Target Audience of One: Super PAC Supporting Paxton in Texas Senate Race Runs TV Ad in Mar-a-Lago Area

Lone Star Liberty PAC

A Super PAC supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his runoff battle against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is running a television ad that’s unlikely to reach any Republican primary voters who could cast a ballot for him — but the ad seems to have been made for just one specific potential audience member.

Cornyn is in the fight of his political life in the May 23 runoff election against Paxton, and it’s guaranteed to be viciously brutal. The incumbent is widely viewed as a stronger candidate in the general election due to Paxton’s series of scandals, lawsuits, and controversies, but the attorney general has gotten support from the MAGA wing of the GOP for his combative, far-right stances.

Trump declined to endorse for the primary but posted on Truth Social the next day that he would endorse “soon,” urging whoever didn’t get his endorsement to drop out.

Multiple media outlets reported the president was expected to endorse Cornyn, but Paxton tweeted a Hail Mary that seems to have been effective in at least delaying an endorsement for his rival, pledging he would drop out if Senate leadership lifts the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, a bill Trump vehemently supports. Cornyn had already expressed his support for the SAVE Act but soon publicly declared his willingness to ditch the filibuster to get it passed, a position he had not taken before.

On the Democratic side, State Rep. James Talarico (D) surpassed Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) by a comfortable margin; she conceded the race the next morning and tweeted a call for her supporters to “remain united” and “rally around our nominees.”

Even before the runoff, this year’s Texas Senate battle was the most expensive Senate primary on record, burning through over $128 million, with a whopping $98.9 million spent just by the Republican campaigns and PACs.

Now this weekend, the Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Paxton, is paying to run an ad in the West Palm Beach, Florida designated market area — which includes Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.

The one-minute ad attempts to portray Cornyn as having “betrayed” the president. The senator’s campaign messaging frequently touted how he voted with the president “over 99 percent of the time,” but he has refrained from attacking some of Trump’s critics and political opponents with the same level of vitriol, and has occasionally voiced critiques of some of Trump’s policies.

This “audience of one” strategy has been deployed before by groups like the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, to run ads in the Manhattan, D.C., or Palm Beach television markets targeting the president’s expected location.

Trump will in fact be at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, according to the White House’s public schedule.

We will leave it to the reader to decide if there is any irony in a pro-Paxton PAC declaring anyone else to be “the most corrupt attorney general,” as shown in the below screenshot from the ad.

Screenshot via YouTube

Watch the video above via YouTube.

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