Scores of Ken Paxton supporters filled the main dining area of Betty Rose’s Little Brisket restaurant in Abilene, Texas, on a recent weeknight, some clutching trays of free barbecue or bottles of free beer.
Many stops along Mr. Paxton’s statewide bus tour to campaign for U.S. Senate offered some enticement to draw a crowd. Liquor flowed at an open bar in Fort Worth. In New Braunfels, near San Antonio, attendees enjoyed free brisket and sausages. In Houston, there was enough food and wine for some to take seconds.
Facing the possibility of a rare statewide Republican defeat in Texas, Mr. Paxton has gone to unusual lengths to fill rooms.
It has not always been easy.
At a Paxton campaign event in Abilene last week, those who attended were offered free barbecue, soft drinks and beer.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
A reluctant campaigner with a laid-back speaking style, Mr. Paxton, 63, has never faced a race as demanding as this year’s. He has also never encountered a Democratic opponent like James Talarico, who has filled concert halls with ardent supporters eager to hear him deliver an impassioned address. The race is testing whether Republican loyalty can overcome the enthusiasm Mr. Talarico has generated.
Mr. Paxton, whom even President Trump has called a poor speaker, does not pack them in like that.
Instead, as Mr. Paxton has traveled around Texas, he has leaned regularly on Republican stars and Trump administration officials to attract large crowds on his behalf.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, helped Mr. Paxton fill an old train hall in Fort Worth. Vice President JD Vance attracted thousands to a warehouse in Weatherford, Texas. President Trump has praised Mr. Paxton repeatedly at stadium rallies around the state — even if he has not left much time for Mr. Paxton to talk.
“Remember, he is perhaps the greatest attorney general in the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Paxton in San Antonio last month.
Mr. Paxton has rearranged or canceled his own campaign stops to accommodate the visitors. He stepped away from his bus tour to attend back-to-back Trump rallies in Corpus Christi and Lubbock, flying between events with the president aboard Air Force One. Mr. Paxton scrapped a rally in East Texas on Thursday to be with Mr. Vance, and canceled two others in the border cities of Mission and El Paso over the weekend for logistical reasons, his campaign said.
Despite the flurry of events, some Republican consultants and Paxton supporters worry that he got a late start on the trail.
Mr. Paxton canceled a campaign event in East Texas to join Vice President JD Vance at a rally in Weatherford, Texas, on Thursday. Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
That anxiety has built for months. Over the summer, some who came out to see Mr. Paxton complained about what seemed to be his lack of urgency and the fact that Mr. Talarico was already running advertisements.
“I see Talarico all the time,” John Tortorelli, 52, said as he waited in line for free food at a Paxton rally in early September in Corpus Christi. “Paxton needs to help himself. He needs to get off his ass.”
The sentiment lingered into the final days of the race, even after outside groups, funded in large part by Elon Musk, spent more than $250 million to blanket the airwaves with attacks against Mr. Talarico and other ads in support of Mr. Paxton.
“He’s cutting it a little close with the campaigning,” Sam Johnson, an engineering student at Abilene Christian University, said before Mr. Paxton spoke at the restaurant last week. “I think he waited longer than he should have to get up on the airwaves.”
Krystal Bristow, who was also at the Abilene event, said that Republicans had grown accustomed to winning statewide and had been slow to recognize the challenge facing Mr. Paxton.
“We get real lax in Texas,” she said.
Outside the restaurant, a lone protester paced silently back and forth, a Talarico bumper sticker on her back, a sign in her hands reading “Paxton is a crook.”
After Mr. Paxton’s speech, a woman and a man waited in a line for guests to take photographs with the candidate. When it was her turn, the woman spoke briefly to Mr. Paxton and was immediately pushed away and escorted out of the restaurant.
The woman, who declined to give her name, said she had “asked him what he was doing in Dubai,” referring to video showing Mr. Paxton’s partying on New Year’s Eve in 2024 with two U.S. fugitives and his girlfriend. (Mr. Paxton is in the midst of a divorce.)
She believed she had been pushed by a member of Mr. Paxton’s security team. A spokesman for Mr. Paxton’s campaign did not respond to questions about the incident.
Mr. Paxton has faced years of legal and ethical troubles. He was indicted on charges of securities fraud, accused of bribery and abuse of office by his own top deputies, investigated by federal authorities and impeached by the Republican-led Texas House.
He has denied any wrongdoing, settling the criminal case and beating the impeachment charges. His supporters have dismissed the accusations, describing Mr. Paxton as someone who, like Mr. Trump, has been unfairly targeted by his political opponents.
Mr. Paxton’s troubles have turned off some Republicans, particularly traditional conservatives who had favored Senator John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to Mr. Paxton. Mr. Talarico has tried to court those voters.
Some Republican leaders have urged wavering voters in their party to support Mr. Paxton despite their reservations, emphasizing party loyalty over the candidate himself.
Mr. Paxton attended a campaign event hosted by Gov. Greg Abbott in Wichita Falls, Texas, last week. Mr. Abbott, who is facing a tough re-election fight, did not mention Mr. Paxton.Credit…Shelby Tauber for The New York Times
“I had to hold my nose and vote for John McCain. I had to hold my nose and vote for Mitt Romney,” the conservative state comptroller, Don Huffines, told the crowd in Weatherford before Mr. Paxton and the vice president spoke. “This is about saving the nation.”
As he has campaigned, Mr. Paxton has stuck close to his teleprompter speech that focuses on lowering costs and presents Mr. Talarico as extreme. Over the course of his campaign, Mr. Paxton has shifted his emphasis from the first part to the second. His early tour was under the banner of “Protecting the Texas Promise.” He is now campaigning on the “Come and Take It” bus tour. His lectern carried the message: “When they come after Texas, Ken Paxton goes after them.”
At a restaurant in New Braunfels, Mr. Paxton warned that Mr. Talarico would undermine the nation’s conservative Christian roots, attack the oil and gas industry and open the southern border to criminals. He was joined by Senator Ted Cruz, who attacked the kinds of voters he said would support Mr. Talarico, including Muslims and “blue-haired transgender witches.”
Mr. Paxton, in his speeches, has pointed to his record of suing technology and pharmaceutical companies as attorney general as evidence that he has everyday Texans’ interests in mind.
His most popular lines have often been attacks on Mr. Talarico.
“He wants to transition our kids. He wants to transition Texas off of oil and gas,” Mr. Paxton has told his supporters, before drawing cheers for the punchline: “How about we transition him and his crazy ideas right out of Texas?”
Still, Mr. Paxton does not deliver a rousing speech. Mr. Trump has said he “may not talk exactly perfectly.”
Ardent supporters of Mr. Paxton said they did not care. They celebrated his record as attorney general, where he has fought for conservative causes. Besides, they argued, a politician who is too good at public speaking might not be genuine.
People wait for food at Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que in New Braunfels, where Mr. Paxton held a campaign event. The owners later said they had not approved the event.Credit…Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images
“Ken Paxton is an authentic candidate,” Anita Valdez, a county Republican Party chair, said at the New Braunfels event. “Someone can speak well and then the results aren’t there.”
The owners of the New Braunfels restaurant, after receiving blowback online, later posted on social media that they had not approved the Paxton event. “This is the action of a rogue employee,” the post read. (The campaign declined to discuss the episode.)
In nearby Georgetown that same day last month, Mr. Paxton was introduced by Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California. Mr. Paxton was born in North Dakota and spent time living in several states as a child, including California, before moving to Texas.
In his remarks, Mr. Paxton suggested that Mr. Talarico, if elected, would vote like a California senator. Behind him, as he spoke, was the word “California” on a university pennant. His campaign later said it had been an oversight.
As public poll numbers continued to show him trailing Mr. Talarico, Mr. Paxton stuck to his message that the election’s stakes were existential for Texas. But he has also added a request to the end of his stump speech.
Pray.
“Pray for Texas. Pray for our leaders,” Mr. Paxton told the audience in Abilene. “Pray for me.”
