It’s easy to see why Ken Paxton thought he could waltz right into the role of senator from Texas. Sure, the state’s Republican nominee and current attorney general is widely seen as one of the most corrupt men in politics, a man with so many scandals that even his fellow Republicans impeached him. (Sadly, the Texas Senate refused to convict him.) Still, Donald Trump won over 56% of the vote in Texas in 2024, despite the Jan. 6th riot and his felony convictions for fraud in New York, so it seemed voters don’t care about corruption. Paxton has been so sure it would be simple to beat his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, that he even blew off campaigning over much of the summer in favor of a luxury European vacation with his alleged mistress, a conservative Christian influencer named Tracy Duhon.
Now Paxton is starting to worry. He even brought Trump to Texas on Aug. 27 to lead a fundraiser for his campaign. Talarico is ahead in the polls, which hasn’t been true for a Democrat in a statewide race for decades. The Cook Political Report, which tends to be reluctant to buck historical trends, nonetheless changed the election rating from “leans Republican” to “toss-up” in late August. Perhaps even more shocking is that Talarico is pulling this off by making issues of character and corruption central to the race, positioning himself as a genuinely pious Christian, in contrast with Paxton’s seemingly endless hypocrisy and debauched behavior.
Talarico isn’t the only Democrat pulling ahead in a state Trump won in 2024 by running on a clean government message. In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff has a comfortable lead in polls over his challenger, Republican Rep. Mike Collins. The senator has been grabbing national headlines for months by targeting Trump in his speeches, leading to chatter about a possible 2028 presidential run. What’s getting attention, however, is not bland, consultant-approved talk about the price of groceries. Ossoff has aggressively targeted Trump on the one issue pundits had long assumed voters no longer care about: corruption. He calls the president a “crook,” describes his cronies as the “Mar-a-Lago mafia” and bashes the White House as “the most corrupt administration of all time.”
These attacks are landing. Voters aren’t shrugging and making excuses like “all politicians are corrupt,” at least not to the degree that they seemed to in past years, which contribute to Trump earning the nickname “Teflon Don.” In a poll released earlier this summer, the Brennan Center found voters are increasingly irate over corruption in government. Brennan’s head, Michael Waldman, called it “the sleeper issue of 2026,” and it “may be bigger than I realized.”
What changed? NPR’s Mara Liasson argued in July that Trump’s corruption has grown so catastrophic in its size — he’s made billions in shady ways in the past year and a half, on top of being gifted a luxury private jet from the Qatari royal family — that it’s no longer so easy to rationalize with “everyone does it.” The economic stress caused by inflation isn’t helping matters, either. Voters are struggling to buy gas and groceries, so watching Trump handsomely line his pockets with money he’d never have but for the office is even more painful to watch. Especially since his go-to move when asked about consumer prices is to whine that “affordability” is a made-up issue.
Ossoff and Talarico have also done much to conquer one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to highlighting corruption: complexity.
Ossoff and Talarico have also done much to conquer one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to highlighting corruption: complexity. In the past, news moved much more slowly and so it was easier for voters to learn and absorb the intricate details of scandals like Watergate or the Iran-Contra affair. Nowadays, it’s hard to unpack these narratives, when there are a thousand other issues vying for people’s attention. Paxton’s scandals, for instance, involved elaborate financial transactions and real estate details, which would be hard for most people to follow if they were paying attention, but is all but impossible in our environment.
Talarico has wisely decided instead to focus on a single, easily digested story that reveals how immoral and greedy Paxton is: the alleged theft of a $1,000 pen. In 2012, a lawyer named Joe Joplin accidentally left a pen — a gift from his wife — at a security checkpoint in a Collin County courthouse. Surveillance footage from that day shows Paxton spotting the pen and pocketing it swiftly. After he was caught, Paxton did return the pen, but his campaign continues to insist it was a mistake, as if anyone could innocently grab a pen that is not theirs from a metal detector bin.
Talarico’s campaign cut an ad showing Paxton taking the pen and ending with Joplin, holding his recovered pen, endorsing Talarico. While they mention — almost in passing — that it’s the “same courthouse where Paxton would later be indicted for investment fraud,” the focus is on the pen. The incident is relatively small when compared to the numerous other crimes Paxton has been accused of over the years, but it has the advantage of being easy to remember and to recount. The pen is a classic synecdoche, standing in for Paxton’s entire lifetime of sleazy behavior.
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Ossoff also understands how to sidestep the wearisome details of Trump’s corruption and instead focus on arresting symbols, which are heavily photographed. That’s why he was able to create a week-long news cycle with a speech where he said Trump likes to “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” This is a reference to Trump’s 35-year-old lithe aide, Natalie Harp, whose worship of the president is so over-the-top that it brings to mind the psychology of a follower in a doomsday cult. People may struggle to follow Trump’s unsavory crypto dealings, but they can wrap their minds around an ill-gotten private jet staffed with a sexy blonde paid $150,000 a year to say things like, “You are all that matters to me” and “I never want to bring you anything but joy.”
Ossoff has also been fortunate. His opponent is an almost comical embodiment of the moral degradation that the GOP has undergone in the Trump era. Collins praised efforts by Trump to create a slush fund to pay off people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He’s under investigation by the House Ethics Committee after the Office of Congressional Conduct released a report accusing the congressman of misusing government funds, including allegations that his chief of staff put his girlfriend on the payroll, even though she wasn’t actually doing the job.
Collins also has a growing pile of links to reported white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Last week, a former Collins staffer was outed for posting pictures of swastikas and a photo of himself in a KKK outfit. The congressman’s office intervened with federal law enforcement in an effort to free an infamous Holocaust denier from jail. His son-in-law is a far-right influencer who has admired Hitler and defended white nationalism. His daughter was credited for creating an infographic her husband claimed was “a consolidated version of all the proof jews control our government through finance.” Collins himself once posted a video praising white college students who surrounded a Black woman on campus, making monkey noises at her.
Ossoff described this pattern as showcasing “extensive ties between [Collins] and white nationalism . . . and neo-Nazi ideology.” Racism is a different issue than corruption, but the two are intertwined, reflecting an attitude of entitlement and contempt for the everyday voters politicians are supposed to be serving.
Ossoff and Talarico have both been smart about not just highlighting corruption, but also why it matters for voters. It’s indicative of leaders whose interests are self-serving. The result is that everyday Americans lose out, both financially and when it comes to getting fair treatment from their government. More voters are putting the pieces together, and Democrats who help them get there, like Ossoff and Talarico, are being rewarded in the polls.
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