A little more than a week after losing 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. Her lawyer said the terms of the divorce would remain confidential.
Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, filed last July to end her 38-year marriage “for biblical reasons,” citing “recent discoveries.” While the divorce was pending, Ken Paxton was seen traveling through Europe with his girlfriend, Christian social media influencer Tracy Duhon.
The attorney general’s history of infidelity and other personal and professional baggage have been a focus of the U.S. Senate race, particularly after the divorce announcement. His opponent, James Talarico, argued that he was untrustworthy and had betrayed the conservative Christian values on which he had built his reputation over more than two decades in public life.
As the attacks reached a fever pitch, Angela Paxton cut to an ad urging voters to join her in supporting the entire GOP ticket, saying, “It’s not so much about individual players on the team. It’s about getting the whole team across the finish line.” She opened the ad by saying she would “address the elephant in the room” but did not mention her ex-husband.
Her support wasn’t enough to get her now ex-husband, or the rest of the ticket, across the finish line, as Democrats swept every state seat and took the Texas House. Sen. Paxton, who was elected in 2018 to the same seat as her husband in North Texas, is among 19 Republicans who control a majority of the 31 seats in the Texas Senate, one of the GOP’s last bastions in a state government now dominated by Democrats.
She is re-elected in 2028 in the Talarico constituency with around 4 percentage points.
The 2026 campaign was not the first time Senator Paxton had to deal with the consequences of her husband’s infidelities. When he was impeached by the Texas House in 2023, she had to sit in the Senate chamber for a two-week trial focused in part on an alleged extramarital affair the attorney general had with a former Senate aide.
According to investigators, the affair briefly ended in 2019 after Angela Paxton became aware of it, then resumed in 2020. The woman he allegedly had an affair with was called to testify before the Senate and showed up in the chamber, but left without speaking.
In her July 2025 divorce filing, filed 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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