Senate nominee Ken Paxton (R-TX) has not publicly apologized to a conservative supporter who says she was the “only Black woman” at a rally his campaign removed her from.
In a video posted Tuesday, Thelma Louise, a Black conservative TikTok creator, said she was told she had been mistaken for a paid agitator for Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico when she was removed from Paxton’s San Antonio rally Sunday.
Louise demanded a public apology in the video, but Paxton’s campaign has not publicly explained her removal, the International Business Times reported.
In a video she recorded as she was walked out Sunday, Louise asked, “And there’s no one that I can talk to about this?” The person escorting her answered, “I’m sorry. No, ma’am.”
Moments later, Louise said, “Someone just came up to me and said that Ken Paxton’s campaign manager wanted me to leave. … I was just asked to leave this event and I did nothing wrong.”
“I drove two hours to get here and I have done nothing but support everyone on the Republican side,” she said. “This is how I get treated?”
Nothing in her footage shows her acting up before staff led her out, IBTimes noted.
Louise, who has more than 200,000 TikTok followers, said in a follow-up video that she left the Democratic Party two years ago and volunteered for President Donald Trump’s campaign.
“To be walked out of a room full of people and isolated as if I had done something wrong, I cannot believe it,” she said. “This was beyond disrespectful.”
In a later video, Louise held up press credentials from earlier events where she had seen Paxton, including the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, and wondered whether she had been mistaken for someone else. She said the episode had made her cry.
“I don’t blame any of this on the Republican Party because they have loved me and they have welcomed me with open arms,” Louise said. “But Ken Paxton’s campaign manager, that person is 100% responsible for the disrespect that I received this evening.”
In her newest video, Louise said, “I was told today that I was mistaken for a paid Talarico agitator. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Was I the only Black woman in the building? Absolutely, I was,” she said. “Have I also been a Ken Paxton supporter? Absolutely.”
“And if that burns your biscuit so bad that you need to get online and roast me and call me all these different names and degrade me, go ahead and do you,” Louise told critics in the same video. “All you’re doing is showing your heart and who you really are.”
Louise said she will speak one-on-one with Paxton soon and wants to hear from him and his campaign manager. She said she is “in no way leaving” the Republican Party and plans on “completely voting red.”
“And despite the fact that they may think that I was a Talarico paid agitator, I still deserve a public apology, especially after all of the support that I’ve given that campaign,” she said.
The removal came a day after Mother Jones national correspondent Tim Murphy was asked to leave the launch of Paxton’s bus tour in Rockwall. Murphy said he had a ticket but hadn’t applied for press credentials. The campaign said he refused to register when asked, which he disputed.
Paxton, the state’s attorney general, is on a “Come and Take It” tour as he faces Talarico in one of the country’s most competitive Senate races.
Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross wrote on X in response to a post about the incident, “‘Being MAGA while Black’ chapter 293.”
Political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote, according to Newsweek, “She has no idea? It seems pretty black and white.”