Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says the Republican Party’s high-profile midterm convention in Dallas did not give his U.S. Senate campaign the boost Republicans might have hoped for.
Instead, Paxton suggested his numbers went in the opposite direction.
“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good,” Paxton said in an audio recording shared by The New York Times.
The Republican Senate nominee made the comments during a private fundraiser in Washington, D.C., attended by conservative donors and lobbyists, according to the Times.
Paxton’s remark came after he was asked whether he believed “he’s a little bit of a drag.” It was unclear from the recording whom the questioner was referring to.
Nick Maddux, a senior adviser to Paxton, disputed the significance of the recording, telling the Times that “this is more manipulated nonsense from The New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.”
Paxton facing tight race against Talarico
The comments are notable because Paxton was one of the biggest political figures featured at the Republican National Committee’s first midterm convention, held earlier this month in Dallas.
The two-day event was designed to energize Republican voters ahead of the November election, with President Donald Trump using the convention to promote Paxton’s Senate campaign.
Paxton defeated incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in a contentious primary runoff, but the general election has developed into an unusually competitive contest for Texas.
There is no clear evidence, however, that the Republican convention itself caused Paxton’s polling decline. His comments indicate that his campaign saw numbers fall around the time of the event, but other factors could have contributed to the movement.
Trump delivered an unusual endorsement
Trump used his closing-night convention speech to make an endorsement of Paxton that was hardly typical campaign fare.
The president said he doesn’t “like the way Ken dresses,” “talks” or “looks,” before praising Paxton as “the greatest” attorney general in the country.
“I don’t know if he’s going to ever speak to me again, but you know, I don’t care as long as he wins,” Trump told the Dallas crowd. “I don’t have to speak to him. He’s going to vote the way we would vote. … You got to vote for him.”
Paxton also spoke at the convention, asking Republicans in attendance for “your prayers” and “your votes.”
Trump’s support helped Paxton through a bruising Republican primary against Cornyn, but the attorney general entered the general election carrying political baggage from his controversial tenure as Texas’ top prosecutor.
That has given Democrats an opportunity in a state where they have repeatedly fallen short in statewide elections.
Democrats seize on Paxton recording
The Texas Democratic Party quickly used Paxton’s private remarks to attack both him and Trump.
“This is embarrassing for the President. Texans know that Paxton is a cheater, who only serves his own corrupt self interests, and now Trump gets to experience it firsthand,” Texas Democratic Party spokesperson Ryan Martin said in a statement.
Texas has long been a difficult statewide battleground for Democrats, but the Paxton-Talarico contest is shaping up differently.
The race is now considered a toss-up, putting additional pressure on Republicans to defend a Senate seat in a state the party has dominated for decades.
Paxton’s comments do not establish why his polling numbers have slipped. But they offer an unusual glimpse at how the Republican nominee himself viewed his political standing following an event that was supposed to help send him into the general election with momentum.
