TX Senate Rundown: Party of Clinton dings Paxton’s trip with girlfriend | Opinion
Democratic pearl clutching in the U.S. Senate race reached a new level when Republican Ken Paxton was seen in recent days traveling to Iceland with a woman with whom he reportedly had an affair, presumed to be a major factor in the collapse of his marriage to state Sen. Angela Paxton.
Welcome to the Texas Senate Rundown, where we examine some recent headlines in the state’s marquee political race and I offer my analysis of each.
Paxton took a vacation, and Democrats treated it like news
Once Republicans tried to make a big issue of Talarico’s girlfriend, it was probably inevitable that Democrats would leap on Paxton’s love life as well. It’s the latest effort to turn Paxton’s marital infidelity into a campaign issue — though apparently the Democrats missed how effective it was for John Cornyn in the Republican primary.
My take: A big opportunity when running against Paxton is that he gives opponents so much to work with. But it’s a challenge, too — what might actually make a difference to voters at this point?
The race is essentially a tie, so it makes perfect sense for the campaigns to unload everything they can on each other. And they are.
It would be surprising, though, if Paxton’s affair and the dissolution of his marriage makes much of a dent. There’s simply too much evidence that most voters, while perhaps disappointed or personally offended, don’t factor in extramarital affairs into their choices.
Democrats pulled out all the stops in the 1990s to save the presidency of Bill Clinton, even though his affair was with a federal employee half his age at the White House. By the time serial adulterer Donald Trump began running for office, the die was well and truly cast.
Democrats noted a liberal publication’s pedantic point that the Paxtons are still legally married. Come. On. The marriage is over. Anyone who’s been through a divorce can tell you that life moves on well before the final papers are signed, especially if there are disputes over assets that cause the case to drag for months. To suggest that Paxton is scuttling off with a “mistress” now smacks of a faux version of the puritanism Democrats told us we had to keep Clinton in office to protect.
I’ve argued that Paxton’s violation of his marital vows should matter to the electorate because it’s part of a pattern: There is no commitment he won’t sully to get what he wants, except (so far) his fealty to Donald Trump. It’s the corruption, not the affair.
Dinging an opponent for taking a vacation is common, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dumb. Everyone gets some time off. Some of the stupidest discourse in our politics is the perpetual conversation about whether the president (any president) is out of Washington too much or playing too much golf. The president, of all people, needs breaks, and the demands of the world follow him wherever he goes.
In Paxton’s case, at this point, the less time he spends assaulting industries and universities from his perch as attorney general, the better.
Democrats tried to make it an affordability argument, noting (correctly) that most Texans can’t afford an overseas vacation right now. Hey, lots can’t afford nice suits, either — should Talarico campaign in shorts and a T-shirt?
Any voter truly bothered that Paxton went to Iceland after a grueling primary and with a slog of a campaign ahead of him was probably firmly for Talarico already.
Finally, we can’t ignore that this story was spread by the Lincoln Project, a group of former Republican campaign operatives who started an anti-Trump effort with attention-grabbing ads and memes. The same group had to jettison co-founder John Weaver when he was accused by several young men of soliciting sexual favors in exchange for career help — at least one of whom said that Weaver’s creepy communications started when he was 14 years old. Maybe sit this one out, y’all.
Paxton’s sleazy campaign style gets Bill Maher’s attention
Comedian Bill Maher (or, more likely, someone on his staff) caught Paxton’s campaign red-handed using a classic political trick to mislead about Talarico’s comments about the border — and the recent recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor riffed about it on a recent episode of his HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
Talarico likes to say that the U.S. needs “a giant welcome mat out front, and we should have a lock on the door.” Republicans have clipped off the second part to suggest that Talarico is an advocate for open borders. Maher, calling it a sign of a “dirty campaign,” riffed for a few minutes, offering “examples” of other comments shortened to make Talarico look bad.
Most are too risque to reproduce here, but to give you an idea, Maher said Paxton had Talarico saying, “I think a lot about children.” The rest of the quote, the comedian said, was “having good schools.” Here’s another one: “White people need to get the hell out … of the sun.”
My take: No question, this was one of the more egregious examples of taking a comment out of context. Talarico hasn’t split with his party much, but he seems to acknowledge that Biden-era border policies were a disaster — substantively and politically.
Credit Maher and his writers for finding a way to inject some levity into a race that is already ugly and will only get worse from here.
