Don’t Screw With Ken Paxton When He’s Having a Bad Day and Other Midterm Musings

Paxton’s recent actions in Texas point toward the larger picture of the 2026 election environment and demand a reassessment of the root causes that have us where we are.

The media vultures have been working overtime going after Ken Paxton since the news broke that he and his wife are parting ways. This has turned the Cornyn campaign into something like a sports fan who needs another team to lose so his can make it to the postseason, which is par for the course for someone who has done very little to promote the America First agenda over the past decade. Cornyn can’t take down Paxton on merit and legislative record.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of that race, let me tell you my personal opinion about these very personal matters:

There is no personal problem, accusation, or misdeed that currently is or will be associated with Ken Paxton that makes John Cornyn a better choice for U.S. Senate. Half of the voters are divorced, and they care more about results than they care for grandstanding and posing.

The voters know this, which is why even the establishment-aligned Senate Leadership Fund poll run by the Tarrance Group has Paxton clobbering Cornyn by 16 points in the coming GOP Primary; the hand-wringing begins under the General Election tabs, which show Paxton trailing Colin Allred in a hypothetical matchup by one point. I don’t find the latter result given that Mr. “I don’t know the population of Iran” Ted Cruz defeated Allred by 8.5% last November and owes President Trump, whom he trailed by over 5 points on the same ticket, a massive “thank you” for sparing him another Beto margin.

Supposedly, Paxton and Cornyn are battling for Trump’s support. Mr. President, there is no reason Cornyn should receive your support. Let me show you something that speaks for itself, namely the fact that Cornyn’s worst two-year runs out of a possible eleven occurred when you were in office:

So, there’s his model. Act like a hardcore conservative with a Democrat President in office, and when there is a risk of promoting a popular new America First agenda, sandbag the hell out of it. The only reason Cornyn didn’t get in the way of Trump’s Cabinet picks is because he knew Paxton was in pursuit. I don’t think Trump will have any issue backing Paxton, given that he himself has taken on plenty of accusations and unfair criticism over his own personal life, and the voters chose him anyway.

Anyway, people trash-talking your personal life is never fun, especially since giving your own side of the story only makes you look like you’re trying to get even and opens you up to more criticism. I can imagine Attorney General Paxton is as fed up with the politicos as he was when Rachel and I saw him at a Tucson fundraiser last month:

What do you do when you’re mad as hell? Once you’re tired of indicting Democrats for voter fraud, you can always threaten to arrest them for playing political games by fleeing to another state to prevent the people’s business from being accomplished:

This is in response to Governor Abbott’s call for a special legislative session to redistrict in mid-decade, which he believes would yield 5 or 6 new Republican seats. People are going to say it’s the GOP breaking with decency by flipping the chess board in the middle of the decade, but screw them. Republican states are underrepresented in the Electoral College and the U.S. House by 12-16 votes or members, including Texas, which was acknowledged as undercounted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Democrat plan for getting around the redistricting push is to skip town. I have a very strong feeling AG Paxton isn’t bluffing on this one, but the legislature is going to need to sharpen their pencils; I only see two currently competitive Democrat-held seats. Stripping away anything currently in my “safe” category will require making some GOP seats much more competitive, forcing candidates to actually campaign for a change.

Gavin Newsom, California’s blowhard Governor, has threatened to respond in kind to Texas’s redistricting efforts, but the GOP only holds 9 of 52 seats there (compared to 13 of 38 in Texas for Democrats), and 7 of 10 leaner or decisive seats per my rankings currently are held by Democrats. Seems like Texas has the edge.

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Now, Why Is This Necessary?

The root cause of the U.S. House dysfunction is the rigged census. The White House needs to take action on doing all it can to authorize a mid-decade re-census of the 14 under- or over-counted states, then use Emergency Powers to ram through changes to the electoral and representative distributions, which will bring about a court battle from hell.

The immediate impact of these population “errors” is to give Republicans a 220 to 215 (as elected) House majority, rather than potentially as high as 236 to 199, without even going into who stole which seats in the 2024 race, like those counted until Christmas in California and a few others stored away in my hard drive. The urgent jeopardy of a Democrat House majority is that they are already telegraphing that their singular purpose holding a majority would be to deadlock the administration and spend every hour of 2027 and 2028 investigating anything and everything associated with Donald J. Trump, creating conditions for social unrest and left-wing political violence that will inevitably follow their scripted House commentary likening MAGA voters and the President to totalitarians who want to starve out their political opponents and strip them of all security.

With the latest rounds of midterm polling, folks are finally coming to understand exactly what it is I’ve been saying about the U.S. House in particular, that the President’s party faces a massive headwind and is hard-pressed to retain or flip the most competitive seats, even if the President is doing well and enjoys solid approval. Trump’s own pollster, Fabrizio Ward, released polling earlier this week showing the GOP trailing Democrats in a big poll of 28 competitive districts: