President Trump backed Ken Paxton in Texas, and the old guard of the Republican Party never forgave either one of them.
Now the Senate race is tight and the knives are out.
And Karl Rove went after Trump’s pick in Texas with one ugly prediction, sitting right beside Barack Obama’s top strategist.
Rove picks a Chicago stage to take his shot
Karl Rove has spent decades as a leading strategist for the establishment RINO wing of the Republican Party. He recently sat down with Democrat strategist David Axelrod at The Economic Club of Chicago, and the Texas Senate race came up.
Rove didn’t hold back on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running against State Representative James Talarico (D).
“If he doesn’t debate, I think he loses,” Rove said, according to Mediaite. “If he debates, the question is, is he going to be able to go on the offense?”
Axelrod, the man who helped put Barack Obama in the White House, piled on. “There’s a reason he hasn’t debated in 16 years. He’s not adroit,” Axelrod said.
Mediaite noted Axelrod got the math wrong. Paxton last debated in 2014, the year Texans first elected him Attorney General.
Rove then made it personal. “You don’t need to be adroit in this,” he said. “The question is, does he have the guts to do it?”
And he kept going. The Hill reported that Rove wondered aloud whether Paxton has the “political moxie” to walk onto a debate stage and win.
Where the debate fight actually stands
Paxton’s senior adviser Nick Maddux said back in July that the Attorney General would “of course” debate Talarico. Nobody has scheduled one yet.
The Dallas Observer reported that Paxton’s team turned down offers from local TV stations and went quiet on a Dallas ABC affiliate after weeks of talks.
His campaign also declined a proposed CNN debate. A Paxton spokesperson said it would be a “CCP-style struggle session.”
Hard to blame anyone on the Right for doubting CNN would run a fair fight.
But Talarico has shifted his challenge to Fox News, and a network spokesperson confirmed Fox would host “if both candidates commit to appearing.”
Mediaite also reported that The New York Times obtained leaked audio of Paxton talking about the Republican midterm convention. “To be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” Paxton said in the clip.
So Rove did not invent the pressure on Paxton. The polls are close. A Texas Public Opinion Research survey put Talarico up 49% to 44%, a Hill/Emerson College poll had the race at 47% to 46%, and The Texas Tribune’s tracker shows Talarico ahead by about 2 points.
The man delivering the lecture
But consider who is handing out the advice.
Rove served as a top White House aide to George W Bush. He helped steer the wing of the party that backed amnesty for illegal aliens, trade deals that shipped American jobs overseas, and open-ended foreign wars. That approach walked Republicans into the 2006 and 2008 wipeouts, with the Iraq War and the Wall Street collapse clearing the path for Barack Obama.
And there he sat next to the strategist who collected the winnings, trading laughs about a Republican nominee with voting close at hand.
Paxton beat incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the primary after President Trump endorsed him in May 2026. Cornyn was the lead Republican negotiator on the gun control bill Joe Biden signed in 2022. Primary voters chose the other guy.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and other Senate Republicans warned during that primary that a Paxton win would put the seat at risk, The Texas Tribune reported. They were not shy about it.
And the money tells its own story. The Washington Examiner reported Talarico has raised $72 million since the start of 2025 against $16.8 million for Paxton. The Washington Sun reported Talarico’s campaign spent about $31.3 million on ads over the summer while Paxton’s reservations stood at just over $150,000 by the end of August.
That’s a whole summer with one side owning the airwaves. Any poll taken afterward carries that weight.
To be fair, the cavalry did show up. Federal filings show the Thune-linked Texas PAC has now spent $131 million, The Texas Tribune reported, and Thune said he thinks Paxton can win “but it is going to be expensive, and we knew that going in.”
But late money and an “I told you so” tone are different from a party that locks arms the morning after a primary.
Look at Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed beat Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the August 2026 Senate primary. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had backed Stevens. CNN reported Democrat leadership praised El-Sayed almost immediately, and Kamala Harris started raising money for him. Stevens endorsed him within hours.
Democrats swallowed a far-left nominee without a public wince. Republicans got a MAGA-aligned nominee and their most famous consultant went to Chicago to question his guts.
Maybe Rove is right about the tactics. A Fox News debate where Paxton hammers Talarico on the border and on his party’s record could move numbers, and the Texas Senate did acquit Paxton in his 2023 impeachment, which gives him an answer to the obvious attack.
But the venue and the company say plenty about the motive. The establishment wing wants the party back once President Trump leaves office, and every stumble by a Trump-endorsed nominee becomes an exhibit in that case.
Expect more of it. If Texas stays close, the same voices who opposed Paxton in the primary will line up to explain that the problem was the voters’ choice, and never the months when the nominee stood alone on the air.
Sources: Mediaite, “Karl Rove Predicts Ken Paxton ‘Loses’ Election if He Doesn’t Debate James Talarico”; The Hill, “Rove says if Paxton doesn’t debate Talarico, ‘he loses'”; The Texas Tribune, “Senate GOP smashing political spending records in Texas with ad-buying binge for Ken Paxton”; Washington Examiner, “Talarico holds 5-point lead over Paxton in Texas Senate race, poll shows”; The Washington Sun, “Thune Ramps Up Spending in Texas as Paxton Struggles in Polling”; CNN, “Progressive Abdul El-Sayed deals blow to Democratic establishment with Michigan primary win”