Standing before the Texas Federation of Republican Women, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton leads the audience through a guided meditation. The soon-to-be ex-wife of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asks the audience to close their eyes and imagine themselves in a secluded outdoor place, with cool mountain air, birdsong and a stream. She continues, “The water is crystal clear. You can easily make out the face of the person you are holding underwater.”
The audience erupts with the kind of nervous, surprised and genuinely amused laughter that only a bait-and-switch joke about murder, delivered by a 63-year-old woman dressed like Barbara Bush, could inspire. “I won’t ask you whose face you saw if you don’t ask me,” she says.
From the sound of Angela Paxton’s speech, Republican women are reluctant to vote for her husband. Yet she is out there making her case for him.
Angela Paxton’s speech, which she gave earlier this month, was not about how to murder, but it was an exhausted and weary call for Republican women to vote for her husband, who is running for U.S. Senate. The one who she’s divorcing on “biblical grounds” and who, according to her divorce filing last year, allegedly cheated on her.
“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage,” she wrote in a social media post in 2025.
Ken Paxton’s scandal-ridden campaign is struggling. Recent polls show him trailing Democrat James Talarico by an average of 3 points. If Talarico wins, it would be the first time Texas sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than 30 years.
From the sound of Angela Paxton’s speech, Republican women are reluctant to vote for her husband. Yet she is out there making her case for him. The man who was filmed while traveling with another woman in Europe this summer. The man whose aide, during his impeachment trial, detailed an affair with a different woman. Angela Paxton listened to that testimony; her husband skipped out.
In her speech, Angela Paxton never says her husband’s name, but he is, as the title of her speech suggests, “the elephant in the room.”
She urges the women to vote for him despite their many reservations, and notes that this election will be decided by women. On that latter point, she is right.
It’s a hard speech to listen to, especially in a time when women have suffered the blunt end of this administration’s policies.
Women vote at slightly higher rates than men. How women vote and whom women vote for, or abstain from voting for, is particularly important in a state that has some of the lowest voter turnout rates in the nation. In 2024, 59.9% of Texas women voted, compared with 55.9% of men.
Her main pitch was not that Paxton would be a good and capable leader, just that he would be a Republican. “We have more control over that seat and the future … when it’s still in the family, even if we’re mad at it,” she argued. “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.”
It’s a hard speech to listen to, especially in a time when women have suffered the blunt end of this administration’s policies. Deaths from ectopic pregnancies are increasing; the maternal mortality rate is rising in states with restrictive abortion bans; Black women suffered huge job losses in 2025; mothers cannot feed their children due to cuts to SNAP benefits; medical costs are rising and insurance benefits are decreasing; Trump administration proposals would push women out of the workforce and into the home. Meanwhile, around the world, the home remains the most unsafe place for a woman to be. And of course, nothing has been done to get justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
Furthermore, a lot of the issues in the race in Texas — the focus of attack ads and probing media questions — have also been about women, specifically about transgender women and girls in sports. Since trans athletes are banned from girls’ sports in Texas, there are fewer trans girls competing in the state than the number of Ken Paxton’s alleged affairs. However, both he and Talarico have repeated talking points that only heighten transphobia and do more to hurt girls and women in Texas than help them.
It’s no wonder that Angela Paxton’s speech began with idealizing holding someone under the water. Living in a red state myself, some days I want to too, and my ex isn’t even running for office.
But her speech’s true elephant in the room is that this is a party that came into power pledging to protect women, yet has done nothing but make the country a more dangerous place for them. That Angela Paxton has to make this speech at all is further evidence of a party that is willing to grind up women, just to keep its grip on power.
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