxton has faced several civil and administrative accusations:
Whistleblower Retaliation (2020–2025): The four top aides fired after reporting Paxton to the FBI filed a wrongful termination suit. A Travis County district court ultimately ordered a $6.6 million judgment against the state in early 2025, finding the whistleblowers were improperly terminated.
State Bar Misconduct Complaint (2022–2023): The State Bar of Texas pursued professional misconduct complaints against Paxton for filing a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The ethics complaint was dismissed by a judge in 2023.
Charles always gets an A+ for deep research wrapped into creative writing. He even thoughtfully used and credited the evil AI monster: “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses.” Thank you Gemini. I don’t consider Gemini my brain’s twin, I resent the name. Maybe their disclaimer should read: “AI is a mistake, so triple-check responses. Better yet, save time and do your own research. It enriches your neurons.”