Karl Rove, the Fox News contributor and former right-hand man to President George W. Bush, has been taking aim at a controversial MAGA candidate, one he says was responsible for turning a Texas blue in the midterms.
The 75-year-old was on The Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox News Radio yesterday to discuss the blue tsunami that put the House and Senate in Democratic hands. Inevitably, they came to Texas, where James Talarico defeated Donald Trump’s MAGA ally Ken Paxton, and Gina Hinojosa, a Democrat, ended the tenure of Governor Greg Abbott.
Rove lives in Texas, and when asked what the exit polls had to say about the Republicans’ misfortune in the normally red state, he did not mince words.
“Well, Paxton drew down the entire Republican ticket,” he said. “He’s at the top of the ticket… and you have to go back to 1982 to see the Democrats have the kind of victory they had in Texas. We lost to every statewide office.”
The last Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Lone Star State before Talarico was elected in 1988.
“People turned out in traditionally Republican counties like Collin County, north of Dallas, and voted straight Democrat,” Rove explained, continuing: “And it was because our ticket was led by a guy who was plagued by scandals and surrounded by controversy.”
Rove was asked whether incumbent John Cornyn would have done better than the state AG.
Trump had thrown his support behind Paxton over Cornyn in May and again at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas in September. Trump was in Texas last month at several rallies to help Paxton, to no avail.
Rove said Cornyn had “enormous strength.” Had he been the one running, Rove said, “We would not have been plagued by… the entire Democrat campaign [saying] Ken Paxton was the most corrupt official that Texas had seen in the modern era. And they made a convincing case.”
Paxton has faced a series of allegations. He reached a pretrial agreement in 2024 to resolve three felony charges brought in 2015 in a securities fraud case, without admitting guilt. In 2023, the GOP Texas House impeached him over allegations of bribery and obstruction of justice, among other things in his dealings with a donor, though the state Senate acquitted him. And as The Daily Beast reports, he was caught on film in London in July on a romantic getaway with his mistress, the Christian influencer Tracy Duhon.
Rove called him a “scandal-plagued individual” and a poor candidate. Kilmeade was of the same mind.
“Oh, believe me, he was terrible. He was sleepy. He was lazy,” the host said of Paxton. “If you’re afraid to debate, you should not run.”
“Look, I thought the only way he could save himself was to debate,” Rove said. “Sure he’d have to deal with all the stuff, ‘What about the girlfriends?’”