Trump's Texas Tour: Paxton Says Convention 'Dropped Numbers' 📉
Trump's Texas Tour: Paxton Says Convention 'Dropped Numbers' 📉
Leaked audio reveals GOP candidate Ken Paxton admitted Trump's Dallas convention negatively impacted his campaign. Is the former president's Texas magic fading for midterm hopefuls?
Donald Trump faces a significant challenge in Texas, a problem extending beyond mere television ratings. As Republicans confront grim midterm prospects, the former president is in damage control mode, eager to deflect responsibility for potential defeats linked to an unpopular war and domestic economic issues. Instead, he's pointing fingers at congressional Republicans for the party's declining popularity, aiming to distance himself from any blame.
At the heart of this Texas-sized problem is Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for Senate.
Paxton is in a precarious position, battling to avoid becoming the first Republican in over three decades to lose a statewide election in Texas.
He's caught between appealing to Trump's fervent base and driving turnout among loyalists, all while navigating controversy within the Texas GOP establishment and lacking the support of his former opponent, incumbent Sen.
John Cornyn.
Despite Paxton's efforts to align himself with Trump, often seen as a strategy to secure a loyal vote for Trump in the Senate, his campaign hasn't managed to pull ahead of Democratic nominee James Talarico, who is mounting a formidable challenge. This struggle persists even with Trump's approval rating at 42 percent in the state.
Paxton was alongside Trump during a visit to a Denton manufacturing plant last Thursday, attempting to project an image of unity. However, leaked audio from a GOP fundraiser, obtained by The New York Times, painted a different picture.
In the recording, Paxton candidly admitted to supporters that Trump's midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month had a net negative impact on his Senate campaign.
So to be honest with you, the numbers - when we did that convention - it dropped our numbers,
Paxton reportedly said. “Everybody's numbers dropped.
Right now, yeah, not good.”
Trump later addressed these remarks, brushing them aside. He attributed any perceived issues with the convention not to its message, but to its unfortunate timing. The event coincided with the NFL's season opener and other games, forcing the GOP's two-day bash in Dallas to compete directly with professional football for viewership.
“That convention was a tremendous success. it went up against the NFL,” Trump asserted, claiming, “They had 24 million views. We had 107 million views. In other words, we beat the NFL by four times.
We were there for a lot of reasons. First of all, I won Texas all three times.
I won the Hispanic vote all three times.
Texas has been great to me.”
However, these figures are misleading. Media analytics firms have clarified that the 107 million figure does not represent actual views. Instead, it combines all social media impressions across various platforms, including content on TikTok, X, and YouTube that might appear in a user's feed without necessarily being watched.
The real issue for Paxton, it seems, isn't a lack of exposure; it's a message problem. Being closely tied to Trump isn't resonating with a broad enough base of Republican voters, including conservative-leaning independents and even some Democrats, to the same extent it did in previous elections.
