“UNFIT TO SERVE:” Ken Paxton Torched For Refusing To Answer Questions About His Corruption
MS NOW: “'Unfit to serve': The Weeknight blasts Ken Paxton fleeing questions amid scandal-plagued Senate race”
Fort Worth Star Telegram: “Alarms should be blaring in the Paxton campaign [...] their candidate isn’t ready for what lies ahead”
Austin American-Statesman: “If the questions in a U.S. Senate debate get too rough [...] there's no provision for a staffer to step forward and throw in the towel.”
AUSTIN, TX — Ken Paxton can run, but he can’t hide. Paxton was slammed on Sunday shows and in newspapers across Texas after refusing to answer questions three times last week, even running away from his own press conference when confronted about his alleged voter fraud and enriching himself in public office.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram wrote “alarms should be blaring in the Paxton campaign” after his disastrous performance, while the Austin American-Statesman pointed out “there's no provision for a staffer to step forward and throw in the towel” if Paxton ever has the courage to get on a debate stage. Fox 26 Houston tore into Paxton saying “he's just running a terrible campaign,” while CBS News Texas noted this was “not the first time the Attorney General hasn’t wanted to answer questions about allegations.” As MS NOW put it: Paxton is “running away from accountability, quite literally.”
Watch the full MS NOW The Weeknight Segment Here
Fort Worth Star Telegram: TX Senate Rundown: What Paxton’s question-ducking says about campaign
July 26, 2026
By Ryan J. Rusak
A good lawyer knows how to respond to questions without necessarily answering them. A good political candidate can take an inquiry and pivot to say what he wants, whether it actually answers the question or not.
And then there’s Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who’s running for U.S. Senate. He whiffed on several recent opportunities to address issues — or at least appear to — that could dog his campaign. It says something about how he’s approaching the campaign against James Talarico, something that could come back to haunt Paxton in the campaign’s remaining three months.
Paxton was in Fort Worth on July 21 for an appearance with Texas sheriffs. His campaign invited reporters covering the race to a “press conference,” a term that is universally understood in politics to be a chance to ask a wide range of questions.
Local reporters tried to do just that, focusing on two big stories recently reported about Paxton — that he recently purchased several expensive condos in Utah and that he does not appear to live at the address where he is registered to vote and has done so in several elections. After the first inquiry, Paxton asked that questions be limited to the law enforcement issues he was there to discuss. After the second, an aide ended the press-conference-that-wasn’t.
My take: Alarms should be blaring in the Paxton campaign. This could be a sign that their candidate isn’t ready for what lies ahead — and that the campaign’s theory of the case is off.
Let’s dispense with any notion that the questions were unfair or from slanted sources. The reporters who lodged them, Jack Fink of CBS 11 and Gromer Jeffers Jr. of The Dallas Morning News, are regarded throughout politics and media as straight shooters who don’t do gotcha games or take partisan angles.
Paxton has been in public life for a quarter-century. He has held statewide office since 2014. He should have known the questions were coming and should be perfectly capable of parrying them.
Austin American-Statesman: Ken Paxton’s ‘ring rust’ raises a bigger question about the Senate race
July 26, 2026
By John C. Moritz
If Ken Paxton were a prizefighter instead of a politician, what happened to him Tuesday in Fort Worth might have been chalked up to "ring rust," the affliction caused by extended inactivity that dulls a boxer's reflexes and increases the likelihood of being knocked for a loop.
To recap, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee was joined at a news conference by nearly two dozen county sheriffs who were there to vouch for his law enforcement bona fides and criticize the record of Paxton's Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico of Austin. But when it came time for reporters to ask questions, they were less concerned with Paxton's preferred narrative and more interested in getting answers from the three-term Texas attorney general about a few unflattering issues that he had either chosen to ignore or farmed out to staff.
The first question had to do with a New York Times report about Paxton purchasing out-of-state condos and other real estate said to be worth millions of dollars despite earning a government salary of $153,750. The next was about a ProPublica/Texas Tribune article stating that Paxton had voted in at least six elections using an address where he hadn't lived since he and his wife split up some two years before. The report said Paxton wasn't even living in the same county where he was registered to vote.
Paxton deflected the first question, saying he had come to the news conference prepared only to address law enforcement issues. A staffer stepped in to shut down the second question, and shortly thereafter abruptly called a halt to the Q&A.
That's where the "ring rust" reference kicks in. Unlike other statewide elected officials such as Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, as well as both of Texas' U.S. senators — all of whom are Republicans, by the way — Paxton almost never holds news conferences with traditional media outlets. He called one just after the Texas House voted to impeach him in May 2023 but walked off without taking any questions. In January 2025, he mixed it up briefly with reporters during an impromptu gaggle at an event outside Austin organized by a conservative group.
There are a few other examples, but not many throughout his three terms as attorney general. And that's why reporters in Fort Worth used the limited opportunity to ask pointed questions about matters Paxton has rarely addressed publicly, rather than lobbing softballs that would produce campaign soundbites. Who knows when their next chance might come?
Talarico, for his part, takes reporters' questions at nearly all of his campaign events and pretty much follows the same playbook as the aforementioned Republicans.
If the questions in a U.S. Senate debate get too rough or wander off topic, there's no provision for a staffer to step forward and throw in the towel. It's up to the officeholder alone to make the case or accept defeat.
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