{"id":191493,"date":"2026-03-05T08:56:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/191493\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T08:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:56:33","slug":"john-cornyn-and-ken-paxton-set-for-runoff-in-texas-gop-senate-primary-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/191493\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cornyn and Ken Paxton set for runoff in Texas\u2019 GOP Senate primary \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

Kennedy Weatherby\/KUT News<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks to members of the media as statewide early voting results are released during an address at the Marriott Downtown in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n

Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are headed to a runoff in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

With all of Texas\u2019 counties and 96% of statewide polling locations reporting Wednesday morning, the incumbent Cornyn had received 41.7% of the vote compared to 41% for the challenger Paxton. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston was a distant third at 13.4%.<\/p>\n

Neither Cornyn nor Paxton could claim an outright victory on Election Night, which requires receiving more than 50% of the votes cast. A primary election runoff<\/a> will be held Tuesday, May 26, to determine the GOP nominee for November’s general election.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

In the Democratic primary<\/a> for Senate, state Rep. James Talarico beat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s election results from Dallas<\/a>, El Paso and Williamson<\/a> counties were expected to be delayed. Judges in Dallas and El Paso counties ordered polls to stay open past the usual 7 p.m. cutoff time. <\/p>\n

Cornyn has been running for a fifth term representing Texas in the U.S. Senate. Serving out another six-year term would make him the longest-serving senator in the state’s history, breaking the record set by Democrat Morris Sheppard.<\/p>\n

“Cornyn’s biggest weakness is his strength, which is his longevity,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project of the University of Texas at Austin. “He is a creature of the institution. He comes from central casting for what a senator should look like, but ultimately, the party has gone through a number of revisions over the last at least decade-and-a-half that in some ways make Cornyn’s approach to politics a little bit anachronistic.”<\/p>\n

\"Ken<\/a><\/p>\n

Yfat Yossifor\/KERA<\/p>\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a candidate for U.S. Senate, gestures to the crowd at his Election Night watch party on March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n

Paxton entered the Senate primary<\/a> last April, publicly announcing his bid to unseat Cornyn on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show. While Cornyn has held the advantages of both incumbency and a sizable campaign war chest, most polls over the past 11 months have shown Paxton either leading Cornyn or statistically tied with him.<\/p>\n

Paxton, who despite having a long history of legal troubles<\/a> and the fact that he\u2019s going through a very public, messy divorce<\/a>, has long been a favorite of the state\u2019s more conservative Republican voters.<\/p>\n

Bill Miller, a political consultant who has advised both Republicans and Democrats, said Paxton is the best positioned to win a second-round contest.<\/p>\n

“The runoff will be the hardcore primary voters, and that\u2019s his base,” Miller said, “so he\u2019ll be extraordinarily difficult to defeat in a runoff.”<\/p>\n

The Texas primary for the U.S. Senate has become the most expensive Senate primary contest in state history. As of mid-February, the tracking organization AdImpact Politics reported that spending in the Republican and Democratic races combined had reached close to $99 million, second in U.S. history only to the 2022 Arizona Senate primary. Cornyn ads alone accounted for nearly $59 million of that total. <\/p>\n

Spending has only increased since then, with attack ads by both the candidates and super PACs supporting them proliferating.<\/p>\n

Hanging over the primary runoff is the question of whether President Donald Trump will weigh in to endorse one of the remaining candidates. A recent poll by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 55% of likely GOP primary voters would be more inclined to vote for a candidate who had Trump’s endorsement.<\/p>\n

Much of the primary has seen Cornyn, Hunt and Paxton each presenting themselves to voters as the most pro-Trump candidate. Miller said that may explain why Trump hasn’t yet weighed in.<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s getting the best of all possible worlds,” Miller said. “It might be something he would consider in the runoff, but I think he\u2019ll stay out of the race and just let the chips fall where they may.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kennedy Weatherby\/KUT News U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks to members of the media as statewide early voting results…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[71676,64638,39794,288,42689,56,58,57,3309,1967,223,287,27,18112,2279,6474],"class_list":{"0":"post-191493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-2026-republican-primary","9":"tag-2026-senate-race","10":"tag-election-2026","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-gop-primary","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-houston-headlines","15":"tag-houston-news","16":"tag-john-cornyn","17":"tag-ken-paxton","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-texas-u-s-senate-race","22":"tag-voting","23":"tag-wesley-hunt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}