Secret recording captures Ken Paxton's whine on who's pulling campaign's strings

Texas Senate hopeful Ken Paxton has been caught on tape complaining about his campaign from a new angle, according to Politico.

He says it's being run by Washington, not by him.

Paxton is less than a month from the end of what he has pitched as a D.C.-outsider bid, but at a small fundraising lunch last month, he admitted he has little say in how it's run.

"I've never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it's all coming — you know — from D.C.," Paxton said, according to an audio recording Politico obtained from a person in the room who doesn't support the controversial candidate and verified with another attendee.

"I don't control message or what we're doing," he lamented.

The Sept. 24 lunch in Washington was hosted by Chris Brinson and Susan Hirschmann of the lobbying firm Williams & Jensen and drew about a dozen people, according to Politico.

Asked how national messaging "plays back home," Paxton said that in a federal race the messaging "comes from other people a lot of times, which you don't control."

He added: "I don't have ability to change anything. So I have to live with whatever I've got. So it is a challenge."

One attendee said Paxton never explicitly named Trump's team, but "everybody knew what he was talking about."

It isn't the first leaked audio from the lunch. The New York Times reported that Paxton told attendees the Trump-hosted midterm convention in Texas "dropped our numbers. Everybody's numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good."

The newest New York Times/Siena poll has Paxton trailing Democrat James Talarico by 6 points, and his campaign has struggled to raise money. The private remarks also sit awkwardly beside his primary campaign against Sen. John Cornyn, whom Paxton branded a "Washington insider" and a "RINO" while aligning himself with Trump.