Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is requesting records of his 2026 opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to determine whether he used taxpayer funds to pay for trips to meet his alleged mistress.
Cornyn’s campaign filed an open records request with Paxton’s office under the Texas Public Information Act for such documents, escalating the feud between the two amid the Texas Senate race. Politico and the Daily Mail reported on the news.
“These records are not only subject to public information law, but relevant to public interest as made clear in a September 12, 2025, Daily Mail article showing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been traveling ‘across the country and even overseas’ to meet a woman named Tracy Duhon with whom he was having an affair,” a copy of the request obtained by the Washington Examiner states.
Paxton has allegedly been seeing Duhon, a married Christian influencer and mother of seven children, since March 2024.
“If Paxton has used official resources to pay for any of these trips, or if the getaways conflicted with responsibilities to the State of Texas, Texans deserve to know,” the filing reads.
“Crooked Ken Paxton used his office and taxpayer resources to conduct and conceal an affair once before,” Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak said. “Taxpayers deserve to know if he is doing it again. It’s a good bet he is.”
The senator’s reelection campaign is asking for Paxton’s calendar records and his correspondence with Duhon. The request referenced reported instances in which Paxton used aliases, including “Dave P.” The campaign wondered whether Duhon was also given an alias in Paxton’s records.
With Cornyn’s move, Paxton’s alleged affair is in the public spotlight once again. His former wife, Angela, filed for divorce in July. They stopped living together in June 2024, not long after Paxton is said to have started seeing Duhon.
Paxton faced adultery accusations involving another woman during his 2023 impeachment trial in the Texas Senate. He was acquitted of all 16 impeachment articles alleging corruption and abuse of office. Angela, who is a state senator, did not vote on the outcome of her husband’s case and provided moral support for him despite the allegations.
Meanwhile, Paxton is running to replace Cornyn in the Senate after being the state attorney general for the past decade. First elected to the upper chamber in 2002, Cornyn is looking to hold on to his seat.
Paxton and Cornyn tout their support of President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies on their respective campaign websites. Trump has not offered an endorsement to either, saying he remains undecided for the time being.
“Well, I’ll make up my mind,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last month. “I like them both. The worst situation I have is when I have two people that I get along with, well, I hate it, and they all want the endorsement. … I’d rather not comment on it right now. I like both guys. They’re both friends of mine, and they’re both good and very different.”
Recent polling by Texas Public Opinion Research shows the race between the two remains tight, with Paxton’s 26% support among Republican primary voters compared to Cornyn’s 32% in a head-to-head matchup. By contrast, a separate poll from Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center showed Paxton in the lead with 44% of the vote to Cornyn’s 39%.
