Angela Paxton urges Texans to vote for Republican ticket including husband Ken

Texas State Senator Angela Paxton has released a direct-to-camera television advertisement urging voters to back the Republican ticket—which includes her estranged husband, Ken Paxton, whom she is divorcing.

The ad, funded by a political action committee supporting Ken Paxton's tight U.S. Senate race, shows Angela Paxton appealing directly to conservative voters. However, she never mentions her husband by name. Instead, she addresses what she calls the "elephant in the room" and frames the election as a team effort where individual personalities do not matter.

"Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team," Angela Paxton says in the advertisement. "That's why I'm voting for the Republican ticket on 3 November. Let's hold the line together."

Why is Angela Paxton divorcing Ken Paxton?

The couple had been married for 38 years when Angela Paxton filed for divorce in 2025, citing "biblical grounds" after accusing her husband of adultery. Her divorce petition noted that the couple had stopped living together more than a year before the filing.

Her decision to run the ad follows months of staying mostly on the sidelines of her husband's competitive campaign. Ken Paxton, currently the Texas Attorney General, is locked in a tight race against Democratic nominee James Talarico. Public polling shows Talarico holding a narrow lead, representing the most competitive threat to Republican dominance in Texas in over three decades.

The television commercial is funded by Texas PAC, a political action committee allied with Senate Republican leadership. The group has spent more than $126 million on advertisements boosting Ken Paxton's campaign.

Putting the party over the candidate

Angela Paxton's public message mirrors comments she made privately to a meeting of more than 100 board members of the Texas Federation of Republican Women in Round Rock. In a video recording of that speech, titled "The Elephant in the Room", she urged attendees to prioritise party power over their personal feelings about candidates.

"It's not the people—it's the seat," she told the audience. "Because we have more control over that seat and the future when we control the seat—when it's still in the family, even if we're mad at them."

Ken Paxton's personal life has repeatedly spilled into his political career. During his 2023 impeachment trial, his former chief of staff testified that the Attorney General had confessed to an extramarital affair in 2018. Although the Republican-controlled state Senate eventually acquitted him of bribery and corruption charges, Angela Paxton sat through days of testimony detailing her husband's alleged infidelity. She was legally barred from voting in the trial.