Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has ousted incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the state’s highly-watched Republican Senate primary.
Paxton, 63, steamrolled Cornyn, 74 in the runoff race Tuesday night after securing a campaign-altering endorsement from President Donald Trump last week.
Paxton was thumping Cornyn by 28 percentage points with most precincts reporting on Tuesday evening. It amounts to a shattering end to Cornyn’s long political career after issuing sparing disagreements with Trump over the last decade.
‘I’ve always supported the Republican ticket and I intend to do so again in this general election,’ the Senator said after conceding the race.
Cornyn, who failed to secure the endorsement after working months for it, has represented Texas in the Senate since 2002.
The end of his 23-year run comes as Trump continues to put his indelible imprint upon the Republican Party, exacting retribution among those showing even the slightest sign of disloyalty.
The longtime Texas Senator criticized Trump’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, has slammed Trump’s behavior before the January 6 Capitol Riot and voted against Trump’s gambits to prevent the certification of Joe Biden‘s victory.
Paxton’s victory means he will compete in a heated general election against 37-year-old Democratic candidate James Talarico.
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Cornyn’s late-stage effort to appease the President also proved unsuccessful.
The Senator offered a bill to rename a highway after Trump and even flipped his long-held position on the filibuster after increasing pressure from the White House.
Trump did not formally endorse Paxton until a week ago. His former campaign manager Chris Lacivita worked for Cornyn while the head of the President’s political operation, James Blair, backed Paxton, creating a rare divide among Trump’s tight-knit team.
Cornyn’s defeat is another scalp for the President’s team that has upended several of Trump’s GOP targets.
Congressman Thomas Massie and Senator Bill Cassidy – both Republicans who drew Trump’s ire – were defeated in their recent primary elections after the President endorsed their opponents.
Trump also saw that state-level lawmakers in Indiana were defeated after they defied the President and did not back his redistricting plan.
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Paxton win sends message to Thune: It’s Trump’s Senate now
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Tuesday evening triumph against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the GOP primary marked the toppling of one of the senior-most members of the Republican conference and seemed to signal that MAGA voters are eager for a change in the workings of the upper chamber.
Paxton triumphed in the runoff on Tuesday evening, earning 62.5% of the vote to Cornyn’s 37.5%, according to the Associated Press. Though Cornyn emerged ahead in the original round of the election, Paxton surged ahead after the elimination of Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, and Trump’s last-minute endorsement catapulted him into a commanding lead.
The successful primary challenge marks one of Trump’s most dramatic efforts to reshape the Senate amid his frustrations with the upper chamber and its inability to advance his legislative priorities. The dramatic result, moreover, seems to signal that Trump’s concerns reflect those of Republican voters and hint at a detached attitude pervading the Senate Republican Conference.
To be sure, Paxton’s winning the Republican nomination doesn’t guarantee his entry into the Senate, as Democratic candidate James Talarico is expected to be a formidable opponent. But Cornyn’s departure from the chamber is now definite.
Cornyn, a long-serving lawmaker widely viewed as a member of the old guard of the GOP, nearly earned the post of Senate Majority Leader against John Thune during the leadership contest to replace Mitch McConnell. Despite facing off with Thune, Cornyn became one of the leader’s top lieutenants.
That association, however, appeared to hinder Cornyn more than help him, given Trump’s vocal frustration with Thune’s leadership and the Senate’s inability to advance marquis legislation or alter its own rules to that end.
While Trump’s own frustrations with Thune reflected on Cornyn through his endorsement of Paxton, the president’s decision outright seemed to be the result of political machinations from Paxton. After the first round, Trump announced he would endorse a candidate in the Texas runoff and ask the non-recipient to drop out of the race.
Political analysts widely interpreted that announcement to signal a Cornyn endorsement, though Paxton upended the situation by offering to drop out if Cornyn could secure passage of the SAVE America Act, a marquis voter ID bill that had languished in the Senate for months.
Trump himself had endorsed the bill and echoed calls for the chamber to reform its filibuster rules to be able to pass the bill without Democratic support. Thune refused and Cornyn was unable to secure passage of the bill, despite claiming to support it. When issuing his endorsement, Trump explicitly cited the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE America Act in explaining his decision to support Paxton and call for new blood.
Cornyn’s ouster is a second blow to Thune, who lost one of his other top supporters, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., in an earlier primary. Cassidy placed third against the Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., and state Treasurer John Fleming, resulting in his elimination from the runoff earlier this month.
Though senior senators have complained of Trump’s interventions, they have been able to do little to push back on the president, except by voting against him in a handful of symbolic tallies. Cassidy, for example, voted with Democrats on a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump’s ability to continue the Iran war. Thune, meanwhile, postponed a vote on a reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement after Cassidy’s defeat.
Such protests, however, are unlikely to dissuade Trump from publicly pressuring the Senate to pass his policies. If anything, Trump’s successes in removing some of Thune’s top allies may encourage him to ramp up the pressure.
Cornyn and Cassidy’s ousters coincide with the planned retirements of Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who collectively include some of the longer-serving and relatively moderate members of the conference.
Cornyn’s ouster will contribute significantly to the transformation of the Senate toward a more Trump-aligned deliberative body — provided the Republicans remain in the majority — come the turnover in January.
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*** Election Night Livewire *** Paxton Vs. Cornyn Finale Headlines Texas Runoffs
Texans cast ballots Tuesday in primary runoff elections that could steer the direction of politics in Texas – and Washington – for a generation.
The marquee race is incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) versus Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) –sporting a fresh endorsement from President Donald Trump – for the chance to take on radical Democrat nominee James Talarico in November.
Cornyn outspent Paxton in the March 3 primary with such unprecedented cash that the battle holds the ignominious record for the most expensive primary in the history of the nation. Cornyn and his allies spent over $100 million on his behalf, with Paxton and his allies spending somewhere between $4 and 6 million.
Yet Cornyn, a sitting U.S. Senator, fell eight points shy of hitting 50 percent, an embarrassment for a four-term Senator who once served as the second-ranking Senate Republican behind only his mentor, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and who finished second in December 2024 in his bid to replace McConnell.
He only received about a point and a half more of the primary votes than Paxton, with Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) receiving about 13 percent.
Trump did not endorse in the primary. Yet within about a day of votes being counted, the president posted on Truth Social that he would make an endorsement in the runoff and ask the candidate not receiving his endorsement to drop out, avoiding an expensive primary.
The conventional wisdom in Washington was Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) had won out, convincing Trump that Cornyn’s small plurality in the primary was reason to back the establishment-backed Cornyn.
Political lackeys for Thune and Cornyn openly gloated.
But just a day later, Paxton pulled a rabbit out of his hat. In a brilliant political masterstroke that could change the trajectory of the Republican Party, the AG pledged to consider dropping out of the race if Cornyn could shepherd the SAVE America Act through the Senate to passage.
That legislation, a favorite of Trump and overwhelmingly favored by not only Republicans but Independents and Democrat voters, had stalled in the Republican-led Senate, with establishment Senators like Cornyn giving lip service to the bill yet doing little to force the bill through.
The MAGA grassroots in Texas and beyond exploded. Trump’s promised endorsement did not come.
Until 75 days later.
With polling showing Paxton building a growing lead over the hapless Cornyn, Trump endorsed Paxton on May 19. The endorsement sent shockwaves throughout Washington. The president had revealed just hours earlier, to an inquiry from Breitbart News Washington Correspondent Nick Gilbertson, he would be endorsing in the race.
The establishment assumed, or hoped, their Texas lifeline had arrived.
It was not to be.
Republican Senators fumed to the Capitol press corps as they assembled at a weekly conference lunch. Shortly after, they ended progress on Trump’s border funding package, choosing to go on early vacation rather than meet Trump’s June 1 deadline.
Just hours later, responding to a question from Breitbart’s Gilbertson on if Trump’s endorsement was a message not only to Republican Senators but MAGA-aligned potential candidates considering primary challenges in 2028, Vice President JD Vance made clear that Trump’s endorsement was a message to Republicans who talked a big game but weren’t with the president when he most needs them.
“I’ve known John Cornyn for a long time, but unfortunately, you know, when it really counted, Ken Paxton was there for the country, was there for the president, and that’s why he ultimately earned the president’s endorsement,” Vance said, adding:
I think one of the things we’ve seen in the Republican Party, while I can’t say that all of our representatives are perfect or all of our senators are perfect, we have seen a much better crop of talent come into Washington since Donald Trump has been the leader of the party, and the leader of the movement. I do think we’re going to continue to see that happen, but I think the message that people should take from this is, fundamentally, you have got to serve the people who sent you. If you don’t do that, you’re going to find yourself out of step with voters, or out of step with the President of the United States, and that’s not a good place to be politically.
While petulant Republican Senators might block Trump’s agenda the rest of the year, a Paxton victory could firmly set the party on a new path in the Senate, which has been slower to change personnel and ideology in the age of Trump than the House.
Some Senators could fall in line rather than risking a Trump-backed challenger. Others might choose to forego reelection bids.
Regardless, Trump’s Paxton endorsement, with all the inevitable fallout, represents a flexing of his presidential muscle not yet seen in Trump’s second term.
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