Just over a week after he lost his bid for the U.S. Senate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s divorce from his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, is finalized, according to The New York Times. His lawyer said the terms of the divorce would remain private.
Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, filed to end her 38-year marriage “on biblical grounds” last July, citing “recent discoveries.” While the divorce was underway, Ken Paxton was seen traveling around Europe with his girlfriend, Christian social media influencer Tracy Duhon.
The attorney general’s history of infidelity and other personal and professional baggage was a focus of the U.S. Senate race, especially after the divorce was announced. His opponent, James Talarico, argued he was untrustworthy and had betrayed the conservative Christian values he built his reputation on over two decades in public life.
As the attacks hit a fever pitch, Angela Paxton cut an ad urging voters to join her in supporting the whole GOP ticket, saying, “it’s not as much about the individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She opened the ad by saying she would “talk about the elephant in the room” but did not mention her estranged husband.
Her support wasn’t enough to get her now-ex-husband, or the rest of the ticket, over the finish line, as Democrats swept every statewide seat and took the Texas House. Senator Paxton, who was elected in 2018 to the same North Texas seat her husband held, is among the 19 Republicans who control a majority of the Texas Senate’s 31 seats, one of the last GOP bulwarks in a state government now dominated by Democrats.
She is up for reelection in 2028 in a district Talarico carried by about 4 percentage points.
The 2026 campaign was not the first time Senator Paxton has had to deal with the fallout of her husband’s infidelities. When he was impeached by the Texas House in 2023, she was required to sit in the Senate chamber for a two-week trial that focused in part on an alleged extramarital affair the attorney general had with a former Senate aide.
According to investigators, the affair ended briefly in 2019 after Angela Paxton learned of it, then resumed in 2020. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was called to testify before the Senate and came to the chamber, but left without speaking.
In her July 2025 divorce petition, filed a few months after Ken Paxton launched his Senate campaign, Angela Paxton said the couple had stopped living together more than a year earlier.
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