On Friday, the Daily Mail reported that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was involved in a sex scandal with a married “Christian influencer” that started after the pair met at the 2024 Kentucky Derby. Allegedly, they continued to see each other after that, often meeting during overseas travels without their spouses knowing. If true, it would certainly explain why Angela Paxton filed for divorce from Ken in July 2025, citing "biblical grounds” in a tweet announcing the breakup.
It is also undeniably bad news for Paxton’s political ambitions, as he is currently challenging incumbent Texas Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary next year. But just how large of an effect will this scandal actually have?
Traders on Kalshi think it’s a major issue for Paxton, as Cornyn’s odds of winning the Republican nomination shot up in the past day. In the past, you’d have to wait days or weeks to get a live picture of how this news impacted the race. Now, it’s instant.
But Paxton still has a chance to overcome this. Which ties to the bigger question: in the age of Trump, do sex scandals still matter?
In the past, it was almost a certainty that such scandals would derail even presidential campaigns (just ask Gary Hart in 1987 or John Edwards in 2008).
Even post-Trump (and his many affairs and accusers), politicians on both sides still resign (or retire) most of the time following a sex scandal. Some prominent examples of this include Democratic Senator Al Franken and GOP Reps. Pat Meehan and Trent Franks, among others in recent years.
But for candidates where the scandal broke during an election, or for politicians who decided to run in an election after the news, the results are decidedly mixed. Here are some examples:
Roy Moore: the Alabama Republican was accused of sexual assault on teenage girls. He lost the Alabama special Senate election to Democrat Doug Jones in 2017, giving Alabama its first Democratic Senator in 25 years.
Cal Cunningham: the 2020 Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina, Cunningham was challenging GOP Senator Thom Tillis when news broke that he had been sending sexual text messages to a woman who wasn’t his wife. He ended up losing the general election, underperforming Biden in the state.
Madison Cawthorne: the first-term GOP Rep. faced a stream of sexual assault allegations and other nudity scandals. He lost the GOP primary in NC-11 narrowly to Chuck Edwards in 2022.
Van Taylor: the Texas GOP Rep. was reported to have an extramarital affair with an “ISIS bride.” He initially ran for election in 2022, but finished with 49% of the primary vote in a five-way race, forcing him into a runoff. It was then that he withdrew from the race.
But on the other hand, lawmakers have been able to weather worse scandals. Some examples of scandal survivors include GOP Reps Matt Gaetz (who has been accused of a sexual relationship with a minor) and Scott Desjarlais, who admitted to having affairs with patients while he was a physician.
Both Gaetz and Desjarlais won renomination and reelection multiple times, but not without electoral consequences. Gaetz routinely underperformed the top of the ticket in his district by 5-10 points, and investigations into his exploits ultimately ended up derailing his nomination for Attorney General. Desjarlais, meanwhile, survived a primary challenge in 2014 by only 38 votes, but has since sailed to renomination and reelection.
The GOP examples above likely provide the best guidance for what might happen in the TX Senate primary. It’s important to remember, though, that most of these examples are of incumbents — not challengers, as Paxton is for the Senate seat. Gaetz and Desjarlais likely only survived because they had the support of President Trump (for Gaetz) and the GOP establishment in the state. It is unclear if Paxton can count on either against an incumbent Senator.
And even if he survives the primary, he could be in for a tough fight in a general election, given Texas is nowhere near as red as Alabama.
On the other hand, Paxton is already a well-known and controversial figure in the state who has survived multiple scandals already, including being impeached by the Texas House in 2023 over allegations of bribery and abuse of office. So perhaps this additional baggage will not impact his candidacy as much as we think, and the scandal will fade with time. This would be the most “Trump-esque” outcome.
Time will tell, and the prediction markets will give an early indicator of where this primary is headed.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore
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