ken paxton made an attack ad with a viewer warning. the target is a drag queen who isn't on the ballot.

via Ken Paxton's own post on X, USA Today, Out and WND.

"🚨VIEWER WARNING🚨"

That is how the attorney general of Texas opened a post on Tuesday afternoon, over a video, above the words "Meet Alyssa Edwards: James Talarico's favorite sick and twisted drag queen." By Wednesday it had about 2,400 likes. Ken Paxton is the Republican running for the US Senate. James Talarico is the Democrat. Alyssa Edwards is a drag queen from Mesquite, and the only thing she is running is her mouth, beautifully.

how one answer became two attack ads

We covered round one last week. At a campaign event, a man asked Talarico who his favorite drag queen in Texas was, and he said, according to USA Today, "probably Alyssa Edwards." On September 14 Paxton posted the clip and asked, "What normal person can name their favorite drag queen this quickly?" USA Today counted 1.1 million views on it by the 17th.

Edwards answered the next day, USA Today reported, by reposting him and claiming the title "Your favorite politician's favorite Drag Queen," signed off with Matthew 7:1: do not judge.

Paxton did not take the verse. The new video, as described by both Out and WND, cuts Talarico's answer against clips of Edwards performing, including some with children whose faces are blurred, and ends on a black and red all-caps card: "James Talarico: Too Weird, Too Radical for Texas."

what normal person, indeed

Consider the effort. Somebody on a Senate campaign sat in an edit bay, pulled drag footage, blurred the kids, picked a siren emoji and wrote "sick and twisted" about a woman who is not his opponent, over one answer his opponent gave at a campaign event. We are asking what normal person can produce a second drag queen video this quickly.

For the record, this is the same Texas where, per USA Today, a federal judge ruled for the second time in August that the state's law restricting drag performances is unconstitutional. The courts have been over it twice. The campaign ads are just getting started.

Update: Alyssa Edwards answered with an open letter. Read what she wrote to Paxton.