In Texas, Republicans have grudgingly embraced state Attorney General Ken Paxton after they tried, and failed, to prop up incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with more than $100 million in campaign spending. Paxton has been dogged by corruption allegations and an affair that led to his 2023 impeachment in the Texas House.

The Paxton and Platner races are hardly the only ones hinging on voters’ willingness to overlook a candidate’s flaws. In the House, both parties are dealing with candidates accused of affairs, insider trading, and more.

But the test cases in Texas and Maine, two states that will decide who controls the Senate next year, have outsize implications for each party and are notable for how far leadership went to box out their respective candidates.

Senate Republicans spent months echoing Cornyn’s warnings that Paxton was unelectable and would saddle the party under the weight of his controversy.

The criticism of Platner was more muted among Democrats, but the fact that he is the presumptive nominee is a major setback for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who recruited Janet Mills (D-ME), a two-term incumbent governor, to challenge Collins, only for her campaign to flame out in April.

A majority-breaker for Democrats?

Hanging over each race is the balance of power in Washington, and though Democrats are favored to retake the House regardless of any one candidate’s weaknesses, they have more to lose if a nominee falters when it comes to the Senate map.

Democrats need Texas, but also Maine and two other GOP-held states if they hope to win a Senate majority. And they can’t lose a single blue seat to Republicans in the process.

In the case of Platner, Democrats are wringing their hands over a bombshell report that he sent women sexually explicit text messages early in his marriage. But controversy has followed Platner since he launched his Senate campaign and was previously forced to cover up a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol and apologize for online posts that downplayed rape and insulted black people.

The conversation over candidate quality, a catch-all term that sweeps together scandal and a politician’s overall strength as a messenger for the party, has consumed the GOP for the entire Trump era.

Establishment Republicans, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), faulted Trump-backed candidates when they lost winnable races in the 2022 elections and credited strong recruitment when they returned to power two years later.

The president’s 2024 coattails are one of the major reasons Republicans today hold unified control of Washington, and that was after the Capitol riot and his conviction in a Manhattan courtroom.

But there are plenty of Republicans who lack Trump’s political teflon, and his endorsement of candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Kari Lake in Arizona has created a lasting GOP debate over what makes someone viable with general election voters.

For Democrats, that debate restarted in earnest in 2024, once President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris lost as his hand-picked successor. And it has not let up since then.

More recently, Democrats found themselves engulfed in the political firestorm surrounding former Rep. Eric Swalwell, a front-running candidate for governor of California who suspended his campaign amid sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell denied the allegations but stepped down from Congress in April.

General election pivot

It is Trump, in part, who is reviving the question of candidate quality. Senate Republicans were livid over his late endorsement of Paxton and believe it could cost them a seat Republicans have held for decades.

But Trump’s support also came after it appeared likely Paxton would have won the primary anyway, and Platner is experiencing a similar phenomenon in Maine. Democratic voters appear willing to look past his rolling controversies, and he had a whopping 30-point lead at the time Mills dropped out of the race.

Paxton won his runoff against Cornyn last month, while Platner is expected to secure the Democratic nomination when Maine holds its Senate primary next Tuesday.

How forgiving voters are of flawed candidates depends on a complicated set of factors, from the severity of the indiscretion to the ideological makeup of the state to the strength of the challenger.

Platner’s appeal is the image he’s cultivated for himself as a rough-and-tumble Marine who started over as an oysterman when he returned from military service.

For Paxton, Republicans are hoping to cancel out questions over his moral fitness by tarring state Rep. James Talarico, his Democratic challenger, as unmanly and too woke for a red state like Texas.

Platner leads Collins by 8 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, and Paxton is as of now neck and neck with Talarico. But that’s before the deluge of campaign spending both parties will unleash in the fall, and much of it is expected to be negative.

Cornyn is sitting on the sidelines as Republicans defend his seat, quipping that he was forced out of the “prediction business” when he lost to Paxton. But he denounced the “unusual tolerance” both parties now have for scandal, and suggested it could cost Republicans with independents.

“I hope this is just a passing phase,” said Cornyn, who served for two cycles as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I think now it’s almost like ideological alignment is the most significant, and not policy or even candidate quality, but I think sometimes you have to relearn lessons the hard way.”

The libertarian wild card in Texas

There is a third candidate in the Texas Senate race: libertarian Ted Brown, who is courting the independents Cornyn says will be so important this November.

Brown, a retired insurance adjuster, has so far attracted few headlines, but the polling is tight enough in Texas that his presence on the ballot could be pivotal.

Brown received 2.4% of the vote when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) ran for reelection in 2024, and he’s hovering around 2% in the latest polling for this cycle. Paxton currently trails Talarico by 1.5 percentage points, on average.

“There are a lot of Republicans that didn’t vote for Paxton in the primary, and a lot of them are not coming around,” Brown told Houston Public Media on Tuesday.

Libertarian candidates generally eat away at the Republican vote and are regarded as spoilers, although Brown rejects that label. In New Hampshire, Republicans are dealing with the same debacle, prompting one of the GOP Senate candidates to attend a libertarian forum to vie for their support.

Cruz ignored Brown altogether when asked about the impact he could have on the Texas race.

“I think Ken Paxton is going to win,” Cruz said. “Texas is a red state, and James Talarico’s policy views are wildly out of step with the values of Texans.”

But Cornyn opined that Brown “can’t be good news for Paxton,” and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) linked Brown’s candidacy to Democratic attempts to “disrupt” the race.

“I think that any disruption in the political ecosystem right now is probably designed by Democrats to give their candidates an advantage,” Thune said.

The Brown campaign did not respond to a request for comment.