I’m assuming that you have a loop to display the top (static) post and a second loop for the paginated posts:
[header]
[static latest post] loop 1
[paginated content] loop 2
[footer]
For loop 1 you may need to clearly identify the category in your custom loop.
$my_cat = get_query_var('cat');
$args = array(
'posts_per_page' => 1,
'cat' => $my_cat,
'orderby' => 'date',
'order' => 'DESC',
'post_not_in' => get_option( 'sticky_posts' )
);