On Tuesday night, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton easily won a runoff election to be the Republican nominee for Texas's Senate seat in the November election. He won 63.8% of the vote against incumbent John Cornyn.

A week prior, President Donald Trump formally endorsed Paxton, despite claims that Trump had been prepared to endorse Cornyn.

The New York Times explained,

Mr. Trump made the Paxton endorsement as he has increasingly expressed frustration with the Republican-led Senate, including over the body’s inability to advance his legislation that would impose stricter voting requirements. Mr. Trump cited Mr. Paxton’s support for “terminating the filibuster” to pass that bill, which is known as the SAVE America Act.

Cornyn has served in Congress for 23 years. "The bruising contest set a record for the most expensive Senate primary campaign in US history," according to the BBC.

There are two major reasons why this election result matters:

First, due to a variety of personal baggage, Paxton's win likely increases the chances that Democrats mount a huge upset in November. Texas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and Donald Trump won it by 14 points in 2024. This would make things harder for the Republicans in the current political environment in which there is a significant chance they will lose control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Paxton will be running against Democrat James Talarico. Talarico is a young Texas State legislator. He has a Master of Education degree from Harvard, used to be an English teacher, and earned a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. In conservative Texas, Talarico generally takes a positive tone and approach and regularly cites the teachings of Jesus.

Talarico and Democrats likely preferred to face Paxton in the November election. "Within two hours of Ken Paxton’s GOP primary win on Tuesday, Talarico had hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign," according to Politico. Additionally, "He raised an eye-popping $27 million in the first quarter of 2026 and had $10 million cash on hand."

Talarico is polling well against Paxton and generally in Texas.

The pro-Talarico Lone Star Rising PAC, which commissioned the internal poll showing Talarico leading Paxton, found that 45 percent of Texas voters would cast their ballots for Talarico, 38 percent for Paxton and 3 percent for independent candidate Ted Brown, with 14 percent undecided.

Second, Paxton is a corrupt degenerate who slavishly supports Donald Trump. He mirrors Trump's style of being as nasty, offensive, and hyperbolic as possible in addressing whatever currently preoccupies him. As Politico explained,

In his Tuesday night victory speech, Paxton mocked Talarico as “tofu Talarico,” “six-gender Jimmy,” “James Talafreako” and “low-T Talarico.” He called the Democrat “a threat to everything we hold dear in this state and in this country” and said he was “the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.”

Paxton's win Tuesday is just another item on the seemingly endless list of embarrassments for the Republican party in the Trump era.

In 2023, the Texas House, which was controlled by Republicans, impeached Paxton on corruption charges by a vote of 121-23. Paxton faced 16 articles of impeachment "related to accusations, primarily by his former top deputies who became whistle-blowers, that he had abused his office for the benefit of himself and an Austin real estate investor who was said to have assisted Mr. Paxton with home renovations and an extramarital affair." Needing a two-thirds vote to convict Paxton, the Texas Senate (also controlled by Republicans) eventually acquitted him.

In 2024, Paxton came to an agreement with federal prosecutors after being accused in 2015 of "duping investors in a tech startup near Dallas before he was elected attorney general." The agreement allowed Paxton to avoid trial, where he faced up to life in prison, but "Paxton must pay full restitution to victims — roughly $300,000 — and must also complete 100 hours of community service and 15 hours of legal ethics education."

Paxton has also faced a variety of other legal issues (whistleblower lawsuit, FBI investigation) related to the above. Additionally, on several occasions, he refused to do his job in defending Texas from lawsuits when he did not agree with Texas's actions. His wife filed to divorce him because he was engaged in at least one affair. He relentlessly worked to stop a Texas woman from aborting her pregnancy after the fetus was diagnosed with a genetic disorder likely to lead to its death and that could affect the mothers health and future fertility.

In nominating Paxton, Republicans have shown once more that they have become morally unmoored, if they ever seriously cared about morality and right and wrong at all. Like the continued Republican support for Trump, Paxton's continued electoral success shows that the most Republicans seem to value spite, vitriol, and contempt, especially when aimed at political opponents, above all else. Honesty, tradition, loyalty, the rule of law, individual rights--many of the guiding principles of our nation and the western world since the Enlightenment--all take a back seat, if they are not explicitly derided as weak and destructive to our country.

As long as a Republican politician slavishly supports Donald Trump and hates the right people loudly and nastily enough, he can be thoroughly corrupt and disregard the law without losing the support of Republican voters. He can enrich himself and his friends at the taxpayers' expense. He can baselessly prosecute his personal and political enemies. He can give preferential legal treatment to his supporters. He can betray core promises. He can lie to our faces. He can act like a total degenerate in his personal life. And Republican voters, and often a majority of all voters, will reward him at the ballot box.