WASHINGTON — Tuesday’s Texas Senate Republican primary will provide the first glimpse of where voters stand after nearly a year of bitter competition and over $95 million spent in a contest between towering figures in Texas — and national — politics.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt are competing to be the Republican nominee come November, with stakes that will be felt across Texas and in Washington, where the GOP political establishment has mounted a massive campaign to keep Cornyn among its ranks.
In a midterm year where Democrats are energized to vote, the GOP nominee will be responsible for being the party’s standard bearer, leading the top of the ticket, with the added task of carrying down-ballot Republicans from Brownsville to San Antonio to Houston. The Senate primary is the first major test for Republicans in Washington who have spent tens of millions on Cornyn’s reelection, convinced that a Paxton candidacy would endanger the party’s control of the Capitol. And the primary is the latest — and largest — battle between the various wings of the Republican Party as their adherents battle for ascendancy in a state the national party cannot afford to lose.
Unlike in past cycles, the general election won’t be a cakewalk for the primary winner. Democrats are fired up about the race, and have a heated primary of their own between state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett to be the party’s nominee for what operatives across the state consider Democrats’ best chance to win a statewide race since Beto O’Rourke’s close call in 2018. Already, Democrats are outvoting Republicans in early voting.
Cornyn, who has never lost a race in his over 35 years as an elected official, helped orchestrate the era of Republican dominance in Texas, navigating the transition from the Bush era to the Trump era as other old guard party members, in and out of the state, have been forced out. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, he is one of the longest-serving senators in Texas history, and has served in the upper echelon of Republican leadership in Washington.
But on Tuesday, Cornyn will face the most serious threat to his career thus far in the form of Paxton, a MAGA movement darling who has weathered a series of ethics scandals to emerge as one of the best-recognized leaders of the party’s hard right. A hardcore Trump ally who led the legal effort to overturn the 2020 election, Paxton has made his bones suing Democratic presidents and making the attorney general’s office a headquarters of the conservative legal movement, putting Texas on the frontlines of national culture war battles over abortion, religion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Paxton’s path to power has been littered with a decade’s worth of ethical baggage. Indicted for securities fraud in his first term, Paxton has been dogged by allegations of abuse of office, bribery, fraud, infidelity and other manners of impropriety, including a 2023 impeachment in which the Texas Senate ultimately found him not guilty. The attorney general has won statewide three times, including while under indictment. The state felony charges were dropped in 2024. He believes Republicans should counteract Democratic enthusiasm by nominating someone who excites grassroots voters, including lower-propensity Trump voters.
Further complicating the race is Hunt, a second-term congressman from Houston who joined the contest in October, all but guaranteeing the primary is headed to a May 26 runoff. Hunt has offered himself as an alternative to skeptics of both Cornyn and Paxton, and the candidate best positioned to win both a primary and a general election. He’s pitched himself as a younger Paxton, without the baggage, touting his close alliance with President Donald Trump and ability to carry on his agenda longer than his older opponents.
Trump, who has said he considers all three to be friends, has not endorsed in the race. Texas’ Senate primary is one of the only contests in which the president has not weighed in.
Already, the Texas Senate primary — including spending from both parties — is the most expensive in American history. Cornyn and his allies have deployed a fortune to boost his image after early polling of the race showed Paxton with a strong lead. The Paxton campaign, which has been significantly outraised by Cornyn’s operation, has held back on major primary spending, convinced the attorney general is well-known and well-liked enough among the Republican base to be able to conserve resources during the primary.
But allies of both campaigns have spent against Hunt in the closing weeks, potentially warding off any late surge. Cornyn has attacked him over his record of missed votes — a narrative that’s only gotten more topical as Hunt has chosen to campaign across the state rather than attend votes in Washington.
Cornyn has closed with an ad, purchased by a joint committee that includes the Senate Republican campaign arm, criticizing Paxton heavily over character concerns. The ad takes aim at his ongoing divorce, announced last summer by his wife who is a state senator, his alleged affair and the assets he’s accumulated while in office. The ad frames the race as being between “the wife cheater and fraud or the Texas workhorse.”
Paxton, by contrast, has closed with a positive ad, in which his daughter and son-in-law speak highly of him as a family man who fights for conservative values.
“Unlike John Cornyn, who’s become a desperate shell of a man clinging to power, my campaign is not about attacking someone else’s family,” Paxton said. “It’s about protecting America.”
Polling suggests Cornyn and Paxton are most likely to advance to a runoff, extending the race by nearly three months. Paxton, who has led or been tied for first in nearly every poll of the race, would theoretically stand to benefit from a runoff electorate, which are typically smaller and tend to favor the more conservative candidate.
While the contest is unlikely to end Tuesday, the exact margin will provide the first true data point of where Texas GOP voters stand in nearly a year — with allies and donors to both candidates closely watching. The margin could also persuade the White House to get involved, though Trump has thus far resisted entreaties from all camps.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has lobbied Trump on Cornyn’s behalf for months, but has thus far been rebuffed. But the intensity of the effort underscores the seriousness with which Washington is taking the primary.
“Almost every time we talk, we talk Texas,” Thune told reporters this week.
How we got here
When Paxton officially kicked off his campaign in April, his rationale was simple — Cornyn was not conservative or pro-Trump enough for Texas. He highlighted a few episodes from the Biden era that had put Cornyn in hot water with some of the state party’s activist class. In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, Cornyn had worked with Democrats on a bipartisan gun safety bill. And the senior senator had once cast doubt on Trump’s electability before the president’s ultimately successful 2024 bid to return to office.
Paxton argued then and now that he is the more MAGA-aligned candidate, and opened the race as a double-digit polling favorite.
Knowing they needed to boost his image, Cornyn started heavily emphasizing his loyalty to Trump. He and his allies began spending millions over the summer in ads touting the senator’s vote record of over 99% with Trump. Cornyn praised the president frequently — even posting a picture of himself reading Trump’s autobiography, “The Art of the Deal” — and touted his support of various Trump initiatives. He hired members of Trump’s inner political circle to be part of his campaign.
Meanwhile, pro-Cornyn super PACs and groups affiliated with the Senate GOP took to the airwaves to get the message out that Cornyn and Trump are on the same team. Once the race tightened, they went on the attack.
Aaron Whitehead, the executive director of the pro-Cornyn super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority, said the group initially focused ads touting Cornyn’s postitives and once the race tightened, they pivoted to attacking Paxton.
“We always saw the election as very fluid. And then, when we got the ballot into a good position, we obviously started in on Mr. Paxton. Where we sit in the primary today, it’s a jump ball,” he said.
By the fall, the polling had narrowed. But the entry of Hunt in October, whose name identification had been boosted by a group running statewide ads praising him, changed the game.
Hunt came out of the gate swinging at Cornyn, reiterating many of the points Paxton had made while arguing the septuagenarian senator’s time had passed.
John Wittman, an unaffiliated Republican consultant and former adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, said Hunt’s inclusion on the ballot benefitted Paxton.
“All of a sudden, there were a lot more polls showing Cornyn was starting to lead,” Wittman said. “And then, of course, Wesley Hunt jumps in the race, and that shook everything up.”
As fall became winter, spending in the race ramped up. In total, Cornyn allies spent nearly $70 million boosting his position and beginning to highlight Paxton’s liabilities. And while the Cornyn team’s spending has likely tightened the race, the senator has still struggled to crack 40% in most polls. Most surveys of the race now show a tight contest between Paxton and Cornyn for first, with some showing Paxton with a lead.
Through the primary, Paxton and his allies have spent a fraction of what Cornyn has. His operation believes the national Republicans are wasting money in Texas that could be spent more wisely in other states.
“Are they going to allow money to be spent in states that need it more?” Sam Cooper, a strategist with the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC, said. “Or are they going to continue to throw good money after bad?”
In the waning days of the primary, super PACs affiliated with both campaigns have also gone negative against Hunt, with nearly $6 million in anti-Hunt spending in the final month of the race.
Hunt has said the influx of money is evidence that he is surging late and a threat to both candidates.
“It means I must be right over the target zone,” Hunt told supporters at a rally this week.
Inside the election
While the Republican primary has drawn fewer voters than the Democratic primary, GOP turnout is outpacing the 2022 midterm election. Over 850,000 voters had cast a ballot in the Republican primary through Feb. 25, according to Republican political consultant Derek Ryan, close to the equivalent number in 2024, a presidential year.
Wittman said a larger primary electorate is a welcome sign for Cornyn. Further-right candidates tend to do better with lower turnout, when the most hardened partisans, who are typically the most energized, are a bigger share of the electorate.
“If it’s a much larger electorate in the primary, then obviously Cornyn has a better opportunity to pick those folks up,” Wittman said.
Cornyn allies are also enthused by the makeup of the primary electorate thus far — namely, that it skews older, a group they believe they have an advantage with. Through Feb. 25, with two days left of early voting, 41% of Republican primary voters are over 70, and only 14% are under 50.
The runoff, which will extend the primary by another three months, is also poised to be even uglier. Negative ads have become more common among all candidates as the primary date has gotten closer, and both the Cornyn and Paxton camps intend to hit their opponent harder moving forward.
For Cornyn allies, that includes doubling down on Paxton’s divorce and allegations that he’s enriched himself in office.
“There are a lot of people that do not want Ken Paxton to get a promotion after his behavior,” Whitehead said. “It’s because he’s been remorseless across the board for everything. When you test this stuff on him, it is very, very bad.”
Because the Paxton team has spent lightly in comparison to Cornyn, his allies believe that the runoff gives them a longer runway to go negative on Cornyn, who has faced plenty of attacks online but less in terms of campaign spending.
“Cornyn has hovered around, 30%, 35% the entire race, and he hasn’t even been hit yet,” Cooper said. “So as we move into a runoff, which is a much more conservative electorate, and it is a binary choice, and Sen. Cornyn’s entire 30-year career is litigated, that’s not going to be better for him.”
And the prospect of a Trump endorsement in the runoff — which has hung over the primary from its beginnings — is not going away anytime soon. If the result is close, and an endorsement becomes even more valuable, the lobbying could become even more furious.
While the primary shifted throughout the past year, especially from the massive Cornyn spending and Hunt’s entry, the fundamentals have remained constant. Cornyn is facing the biggest threat to his long political career. Republicans in Washington are concerned about the prospect of Paxton leading the Texas ticket. And the bitterness that infected the race even before Paxton’s entry has only hardened over time.
“[Cornyn]’s desperate, he knows he’s going to lose, and his only goal is to hurt me and the party,” Paxton said in the pair’s latest dust-up on social media.
“There you go again: playing the victim,” Cornyn shot back. “All your baggage is self-inflicted.”
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