In TV ad, Angela Paxton urges voters to back “the Republican ticket” that includes her estranged husband

State Sen. Angela Paxton, in the final weeks of her estranged husband’s dogfight bid for the U.S. Senate, sat for a direct-to-camera TV ad urging voters to join her in voting for “the Republican ticket,” signaling her support for the man she’s seeking to divorce on “biblical grounds.”

Paxton, R-McKinney, has mostly stayed on the sidelines while her husband, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been locked in a tight race against Democratic nominee James Talarico. In the advertisement, her most explicit public remarks yet, she tells voters that in a general election, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.”

“Either we hold every Republican seat, or we hand the future of Texas to the other team,” Angela Paxton concludes, without mentioning her husband by name. “That’s why I’m voting for the Republican ticket on Nov. 3. Let’s hold the line together.”

Angela Paxton filed for divorce in 2025 after 38 years of marriage with Ken Paxton, accusing him of adultery. The filing came three months into the attorney general’s primary challenge against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who Ken Paxton went on to defeat. Angela Paxton noted in her divorce petition that the couple had stopped living together more than a year earlier.

The advertisement is funded by Texas PAC, a super PAC affiliated with Senate GOP leadership that has dropped over $126 million on ads boosting Ken Paxton’s campaign.

Most public polling shows Talarico holding a narrow lead in the race, within the margin of error — the most competitive position in decades for a Texas Democrat running statewide. Republicans have not lost a statewide election here in over three decades.

The new ad comes a couple weeks after Angela Paxton privately delivered a similar message to a group of conservative women in Round Rock, whom she encouraged to consider the importance of keeping the U.S. Senate seat in GOP hands.

In a speech to a ticketed meeting of the Texas Federation of Republican Women of more than 100 board members, she encouraged attendees to put their party’s values over individual candidates.

“It’s not the people — it’s the seat,” Paxton said in a video clip of the speech to the Texas Federation of Republican Women. “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. But if we lose it to the other team, the nuances that we want to fix with maybe a certain candidate are nothing compared to what it’s going to take to get it back, right?”

The title of her speech was “The Elephant in the Room,” a euphemism she repeats in the Texas PAC ad, telling the audience, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.”

Ken Paxton’s alleged adultery also surfaced in his 2023 impeachment case, in connection to a bribery accusation. His former chief of staff testified in front of the Texas Senate about an alleged extramarital affair, saying that the attorney general confessed to it in a 2018 meeting with aides. Paxton was ultimately acquitted of all charges by the Republican-controlled Texas Senate.

Angela Paxton was not allowed to cast a vote, but sat through days of testimony that at times touched on her husband’s alleged indiscretions.