When Angela Paxton spoke to a room of Republican women in Texas in September, she named her speech “The Elephant in the Room.” The elephant, of course, was her divorce from Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general and the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. Last summer, she filed for divorce on what she called “biblical grounds,” alleging adultery; Ken Paxton has denied the allegation.
Then came the line that should trouble every woman, Republican or Democrat: “It’s not the people, it’s the seat.” Republican women, she said, should keep the seat “in the family, even if we’re mad at them.”
That is the real elephant in the room. It is not one troubled marriage. It is a political culture that asks women to set aside character, accountability, and even their own interests whenever party power is at stake.
A Senate seat is not a family heirloom. It belongs to the public.
I am a Texas woman and a former Republican. I know the language of party loyalty. I know the fear of handing power to “the other side.” But no democracy survives if voters are told that the office matters more than the person entrusted to hold it. A Senate seat is not a family heirloom. It belongs to the public.
Ken Paxton’s record is not a private matter. In 2023, the Texas House impeached him on 20 articles. The Texas Senate later acquitted him on 16 articles and dismissed four held in abeyance. The accusations included using the powers of his office to benefit a political donor, real estate developer Nate Paul. An acquittal ended the impeachment trial; it did not erase the House record, the testimony, or the public’s responsibility to judge what it saw.
Nor is this simply a question of one politician’s past. It is a question of what kind of bargain women are being asked to accept. Texas women live under one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws. The law gives no exception for rape or incest and permits abortion only in narrowly defined, life-threatening medical circumstances. Yet women are now being told that their anger about a candidate’s conduct should be put aside for the good of the party.
At the same time, the money is arriving to make that choice feel inevitable. MAGA Inc., the super PAC aligned with President Donald Trump, announced a $10 million ad buy to support Paxton and oppose his Democratic opponent, James Talarico. That is not a grassroots lesson in forgiveness. It is political power protecting political power with the one language it never seems to run short of: money.
This is why Angela Paxton’s formulation matters beyond Texas. The argument is not that a voter must agree with every candidate. No voter does. It is that questions of trust, honesty, and abuse of public power should be treated as inconveniences—mere “nuances” to be handled later, after the party has secured control. That is not how accountability works. Once politicians learn they can keep the office no matter what they do, the public loses its only real leverage.
Angela Paxton is entitled to her faith, her divorce, and her political views. She is not required to campaign for her former husband, and she has said she will not. But when she urges women to preserve the seat regardless of the person, she asks them to accept the central lie of modern party politics: that loyalty to the machine is more important than loyalty to ourselves, our families, and the rule of law.
Women are not a party’s cleanup crew. We are not here to absorb the consequences of men in power, excuse them, and then vote to give them more power because somebody fears a loss of control. We can care about policy, courts, taxes, and the future of Texas without pretending that character is irrelevant.
The next time a politician asks women to keep a seat “in the family,” we should answer plainly: Public office is not family property. It is not a reward for partisan obedience. And no woman owes her vote to a political elephant that keeps asking her to feed it. Elephants are proud, maternal animals. They stand on their own merit.
The post Angela Paxton’s Message: Elect the Elephant at All Costs appeared first on The Texas Observer.
