Rove says if Paxton doesn’t debate Talarico, ‘he loses’

Republican strategist Karl Rove said he believes Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) will lose his bid for Senate if he does not agree to a debate with his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico.

“If he doesn’t debate, I think he loses,” Rove said in a Wednesday appearance at The Economic Club of Chicago alongside Democratic strategist David Axelrod. “If he debates, the question is, is he going to be able to go on the offense?”

Axelrod weighed in on Rove’s assertion, saying, “There’s a reason he hasn’t debated in 16 years. He’s not adroit.”

“You don’t need to be adroit in this,” Rove, a former top White House aide to the George W. Bush administration, responded. “The question is, does he have the guts to do it?”

The Republican strategist continued, “Because he goes into the debate and says, ‘You can say all those negative things about me … but I was cleared by the state Senate but I understand why you want to talk about that cause you don’t talk about [other issues].'”

Rove’s comment on the “negative things” Talarico would say about Paxton in a hypothetical debate was a reference to the Texas attorney general’s 2023 impeachment . State representatives voted to indict Paxton on corruption charges, but he was later acquitted in the Texas Senate.

“I don’t know if he’s got the political moxie to say, ‘My future depends on me getting into a debate and coming out the winner,’” Rove concluded.

Talarico has repeatedly bashed Paxton for not appearing in debates with him — notably challenging his Republican opponent to a Fox News debate during an interview last week on CBS.

Despite President Trump carrying the Lone Star State in each of his presidential bids, Paxton trailed Talarico by 2 points in a September Fox News poll . The Democrat’s lead was within the survey’s 3-point margin of error.

The poll found an even wider gap in likely voters’ favorability ratings of the two candidates, with Talarico earning an 8-point net positive rating, while Paxton came in at 18 points underwater.

The president also called Paxton , whom he has endorsed, “a pain in the a—” during his stops this week in Texas and Oklahoma, acknowledging the Lone Star State’s attorney general is “a little controversial.” Though he added that the GOP Senate candidate “was at my side more than anybody” when he “was being hit by the radical left very hard.”

Trump’s visit to Texas came shortly after The New York Times obtained an audio clip in which Paxton said the president’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas “dropped our numbers.” A senior Paxton adviser called the report “manipulated nonsense.”

During the midterm convention, the president said he doesn’t “like the way Ken [Paxton] dresses,” “talks” or “looks” but called the Senate hopeful “the greatest” attorney general in the country.