Perennial third-party candidate Ted Brown might be the last person Attorney General Ken Paxton wants on the Texas ballot right now.
The Libertarian candidate is finding some traction this time around in the U.S. Senate race, and Mr. Paxton is struggling to bring his Republican voters home.
“A growing number of Republicans are saying they’re going to vote for the Libertarian,” said Ross Hunt, a Texas-based GOP pollster.
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Republican voters in Texas often flirt with third-party candidates early, then drift back to the Republican nominee as Election Day nears, out of fear of handing a Democrat the seat. But that usual pattern hasn’t kicked in yet.
“In this particular race, I think some Libertarian vote against Paxton is real,” said Mr. Hunt.
Still, he said, a lot of things have to fall in place for Democrat James Talarico to capture the Senate seat and break his party’s more than 30-year losing streak.
For his part, Mr. Brown says he is in the race to win.
He said the pool of unhappy Republicans feels bigger than it did two years ago, when he ran against Sen. Ted Cruz and took more than 2% of the vote. He said some voters see Mr. Paxton as corrupt or worry he’ll rubber-stamp President Trump’s agenda, including unpopular tariffs and wars.
“A lot of people supported Trump because they thought he was an anti-war candidate,” Mr. Brown said. “This ridiculous war with Iran is a war of choice, and a lot of Republicans aren’t pleased, especially younger Republicans.”
The Paxton campaign said Mr. Talarico is counting on a split Republican vote.
“A vote for the Libertarian, or a protest vote from any Republican who sits this one out, is a vote to hand the U.S. Senate to the democratic socialists,” said Paxton spokeswoman Madison Cercy.
“Make no mistake: James Talarico will raise your taxes to pay for his radical agenda, kill Texas oil and gas jobs, and let criminals loose to run rampant in our streets,” she said. “Ken Paxton is the only candidate in this race standing between hardworking Texans and a Democrat majority that would tax us to death.”
Rep. Tom Oliverson, who chairs the Texas House GOP caucus, predicted that support for Mr. Brown will fade once voters get a better look at Mr. Talarico, who is about to be buried in an avalanche of negative ads.
Texas voters, he said, will soon see that giving Mr. Talarico the Senate seat would be akin to electing a far-leftist similar to Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York or New York Mayor Zohran Mamanda.
“They’re going to be like, ’Look, we cannot turn a Senate seat over to this guy,’” Mr. Oliverson said.
Mr. Talarico leads Mr. Paxton by nearly 3 points in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, the same amount of the vote captured by Mr. Brown. Another 6% of voters are still on the fence.
Mr. Paxton’s sometimes tenuous relationship with his own party isn’t new.
In 2023, the GOP-controlled Texas House voted 121-23 to impeach him over allegations including bribery and abuse of office. The threat of a political price hung over that vote too — Mr. Trump had warned he would “fight” any Republican who let impeachment proceed — and the House impeached him anyway. The GOP-controlled Senate acquitted him on all 16 articles.
Mr. Paxton has leaned hard on his Trump alliance to steady himself since, at one point sitting in the courtroom during Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in New York.
Even his estranged wife, Angela, has effectively nudged Republicans not to abandon him — without ever saying his name.
“It’s not the people — it’s the seat,” she told a room of Texas Republican women recently. “Because we have more control over that seat and the future when we control the seat — when it’s still in the family, even if we’re mad at them.”
The comments came a year after she filed for divorce, citing biblical grounds, and alleging Mr. Paxton had an extramarital affair.
Mr. Paxton also drew the ire of some Republicans for challenging Sen. John Cornyn in the primary.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brown’s repeat runs have made him a familiar protest option for voters tired of the two-party grind, and he’s leaning into that now. Even a small slice of disaffected conservatives could swing the outcome.
Mr. Brown knows he’ll get blamed if the race is close and Republicans lose.
Asked who he would rather see win, he didn’t hedge: Republicans “absolutely do not deserve to win the way they behaved in office.”
“So that’s why probably the best result for the country would be for Talarico and other Democratic Senate candidates to win their elections, even though I don’t agree with them,” he said.
He also joked that from the libertarian perspective, the good news would be that “Republicans have lost this election” and “the bad news is the Democrats have won this election.”
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