Two Senate races, in Texas and Maine, have become tests of party loyalty for Republican and Democratic voters alike — similar, but not identical, problems for their respective party bosses.
With control of the upper chamber hanging in the balance, two candidates who have rejected their party’s national brands are now in the driver’s seat.
Ken Paxton’s victory in the Texas primary runoff over Sen. John Cornyn represented a nightmare scenario for Republicans both in Texas and in Washington, D.C., where groups linked with Senate GOP leadership had already spent tens of millions of dollars defending Cornyn and trashing Paxton’s reputation before President Donald Trump decided to endorse Paxton as revenge for Cornyn not being loyal enough.
There’s been a mending of ties (to some extent) since Cornyn’s defeat, but the damage is already done: a slew of negative campaigning, advertising and politicking has left Paxton hopelessly underwater with independent voters. Just one in 10 has a favorable view of the Texas attorney general, according to one poll from the Texas Politics Project.
Then there’s Maine. Oysterman Graham Platner is proving an easier pill to swallow for many national Democrats, eager to shed their images of stuffy pearl-clutchers. But his apologies and explanations for why he received a tattoo resembling a Nazi “Totenkopf” symbol years ago, before later covering it up, is still leaving some members of his party unsatisfied as they remain on high alert for what they see as the creeping corrosive influence of anti-Semtism on both the left and the MAGA right.
open image in galleryIf there’s one big similarity between the two candidates, it’s this: Both have now successfully forced their respective party establishments, weakened as they are, to bend the knee. Whether that will end up being a good idea or not for those party leaders remains to be seen.
Paxton’s race in Texas represents possibly the clearest example of voters being forced to hold their noses across the nation this cycle. The scandal-plagued attorney general is unrepentant after facing impeachment from Republicans in his own state legislature over claims he misused his office to help out a donor, and just as recently as this past weekend was seen in a new video posted by anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project that raised even further questions about his ongoing messy divorce from a state senator.
Still popular with many Trump voters, Paxton’s unfavorables among everyone else in the state are at catastrophic lows. What’s more, there’s a prominent wing of Republicans in the state government, led by the state House speaker who oversaw Paxton’s impeachment, who publicly and loudly say they will not vote for the attorney general under any circumstances. Some are even publicly eyeing his challenger, Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
“There’s a faction of Republican voters that will not vote for Ken Paxton under any circumstances,” Dade Phelan, the former Texas House speaker, told Newsweek. A Republican strategist from the state elaborated on the problem Paxton represents for their party to the outlet as well.
open image in gallery“I think the chances of the Democrats winning in Texas are better now than they’ve been in 25 years,” Mike Madrid told Newsweek.
Even John Cornyn, a Republican loyalist through-and-through, has said that he won’t raise money or campaign for Paxton in the fall, essentially telling his onetime opponent “good luck” as the latter seeks to heal Republican party divisions. Those divisions are real, and concerns about Paxton’s character are making it impossible for some Bush- and Reagan-era conservatives to get on board.
“My formative political years were around Bill Clinton’s scandals and a Republican Party that was very clear that character counts,” the former mayor of Southlake, Texas, John Huffman, told the Fort Worth Star-Tribune.
“Now we nominate Ken Paxton, who doesn’t even pretend anymore.”
The issue of candidate quality is no stranger to Republicans, who’ve been dealing with it as a serious problem affecting their electoral prospects since practically the day Trump walked onto the stage. In successive election cycles Trump-endorsed candidates like Herschel Walker, Kari Lake and Mark Robinson have cost the GOP key races after their campaigns melted under the spotlight’s glare.
open image in galleryBut Democrats have absolutely no reason to be patting themselves on the back or feeling confident after a new slate of polls made it clear this week that vulnerable Republican Sen. Susan Collins is still likely the favorite, for now, in the Maine Senate race — a must-win state for Democrats if they want the majority back this cycle.
Platner’s public flagellation over his “Nazi tattoo” scandal has driven his own favorability levels down as well, though not to the depths reached by Paxton. Half self-inflicted, half angry backlash from the party’s establishment wing in the days leading up to the primary and shortly following, the furor over Platner has cast doubt on the strength of his candidacy after Platner spent months showing his strength at packed town hall events around Maine.
Picking up the support of the far left/socialist-leaning Bernie Sanders wing of the party due to his position on Israel and Gaza, Platner’s own apologies have eased his acceptance into the field of Democratic 2026 candidates. But there’s definitely still lingering resistance: Platner’s team revealed this week that Gov. Janet Mills, his primary opponent, hadn’t been in touch to discuss the general election after she half-heartedly stuck a toe back into the race with only days to go.
On social media, Democratic strategists publicly fret over both Platner’s tattoo and his history of off-color, sometimes sexist posts on Reddit that they fear will be weaponized by Republicans — or, worse, are signs of more shoes yet to drop. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is closely aligned with Sanders, declined to endorse Platner before the primary and called allegations of his treatment of women “hard to stomach” in an interview.
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open image in galleryThere are two other members of Congress, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who’ve publicly called on their party to drop its support of Platner.
Moskowitz, who is Jewish, linked Platner’s rise with a growing fear felt by Jewish Americans within left-leaning spaces, as many perceived hostility in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack and the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
“Do you think that somebody who has a Nazi tattoo on their chest should serve in the United States Senate?” he asked a witness at a congressional hearing in May.
Polls indicated that both Platner and Paxton’s races are within the margin of error. If Democrats do take control of the Senate this fall, it could be a sign of how party loyalty can cut both ways, sometimes simultaneously.
But the left could also wake up on Nov. 4 wondering how they ignored the same dynamic that helped Democrats win seats in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere as it turned on them.