Paxton's Wealth and Travel Draw Scrutiny in the Senate Race: Up to $23 Million, 15 Properties and Nearly 1,000 Security Trips

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, has built a personal fortune of up to $23 million since his first election to public office in 2002, according to The New York Times, in reporting summarized in a Jouster compilation read in full this cycle. His assets include multiple mutual funds, a cellphone tower and 15 properties across six states, and he has rarely explained publicly how he amassed that wealth on a government salary, the Times reported.

Public records reviewed by the Times show Paxton, his blind trust and a family trust own properties worth roughly $9 million, among them four condos at a Utah resort, three Florida homes, an Oklahoma cabin and land in Hawaii, with ten of the 15 bought in the last six years, the compilation said. His attorney general salary is $153,000. The Times also reported that a cell tower on a Frisco hospital campus, linked to a company Paxton co-founded while he sat on the hospital's board, has paid him six figures roughly every 18 months since 2006. Forbes separately estimated his net worth at about $13 million, and nonprofit newsrooms found that his federal disclosure omitted seven properties and three Utah mortgages, according to the compilation, which noted that Paxton's campaign has dismissed much of the reporting as political attacks.

A ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis found Paxton has taken nearly 1,000 trips with a state-funded security detail since 2015, costing $3.3 million, and only 138 of them, about one in six, could be tied to state business, the compilation said. The trips included 53 to Florida and 24 to Utah, where he and his family trust own property. An Associated Press review found more than 275 out-of-state trips and hundreds of blank workdays on his official calendars, and Paxton's office has not offered specifics on the trips' purposes, according to the compilation.