Paxton Says Trump's Texas Rallies Are 'Absolutely' Helping His Senate Bid - as a Small San Angelo Crowd Draws Fresh Scrutiny
On Newsmax, the attorney general credited Trump's Corpus Christi and Lubbock stops with sharpening the race's contrasts. Online, a video of a few dozen people in a small hotel room in San Angelo is telling a different story about his ground game.
HOUSTON - Ken Paxton is running two campaigns at once this week: the one beside the president, and the one in the small rooms. Asked on Newsmax's 'Finnerty' on Wednesday whether President Donald Trump's recent Texas rallies are helping his U.S. Senate bid, Paxton did not hesitate: 'They absolutely are. There's no doubt. We were in Corpus [Christi] yesterday. Then we flew to Lubbock. We did one in Lubbock - both great cities, both great people.' Trump, he said, 'draws such attention to highlight the differences between me and James Talarico, which couldn't be more immense' - free markets against what Paxton called Talarico's 'sort of Marxist views,' oil and gas, cattle interests and transgender issues among them.
Paxton also used the interview to claim a policy trophy: Texas Children's Hospital, he said, has agreed to pay approximately $10 million to Texas and to fund a five-year program of care for minors who experienced complications from gender-transition treatments, a clinic that opened Tuesday. 'We sued them. We stopped them from transitioning children. We got them to fire doctors who were doing it,' Paxton said. 'And then we got them to set up a five-year program where they pay for it. I'm very proud of it. I hope other states will do it.' Those are his characterizations of the settlement, carried here as he stated them.
The counter-image arrived from San Angelo. Video circulating online, reported by Particle News, shows Paxton speaking for about 15 minutes in the 'Video Wall Room' of a Clarion Hotel to only a few dozen attendees - a room that holds about 106 people, in a hotel with a 4,000-square-foot ballroom - and a brief clip captured him thanking 'that one clap.' The campaign did not answer questions about the venue choice. One small room proves nothing about a statewide race five days out, and this station is not treating it as a turnout count. But in a contest that will help decide control of the Senate, optics are a currency of their own - and the contrast between Tuesday's arena rallies with the president and Wednesday's small-room video is the contrast both campaigns will spend the final days arguing about.
