Donald Trump loyalist and Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton has been caught on tape admitting he has lost control of his own campaign.
The Texas Republican made the confession to a room of DC lobbyists at a private fundraising lunch, according to audio obtained by Politico.
‘I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign,’ Paxton told about a dozen donors on September 24.
It is the second damaging leak from that lunch in less than a week. The timing could hardly be worse as new polling shows the race tightening in the deep red state.
Paxton trails Democrat James Talarico by six points in the latest New York Times/Siena poll, with less than a month to go in a seat Republicans need to hold their majority.
The leak lands as Trump is being forced to campaign in deep red states to stop Democrats seizing control of both the House and the Senate. The president is battling record low approval ratings and a cost of living crisis driven by the war in Iran.
‘I don’t control message or what we’re doing,’ he said, complaining that the direction was all coming from DC.
He told the room that messaging in a federal race often comes from other people, and that he was stuck with it: ‘I don’t have ability to change anything.’
The Texas Republican made the confession to a room of DC lobbyists at a private fundraising lunch last month
It is the second damaging leak from that lunch in less than a week. The timing could hardly be worse as new polling shows the race tightening in the deep red state
The president is battling record low approval ratings and a cost of living crisis driven by the war in Iran
One attendee told Politico that Paxton never pinned the blame on Trump’s team by name, but everyone in the room knew who he meant.
The admission is awkward for a man who won the nomination by branding incumbent John Cornyn a Washington insider and a RINO.
‘I’m not their person and I’m never going to be their person,’ he said of the DC establishment during the primary, according to the AP.
Paxton adviser Nick Maddux insisted the attorney general was ‘obviously’ talking about super PACs, which campaigns cannot coordinate with.
In a separate recording of the lunch obtained by the New York Times, Paxton said Trump’s midterm convention in Texas ‘dropped our numbers’, a report Maddux dismissed as ‘manipulated nonsense’.
A well-known DC lobby firm hosted the lunch, where a defense contractor executive drew chuckles by asking how the campaign’s message plays with ‘real people’ back home.
Regardless of the polling anxiety heading into November, Paxton holds a major cash advantage over Talarico and rolled out a $20 million ad buy last month.
Paxton has received millions in funding from Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s GOP fund since the beginning of September.
