Wesley Hunt tests waters of a Senate bid, setting up possible heavyweight primary with Cornyn and Paxton

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WASHINGTON — Groups affiliated with Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, have poured more than $3 million into advertising across the state as the second-term congressman explores a potential dark-horse Senate bid.

Ads introducing Hunt to voters are running far beyond his political base in Houston, which runs from the wealthy parts of west Houston that serves as a base for the oil-and-gas industry, to western and northern suburbs like Tomball and Cypress. Voters in Dallas, San Antonio and Waco, among other places, are seeing television ads from Hunt’s campaign and PACs supporting him.

The already-crowded Senate primary in Texas would be an uphill climb. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton are both well-known figures among Republican primary voters across the state. Cornyn has appeared on statewide ballots dating back to his election to the Texas Supreme Court in 1990 and has the backing of Senate leadership and its deep-pocketed donor network. Paxton, who quickly emerged as a favorite on the right after his elevation to statewide office in 2014, has further burnished his reputation among hardline conservatives by surviving a series of political and legal scandals.

Hunt, by contrast, has been part of Texas’ 38-member congressional delegation for less than three years. The list of House members from Texas who have gone on to win a Senate race in the last century is as short as it is memorable: longtime Sens. Lloyd Bentsen and Phil Gramm, and President Lyndon B. Johnson. No U.S. House member from Texas has gone on to win any statewide elected office this century.

Political operatives and strategists have mixed opinions about the viability of a Hunt Senate campaign. His case is predicated on the notion that Cornyn, who has trailed in primary polls, cannot win a Republican primary, and that Paxton, dogged by scandals, could jeopardize Republicans’ chances in the general election. If Hunt runs, he would offer an alternative palatable to both the MAGA wing and Republican establishment — in his and his allies’ estimation.

“Wesley Hunt wins a primary and he wins a general,” said an unaligned Republican operative who has worked on Senate campaigns in Texas and believes Hunt has a pathway to winning. “And frankly, it doesn't break the back of the Republican fundraising apparatus to get there.”

But Hunt, who declined to comment for this story, lacks the institutional support Cornyn has consolidated in Texas and Washington and the statewide grassroots loyalty garnered by Paxton. If he runs, his biggest challenge would be generating enough name recognition outside Houston — in time for a primary where voting begins in about six months — to reasonably challenge two of the biggest names in Texas GOP politics.

Half a dozen operatives said Hunt’s best bet would be to siphon off enough votes to keep Paxton under 50% and finish second in the March primary, forcing a May runoff with the attorney general. Paxton has routinely led Cornyn by double-digit margins in public polls.

“Realistically speaking, unless [Hunt] can vault himself to the level of name recognition statewide that both General Paxton and Senator Cornyn have, then he's not going to win the primary,” said Shelby Williams, the former GOP chair in Collin County, the most populous Texas county won by Sen. Ted Cruz in 2024. “He's going to maybe force a runoff at best.”

Hunt will need to make a decision by Dec. 8, the filing deadline for next year’s primary ballot. The Senate contest is scheduled for March 3.

Operatives cautioned that the timeline to make a decision is approaching. The longer he waits, the more frustrated the GOP political apparatus becomes, one Republican strategist warned.

Unpacking Hunt’s spending

If he runs, Hunt would need to make up ground financially, having raised just over $400,000 in the latest fundraising quarter — spanning April through June — and reporting a $3 million war chest. By contrast, Cornyn and Paxton, who are reaping the fundraising advantage of their already declared candidacies, hauled in about $800,000 and $2.9 million, respectively, during the three-month span, which Cornyn ended with nearly double Hunt’s cash on hand.

Hunt’s most prolific donors, writing checks for tens of thousands of dollars, point to his dual appeal among traditional and Trump-aligned Republicans, which his supporters say could elevate him in a potential Senate bid.

Hailing largely from the oil and gas, private equity and legal sectors, Hunt’s donors include longtime backers of the Republican Party. Chemical business mogul Peter Huntsman and billionaire investor Christopher Sarofim have donated to Republican presidential candidates dating back to George W. Bush.

Huntsman appears to be less committed to the MAGA cause, having made large donations to several Democratic candidates last election cycle and none to any of President Donald Trump’s campaigns. But several of Hunt’s other funders, including oil titan Javaid Anwar and energy investor Robert Sweeney, have been prolific donors to Trump’s campaigns.

Across the state, Hunt’s team has used the money to start making ad buys, peppering the airwaves with videos introducing him to the electorate outside his Houston district.

Earlier this month, Hunt’s campaign made a six-figure ad buy on the conservative cable channel Newsmax in the Dallas, San Antonio and Houston areas. With clips of Hunt’s time in the military and ample footage of Trump, the ad appeared aimed at introducing unfamiliar voters to Hunt’s MAGA bona fides.

He has also made several media buys in Washington and Florida seemingly targeted at an audience of one — Trump — whose endorsement is seen as the holy grail for any candidate in the race. Hunt was also the only member of the U.S. House to fly from Washington to Texas with Trump during the president’s visit to Hill Country sites hit by the deadly July 4 floods.

Beyond amplifying his own brand, Hunt has also begun taking not-so-subtle jabs at one of his prospective opponents. Days after Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on "biblical grounds” — citing alleged adultery in her divorce filing — Hunt stood up an ad replete with images of his family and repeated overtures of “faith.”

Much of the pro-Hunt spending on the airwaves has been from Standing for Texas, an independent group. Hellfire PAC, a committee supportive of Hunt’s prospective Senate bid, has raised more than $1 million this year, but multiple GOP operatives said they thought he would need to raise more money to his main campaign account to compete with Cornyn and Paxton.

Advertisers charge lower rates to campaigns than they do to PACs or other outside groups in the run-up to elections, meaning campaign funds stretch further — especially in Texas, an expensive state for politicians by virtue of the number of media markets across the state.

“He's not going to have party committee support, so he'll have to do it all on his own,” a GOP strategist familiar with the race said. “I think that's a very big if, if he can.”

But the operative who thought Hunt could emerge from the primary said the financial picture could change if Cornyn is unable to lift his polling numbers and drops out of the race — though Cornyn has said he has no plans to do so.

“If this experiment doesn’t work for Cornyn … those donors will be looking for a way to stop Paxton,” the operative said.

Is there a path for Hunt?

Hunt met with members of Trump’s political team and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — Senate GOP leadership’s campaign arm — in the spring to discuss a potential bid. But the White House has thus far kept its powder dry, and the NRSC has vigorously lined up behind Cornyn — which operatives from the Washington-based group told Hunt when they met, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

Public polls of the primary have routinely shown Paxton leading. When Hunt is included, Paxton still leads but typically falls short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

Polling averages using surveys from May show Hunt in third, 17 points behind Cornyn and 24 points behind Paxton. But a more recent statewide poll, conducted by pollster G1 Research in late June and obtained by The Texas Tribune, found Hunt’s hypothetical candidacy drew 17% support to Cornyn’s 28% and Paxton’s 41%. It also found that Hunt would beat Cornyn in a head-to-head race but trail Paxton — unless he received a highly coveted endorsement from Trump, in which case he would leapfrog the attorney general.

The poll also underscored Hunt’s biggest weakness — 63% of primary voters were unfamiliar with or unsure of him.

Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist who ran Cornyn’s 2014 campaign, said any candidate running for U.S. Senate in Texas will face the formidable challenge of breaking through to voters over a vast and diverse state — especially in a compressed time frame.

“It's years and years and years of doing things, meeting people, getting media attention in the state, doing local TV interviews, local newspaper interviews, going to the county fair,” Steinhauser said.

One Republican operative speculated that Hunt would ultimately need $20 million to get his name identification high enough to be credible. But Steinhauser warned that ad spending alone would not be enough to comfortably position Hunt against two Texas Republican stalwarts.

That Hunt would enter the race as a relative unknown could be an opportunity to win favor among a primary electorate receptive to a third option, argued the unaligned operative who is bullish on Hunt’s chances.

“The real challenge for both Paxton and Cornyn in this situation is that they're already defined,” the operative said. “Wesley isn't, and he's already beating Cornyn head to head.”

Hunt’s window to enter the race is fast closing, with the December filing deadline and the time-consuming task of introducing him to the electorate. And he is not the only House member from Texas looking at the race.

Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, recently met with White House officials to discuss the Senate primary, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, which was first reported by Semafor.

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