Nick Maddux
Role at the time: Senior adviser to Paxton's Senate campaign
Response to this claim
The Republican midterm convention in Dallas lowered Paxton's poll numbers and those of other Republicans.
“Every serious pollster will tell you that our numbers have improved since early September”
Texas Tribune report on the audio recording published by The New York Times on September 30, 2026, in which Paxton tells a small group of donors and lobbyists at a fundraiser that the Dallas midterm convention "dropped our numbers." It includes the response of Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux. The Tribune says it did not independently verify the Times' reporting.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The reference point is Paxton's recorded remark that the Dallas midterm convention "dropped our numbers." Maddux says "our numbers have improved since early September", the opposite of what the remark describes, so we labeled it Denied. The closest competing label is Challenged characterization; it loses because he asserts a contrary fact about the polling rather than only disputing how the remark was described.