Paxton responds to Cornyn calling him ‘lazy’: ‘They don’t know my schedule’

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Sunday pushed back on Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) calling him a “lazy” campaigner.

“John Cornyn doesn’t know my schedule. He doesn’t know how many hours I’m putting in every day, 18 hours a day,” Paxton told host Jacqui Heinrich on Fox News’s “ The Sunday Briefing .”

Paxton, who beat Cornyn by more than 27 points in May’s Texas Senate GOP runoff, added he has been “driving all over the state,” raising money and trying his “best to connect to as many voters as possible.”

The Republican nominee continued, “They don’t know my schedule. It’s completely fabricated.”

Earlier this month, Cornyn told The Texas Tribune that while he supports the party’s ticket in Texas, his former primary opponent is at risk of losing to Democratic nominee James Talarico in November.

“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn said. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it — we are where we are.”

But Paxton said Sunday he is averaging roughly 18 hours of campaigning per day in the general election sprint and stopped in “four or five different cities” on Saturday alone.

Polling indicates a tight race between Paxton and Talarico, a member of the Texas House since 2018.

A recent survey from Texas Public Opinion Research found Talarico leading with 47 percent support to Paxton’s 40 percent, with 11 percent of respondents undecided. Talarico’s lead was outside the margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.

Decision Desk HQ also gave Talarico a 55 percent chance to win as of Thursday, as the 37-year-old attempts to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in the Lone Star State since former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.

One edge Talarico has over Paxton is his campaign war chest. As of the end of June, the Democrat’s campaign had more than $21.5 million on hand compared with less than $1.8 million for the Republican’s operation, according to the Federal Election Commission.

But Paxton set up a joint fundraising committee with the National Republican Senatorial Committee in June, after the group bashed him during the primary.

The state attorney general also said Sunday he has reached out to “many” Cornyn donors, an endeavor he started “immediately” after the runoff.

“We are attracting Cornyn donors and Cornyn supporters, because I think they realize … if we lose this race, we’re going to lose the U.S. Senate and we’re going to lose Texas,” he told Heinrich.

“So we have to win this race, and we are going to win.”