Paxtonfreude is a bipartisan business in Texas these days. “This is one of the biggest dirtbags that has ever run for office,” the lawmaker who sent the picture tells me. With a measure of satisfaction, he says that his party’s pollsters report that “there’s no amount of money in the world that can save him.” The lawmaker supported his party’s failed effort to impeach Paxton in 2023. He tells me he’s in a large group chat with other veterans of that fight, many of whom paid a heavy price for crossing Paxton. The chat is active. Every bad poll, every bad pic, every embarrassing leak. “Forty times a day,” he says.

Former House Speaker Dade Phelan, a longtime Paxton foe, tells me Republicans across the state are telling him they’ll skip the ballot line for Senate. “That never happened in 2018,” he said, when Beto O’Rourke lost by only 2.8 points to Ted Cruz. “I don’t even know if I want him to win,” says a longtime Republican consultant about Paxton. While he can’t support Talarico, he says, “there might be a certain sadistic pleasure for me in, like, us getting our just deserts.” Trump seems to understand the problem. Paxton “may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen,” he says. But he is, for better or worse, Trump’s man.