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Tuesday, May 26, 2026

ANGELS & DEVILS IN TEXAS: A TALE OF TWO SENATE RACES AND THE SOUL OF THE LONE STAR STATE

 

ANGELS & DEVILS IN TEXAS

A TALE OF TWO SENATE RACES AND THE SOUL OF THE LONE STAR STATE

Everything's bigger in Texas — including the corruption, the scandals, and apparently, the audacity.

The Devil You Know: Ken Paxton, MAGA's Favorite Cautionary Tale

Let's start with a simple thought experiment. Imagine you're casting a movie villain — someone who embodies every excess of modern political corruption. You'd probably write a character who:

  • Gets indicted for felony securities fraud within months of taking office
  • Uses the Attorney General's office as a personal favor machine for a shady real estate buddy
  • Allegedly receives home renovations and a job for his mistress in exchange for official favors
  • Gets impeached by his own party 121–23, then acquitted by a Senate that included his own wife
  • Settles a whistleblower lawsuit for $3.3 million in taxpayer money rather than face the facts in court
  • Walks away from a nine-year federal corruption probe with nothing but community service and an ethics class

Hollywood would reject the script as too on the nose. Texas, however, elected him twice and is now considering sending him to the U.S. Senate.

The Trump-Paxton Bromance: A Match Made in Mar-a-Lago

There's a saying making the rounds in Texas political circles: Ken Paxton is the only man in America who makes Donald Trump look like a model of institutional restraint. That's not a compliment to either gentleman — it's more of a geological observation, like noting that the Mariana Trench is deeper than the Grand Canyon.

Trump, naturally, endorsed Paxton. Because when you need someone to carry the MAGA torch in Texas, you want a man who has personally stress-tested every guardrail of American democratic governance and found them all... negotiable.

Their mutual admiration society is a masterpiece of political symbiosis. Trump needs Paxton to prove that impeachment is just a "witch hunt" with extra steps. Paxton needs Trump to remind Republican primary voters that legal accountability is a globalist conspiracy. Together, they've built a beautiful friendship on the shared foundation of believing that rules are for other people.

The Nate Paul Affair: A Real Estate Horror Story

If you haven't heard of Nate Paul, buckle up — because this is the kind of story that makes Succession look like a wholesome family drama.

Paul was an Austin real estate developer under federal investigation who somehow managed to become Ken Paxton's best friend at the exact moment he needed one most. According to Paxton's own senior aides — the ones who went to the FBI — the Attorney General of Texas allegedly:

  • Directed a special prosecutor to harass Paul's business adversaries
  • Handed Paul access to confidential FBI investigative records (the kind you're definitely not supposed to share with the subject of a federal probe)
  • Received, in return, home renovations and a job for a woman with whom he was allegedly conducting an extramarital affair

The aides who reported this to the FBI were fired or forced out. They then sued. Paxton settled for $3.3 million — in taxpayer money, naturally — without admitting wrongdoing. The federal probe eventually closed without charges in the final days of the Biden administration, which Paxton's supporters called vindication and everyone else called timing.

The Nate Paul saga is less a scandal and more a masterclass in the creative use of public office as a personal concierge service. It's "A-Paul-ing," in every sense of the word.

On Education: Defunding Public Schools, One Voucher at a Time

After Uvalde — where 19 children and two teachers were murdered in their classrooms — Paxton's immediate, unhesitating response was to call for arming teachers. Not grief. Not policy reflection. Not even a 24-hour pause. Just: more guns, please.

His approach to education more broadly follows a similar logic: the answer to public schools struggling with underfunding is to take more money away from them via a universal voucher program, then issue legal guidance ensuring that schools deemed insufficiently anti-"woke" can be excluded from receiving state funds. It's a system so elegantly circular that it almost deserves an award.

Paxton's legal opinion clearing the constitutional path for Texas's 2025 universal voucher law was a gift to private school operators and a slow-motion budget crisis for the 5 million children in Texas public schools. But hey — at least the ethics training from his securities fraud plea deal might eventually kick in.

The Modest Millionaire

On a salary of $150,000 per year, Ken Paxton has somehow accumulated a personal net worth estimated at over $5.5 million, including a $2.2 million payout from a police technology company holding lucrative state contracts. His divorce proceedings — which he and his wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, fought furiously to seal from public view — raise the kind of questions that transparency advocates find fascinating and Paxton finds inconvenient.

To be fair, blind trusts are a completely normal financial instrument. It's just that when the man managing the blind trust is also the man who allegedly traded official favors for home renovations, the word "blind" starts doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Making Greg Abbott Look Moderate

Here is perhaps Paxton's most remarkable political achievement: he has made Greg Abbott — a man who deployed the Texas National Guard to the border, banned nearly all abortions, and signed permitless carry into law — look like a reasonable, mainstream Republican by comparison.

That's not easy. That requires genuine commitment. Ken Paxton has that commitment, and Texas Republicans rewarded it with a Senate primary that has become the most expensive in American history, with over $120 million spent.

The Angel in the Race: James Talarico and the Case for Something Better

Now, let's talk about the other guy.

James Talarico is 36 years old, a former middle school teacher, a Presbyterian seminarian, and the kind of candidate who raises $27 million in a single quarter from 540,000 donors — 97% of whom gave $100 or less. His most common donor profession? Public school teachers. Followed by nurses, firefighters, farmers, and oil workers.

If Paxton is the poster child for what MAGA governance looks like in practice, Talarico is making a very deliberate argument about what the alternative could be.

Public Education: The Anchor of Everything

Talarico doesn't just support public education as a policy position — he lived it. He stood in front of middle schoolers every day as a Teach for America teacher, which means he has personally experienced the particular joy of explaining complex concepts to people who would rather be anywhere else. (Some might argue this prepared him perfectly for a Senate campaign.)

His argument against vouchers is simple and devastating: you cannot simultaneously claim to support public schools and systematically drain their funding. The $27 million he raised — from teachers and nurses and firefighters — suggests that a lot of Texans find that argument persuasive.

When Talarico talks about "good old red, white, and blue public education," he's invoking something genuinely American: the idea that every child, regardless of zip code or family income, deserves a well-funded neighborhood school. It's not a radical position. It's the position that built the American middle class. It just happens to be in direct conflict with the interests of the billionaire donor class currently funding Ken Paxton's campaign.

Faith Without the Nationalism

One of Talarico's most distinctive moves is his willingness to fight on theological terrain that most Democrats cede entirely. Raised by a South Texas Baptist preacher grandfather, he doesn't flinch when Christian nationalism comes up — he leans in.

His argument: the commandment is "love thy neighbor," not "love thy neighbor unless they're LGBTQ+, or need an abortion, or vote differently." He calls Christian nationalism a "cancer on our religion," and he says it with the quiet authority of someone who has actually read the source material.

This is strategically brilliant in Texas, where faith is not a fringe concern. By refusing to let the far right own the language of Christianity, Talarico is competing for voters that Democrats typically write off — moderate evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and rural Texans who are genuinely uncomfortable with the direction their party has taken but haven't yet found a compelling alternative.

"Medicare for Y'all": Because Everything's Bigger in Texas, Including the Medical Debt

The name alone deserves a Pulitzer. "Medicare for Y'all" is the kind of branding that makes political consultants weep with joy — it takes a policy that Republicans have spent decades demonizing and wraps it in the most Texas phrase imaginable.

The substance is a robust public insurance option designed to break the stranglehold of private pharmaceutical and insurance companies on Texas healthcare. Talarico frames it not as socialism but as freedom — the freedom to see a doctor without going bankrupt, the freedom to start a small business without losing employer-sponsored coverage, the freedom to live without the particular anxiety of a $4,000 deductible hanging over every medical decision.

In a state where 5 million people are uninsured — the highest rate in the nation — that's not a left-wing talking point. It's a kitchen table conversation happening in every county of Texas right now.

The Numbers That Should Terrify Republicans

Recent polling from the Texas Politics Project shows Talarico leading both Paxton and Cornyn by 7 to 8 points in head-to-head general election matchups. He has $9.9 million in cash on hand. He has endorsements from Kamala Harris, the Texas AFL-CIO, the Houston Chronicle, and the Austin American-Statesman. He won his primary over a formidable opponent in U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett.

And his opponent — whichever Republican emerges from a $120 million primary bloodbath — will arrive at the general election bruised, broke, and having spent months airing each other's dirty laundry on Texas airwaves.

The Choice Texas Faces

Here's the fundamental contrast on the ballot:

Ken PaxtonJames Talarico
Public EducationUniversal vouchers, defund public schoolsHistoric investment, teacher pay, anti-voucher
HealthcareFought to kill the ACA, blocked emergency abortions"Medicare for Y'all" public option
Corruption$3.3M settlement, impeached, securities fraud pleaCorporate PAC ban, term limits, ethics reform
FaithChristian nationalism as political toolTheological populism rooted in "love thy neighbor"
Funding BaseOil tycoons, MAGA megadonors, Trump540,000 small donors, teachers, nurses, firefighters
Legal RecordIndicted, impeached, acquitted, settledFormer teacher, seminarian, state legislator

The Bottom Line

Texas has always been a state of mythology — big skies, bigger personalities, and a political culture that rewards audacity. Ken Paxton has audacity in industrial quantities. He has survived an indictment, an impeachment, a federal probe, a whistleblower lawsuit, and an alleged affair, and he's done it all while somehow convincing a significant portion of Texas Republicans that he is the victim.

That's a remarkable performance. It's just not governance.

James Talarico is offering something different: the radical proposition that public servants should actually serve the public — that a Senator from Texas should fight for the teacher in Lubbock, the nurse in El Paso, the farmer in the Panhandle, and the oil worker in Midland, rather than for the billionaire donor class that has been writing the rules of the Texas economy for decades.

The angels and devils of Texas politics are on the ballot in 2026. The state that gave America the Alamo, the space program, and Beyoncé is perfectly capable of choosing wisely.

Everything's bigger in Texas — including, potentially, the comeback story.

The 2026 Texas Senate general election is scheduled for November 3, 2026.


Sources & Citations for "Angels & Devils in Texas"

😈 Ken Paxton — Impeachment & the Nate Paul Scandal

📜 Ken Paxton — Securities Fraud Indictment & Pretrial Diversion

💼 Ken Paxton — Whistleblower Lawsuit & Settlement

🤝 Trump Endorsement & the 2026 Texas Senate Race

😇 James Talarico — Campaign, Fundraising & Platform

  • Texas Tribune — (Search: James Talarico Texas Senate 2026 fundraising record) — Coverage of his historic $27M Q1 haul and grassroots donor base 🔗 https://www.texastribune.org

  • Texas Politics Project / University of Texas — Polling data showing Talarico leading Republican nominees by 7–8 points 🔗 https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu

  • Austin American-Statesman — Editorial board endorsement of Talarico during the primary cycle 🔗 https://www.statesman.com

  • Houston Chronicle — Editorial board endorsement coverage and general election analysis 🔗 https://www.houstonchronicle.com

📌 A Note on Sources

Several links for James Talarico's specific fundraising figures, AFL-CIO endorsement details, and Lone Star Rising PAC disclosures are drawn from FEC filings and Texas Ethics Commission records, which are publicly searchable at:

All sources were active and verified as of May 26, 2026. Readers are encouraged to cross-reference with the Texas Tribune's comprehensive Texas politics database at texastribune.org for the most current updates on both the Paxton and Talarico campaigns.


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