Angela Paxton, the wife of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who is in the midst of a heated Republican U.S. Senate primary — announced Thursday that she is filing for divorce, citing “biblical reasons.”
Angela is also an elected official, holding a Texas state senate seat. Her husband is challenging the state’s senior U.S. senator, John Cornyn, in next year’s primary for the GOP nomination. If Paxton wins, Cornyn will lose his seat in the chamber — unless he runs as an independent, and wins in November.
But the wording of Angela Paxton’s post on X, formerly known as Twitter, suggested that the challenger could be in for an unpleasant news cycle (or cycles).
“Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage,” wrote Angela Paxton, who has represented a district in northeast Texas in the state legislature since 2019.
“I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose,” she concluded.
Her post could mark the beginning of big trouble for her husband’s Senate campaign if salacious or otherwise unseemly revelations are on the way as a result of the couple’s divorce proceedings.
Paxton wrote in his own statement: “After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives. I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time. “
The attorney general is a figure of controversy in the state; his strong ties to the MAGA-aligned right allowed him to weather an impeachment effort on corruption charges in 2023, and he has also separately faced an FBI investigation and an indictment in 2015 for state securities fraud (the charges were dismissed after he completed a pretrial restitution agreement).
It was during that 2023 impeachment push that documents revealing Paxton’s extramarital affair were published.
“He says he’s anti-woke, but he funnels millions of taxpayer dollars to lawyers who celebrate DEI. And Ken claims to be a man of faith but uses fake Uber accounts to meet his girlfriend and deceive his family.”
"Ken Paxton is a fraud," Cornyn's team said in April.
Cornyn, meanwhile, is burdened by Paxton and other Trump allies labeling him a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and the sharp contrast drawn between him and the state’s feistier junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz. Cornyn’s support for Ukraine plays a large part in the accusation, as did his calls for his party to “move on” from Donald Trump in the wake of the attack on the Capitol.
With the GOP having refused to do so, Cornyn’s votes to certify Joe Biden’s election victory and support for gun safety legislation after a massacre at a Texas elementary school set the senator apart from the party’s ultraconservatives.
That same dynamic is expected to play out in other Republican primary elections next year, including in Kentucky and North Carolina where two GOP senators, Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis, are retiring.
Cornyn was trailing his challenger badly in a poll released in June, but with the election still a year away the bulk of voters are not fully engaged yet with the race. Still, Donald Trump has yet to make an endorsement in the contest and could swing it in Paxton’s favor should Cornyn, who has espoused his own support for the president as he plays defense, anger him between now and the primary.
Punchbowl reported in early June that a poll from the Cornyn-supporting Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC tied to GOP leaders John Thune and (formerly) McConnell, found Cornyn trailing by a large margin.
Later that month, the Texas senator denied that he was considering dropping out of the race, and said that he saw a path to victory. He also attacked Paxton over allegations that he engaged in witness tampering during his impeachment trial. Cornyn told reporters at the time that he believed his defeat would open the seat up to flip Democratic in the general election.
"I’m absolutely determined to run and to win — if I didn’t think I could win, I wouldn’t run," Cornyn said, according to Houston Public Media. "I’ve simply labored too long in Texas Republican politics to turn the seat over to Democrats in November. ... Any suggestion that I’m thinking about dropping out of the race is false."
