{"id":301229,"date":"2026-05-20T11:28:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/301229\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T11:28:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T11:28:21","slug":"texas-u-s-senate-runoff-tests-gops-appetite-for-disruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/301229\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas\u2019 U.S. Senate runoff tests GOP’s appetite for disruption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 When Michael Burgess first ran for Congress in 2002, his name was sandwiched between two now-familiar politicians on the Republican ballot. <\/p>\n

Above him was John Cornyn<\/a>, making his first bid for U.S. Senate. Further down was Ken Paxton<\/a>, a then first-time candidate running for the state House in Collin County.<\/p>\n

All three won those initial races in a landmark year for the Texas GOP, when the party established the trifecta control<\/a> of Austin it\u2019s maintained ever since. Twenty-four years later, Cornyn and Paxton are on a collision course, battling in an ugly runoff to be the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat Cornyn has occupied for over two decades. <\/p>\n

Burgess, a Lewisville Republican and affable policy wonk, retired at the end of 2024. Having observed both for decades, he\u2019s backing Cornyn. <\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s a better person to help [the Trump administration] \u2014 someone who\u2019s seen as a steady hand and has been there and understands how things work and how things don\u2019t work?\u201d Burgess said in an interview last week. \u201cOr someone who\u2019s going to come in and [say] let\u2019s blow it all up and then see what we can deal with at the end? There is a need for disruptors in our system, and we have disruptors in our system. But we can\u2019t all be disruptors. Some of us have to be builders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump himself disagrees. The president endorsed Paxton Tuesday, expressly citing the attorney general\u2019s willingness to disrupt convention. <\/p>\n

Paxton, Trump said, \u201cis a Strong Supporter of TERMINATING THE FILIBUSTER\u201d. He is a \u201cFighter, and knows how to WIN\u201d and, critically, \u201csomeone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT.\u201d<\/p>\n

The May 26 runoff will be the most consequential trial yet for the values championed by the older GOP set \u2014 statesmanship, Washington knowhow, dealmaking, personal character \u2014 set against the brash, battle-centric, maximum warfare approach, marked by a willingness to cull their own ranks and demand absolutely loyalty, favored by Trump and supporters of Paxton. <\/p>\n

Burgess is part of the GOP\u2019s establishment old guard that has gone to bat for Cornyn, in defiance of much of the MAGA base, emphasizing the elements of the senator\u2019s character that make him well-regarded among his colleagues in Washington \u2014 staid, even-keeled, focused on the legislative process, someone who understands the importance of finding common ground.<\/p>\n

Those values, they say, are what makes Cornyn an effective senator \u2014 and why he deserves to keep the job. <\/p>\n

But they\u2019re also why Paxton and his supporters, many of whom are aligned with the newer, more MAGA-ified GOP, see Cornyn as a pariah in the modern day GOP. Paxton has built his political brand around fighting the old guard that Cornyn represents, at least in the eyes of Paxton\u2019s supporters. <\/p>\n

\u201cCornyn is weak, ineffective and very bad for the Republican Party,\u201d the narrator says in one recent Paxton TV ad. \u201cIt\u2019s time for change in Washington. Ken Paxton is a conservative fighter who sued Biden over 100 times, fought for border security and will take a sledgehammer to the establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s evaluation process hinges on different axes than the Texas GOP old guard \u2014 namely, a fighter\u2019s mentality and personal loyalty. Cornyn, who expressed doubts about Trump\u2019s electability in 2023, evidently didn\u2019t meet the standard.<\/p>\n

Paxton routinely dings Cornyn on the length of his political career, painting him as an establishment creature who lacks the fight the base is looking for. The runoff between the two is a war between the party\u2019s wings, pitting the senior senator against a rival who has fought and beat the GOP establishment Cornyn helped build and who wears their dismay like a badge of honor.<\/p>\n

Cornyn has plenty of endorsements from current elected officials and political players \u2014 the National Border Patrol Council, the Texas Alliance for Life, a bevy of local agricultural groups and seven current Republican House representatives from Texas, from longtime Reps. Michael McCaul<\/a> and Roger Williams<\/a> to newer members like Craig Goldman<\/a> and Nathaniel Moran<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But he\u2019s dominating Paxton among the retired GOP politicians who ran Austin and Washington in the 1990s and 2000s, when Republican control of Texas was newer and shakier. Cornyn\u2019s old guard backers are more likely to remember the era of Democratic dominance in the Lone Star State, and more concerned about the potential to lose the general election. <\/p>\n

The former congressmen who have endorsed Cornyn, out of office and free to speak their minds, expressed concerns about the state of the party \u2014 and how primaries have changed toward the ends of their careers or in the years since they\u2019ve left. They\u2019re worried about a Republican electorate that relishes fighting one another more than winning general elections or engaging in the legislative process. Their belief in Cornyn and concerns about the state of the electorate have now led them to the opposite side of Trump in this fight.<\/p>\n

The runoff is a test of whether voters are still listening. <\/p>\n

Ted Poe, a Republican from Humble, represented the 2nd Congressional District from 2005 to 2019. He\u2019s backing Cornyn because the senator was a reliable partner in the upper chamber and because Texas benefits from the seniority Cornyn has accrued, Poe said in an interview earlier this month.<\/p>\n

He sees the anti-incumbent streak playing out in Texas as a trend in primaries across the country \u2014 and he\u2019s worried about where it leads.<\/p>\n

\u201c[To] be an incumbent, even if you are a conservative \u2026 that ain\u2019t good enough for a lot of people,\u201d Poe said. \u201cThey just [say], \u2018Well, we need to get rid of them, we need to clean house.\u2019 What you do then is you self-destruct. You self-destruct your power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton, of course, now has the most relevant endorsement of them all \u2014 Trump\u2019s backing. And the 2026 Republican electorate is a different animal than when Cornyn rose to statewide prominence some three decades ago. Accustomed to decades of being in power, today\u2019s GOP voters are used to \u2014 and sometimes revel in \u2014 their biggest fights being intra-party. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy goodness, the biggest battles that we\u2019ve had in the last couple of cycles have been in primaries,\u201d said Henry Bonilla, a Cornyn-supporting San Antonio Republican who flipped a congressional seat in 1992 and served until he was defeated by a Democrat in 2006. \u201cThat is a huge change from what we saw [previously] \u2026There\u2019s just a lot of anger in the country right now, and I think it stimulates that kind of political activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cornyn sees Paxton as a threat to the era of Republican Party dominance that he and many of his seasoned endorsers worked to build. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a small minority of people who think we should be about the politics of exclusion and subtraction,\u201d Cornyn said in an interview Monday, before the Trump endorsement. \u201cBut both parties, historically, have been coalitions. And we have a big enough tent that we can have some diversity of thought within the Republican Party. Because if all you do is want to exclude people who don\u2019t think exactly the way you do, you risk being a minority and not having any voice at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vitriol in Republican primaries has \u201calways been a feature,\u201d Burgess said, but feels more \u201cprominent\u201d these days than in the past. The bloodsport nature of GOP contests contributed to his decision to retire at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does get tiresome to see the intra-party [fighting],\u201d Burgess said. \u201cCome on. What do we believe? What are we for? \u2026 And if it\u2019s just to try to tear each other down, I don\u2019t know that that\u2019s necessarily useful for the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican primary, in which Cornyn finished 1.5 percentage points ahead of Paxton, proved there are significant constituencies in the Texas GOP for both men\u2019s approaches. <\/p>\n

But runoff elections, in which turnout is lower, tend to favor the more hardline candidate. In that climate, not everyone is sure there\u2019s a willing majority for Cornyn\u2019s brand of experience and legislative productivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Poe said. \u201cThey\u2019re sure quiet. \u2026 It seems like it\u2019s the trend to be the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The builders vs. the disruptors<\/p>\n

Former elected officials have been among the loudest and proudest defenders of Cornyn. Rick Perry, who occupied the Governor\u2019s Mansion from 2000 to 2015, chairs the Lone Star Freedom Project, a group that spent $17.4 million boosting the senator during the first round of the primary. Former Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, a flamethrower who primaried Paxton for attorney general and lost, made<\/a> a video with Cornyn and has been banging the anti-Paxton drum throughout the runoff. And Cornyn last month rolled out an endorsement from Newt Gingrich, who was House speaker from 1995 to 1999, praising Cornyn\u2019s record of \u201ctangible victories\u201d over \u201cmere rhetoric\u201d.<\/p>\n

Former Texas Republican Sens. Phil Gramm \u2014 Cornyn\u2019s predecessor \u2014 and Kay Bailey Hutchison, who served alongside Cornyn until 2013, wrote an op-ed<\/a> in the Houston Chronicle last fall laying out their rationale for supporting their colleague. Like Gingrich, they praised Cornyn\u2019s record of action over talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know something about getting things done in Washington to make life better for people in Texas and America,\u201d the pair wrote. \u201cWe also know Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> and have worked with him and followed his leadership in the Senate. He is a workhorse and not a show horse. He knows he is in the Senate to lead and not to protest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry and Gramm campaigned for Cornyn in San Antonio Monday, the first day of early voting.<\/p>\n

But an increasingly vocal segment of the GOP is looking for a protester \u2014 someone to channel their anger and lean into the fight, whether it\u2019s with Democrats or fellow Republicans they\u2019ve branded as RINOs. Among this cohort, a politician\u2019s talent for navigating Washington is seen more as a blemish.<\/p>\n

Paxton has seized on this sentiment from the get-go. One of his common lines on the stump is to ask voters what Cornyn has achieved in 22 years, and compare it to any two-week period of his tenure as attorney general, throughout which he\u2019s frequently launched lawsuits against Democratic presidents and left-leaning groups. Texas, he often says, can do better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can have another senator that\u2019s more like Ted Cruz<\/a> than Joe Biden,\u201d Paxton said at an April campaign event in Grapevine.<\/p>\n

Cornyn says his long Senate career has taught him how to advocate on behalf of Texas, including by securing federal reimbursement for everything from Biden-era border operations to Hurricane Harvey.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t get that done if you don\u2019t know how the system operates,\u201d Cornyn said. <\/p>\n

But Trump \u2014 and Paxton \u2014 want to blow up the Senate conventions Cornyn has spent decades mastering, most notably through eliminating the filibuster. Cornyn dropped his longstanding opposition<\/a> to the idea after the primary in March, saying he was open to filibuster reform in order to pass the GOP\u2019s signature voting restrictions bill. Trump picked the candidate who has said he outright wants to get rid of the filibuster, which would fundamentally change the upper chamber.<\/p>\n

Plus, it can be hard to message on the everyday, behind-the-scenes work of influencing bills. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s my go-to guy in the Senate,\u201d said retiring Rep. Michael McCaul, who has represented Austin since 2005. \u201cThere are a lot of things that don\u2019t translate back home [that] you do up here. He\u2019s been very effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cost of the purity test<\/p>\n

The ranks of former congressmen who support Cornyn routinely brought up two words \u2014 \u201ceffective\u201d and \u201ccompromise\u201d \u2014 even as they acknowledged that voters don\u2019t always like to hear the latter one.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompromising shouldn\u2019t be a dirty word,\u201d said former Rep. Mike Conaway, a Republican who represented West Texas from 2005 to 2021. \u201cBecause you\u2019re not going to get anything done. If you\u2019re going to insist on all legislation being 100% the way you want it, then you\u2019re going to be a party of one person. And that is ineffective. That\u2019s not going to get anything solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cornyn had a similar assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at President Trump himself, he\u2019s all about the art of the deal,\u201d Cornyn said. \u201cYou don\u2019t make a deal without two sides at least feeling like they got something from the deal. I think that is what voters want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cornyn\u2019s endorsers who have worked in Washington see a disconnect between the purity tests some primary voters impose and the level of compromise it takes to pass legislation, where senators are one of 100. Poe said too many Republican primary voters \u201cthink it\u2019s Burger King \u2014 I wanna have it my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Pete Olson, who was Cornyn\u2019s first chief of staff and represented the 22nd Congressional District from 2009 to 2021, said political purity tests mean that anyone who comes to Washington to govern gets \u201ctorn apart by the extreme right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just hard to get out there and fight when every time you stick your head out of the foxhole, somebody\u2019s just shooting at you from behind,\u201d Olson said.<\/p>\n

But in a sign of how the party has changed, some of the former House members who have endorsed Cornyn were replaced by Paxton supporters. Burgess was succeeded by Rep. Brandon Gill<\/a>, who endorsed Paxton after the primary. Olson\u2019s congressional replacement was Rep. Troy Nehls<\/a>, who endorsed Paxton early and brought the attorney general as his guest to the State of the Union.<\/p>\n

In the primary, two Texas Republican incumbents were taken down by insurgent challengers. The new nominees \u2014 state Rep. Steve Toth<\/a> in the 2nd Congressional District and gun rights YouTuber Brandon Herrera in the 23rd Congressional District \u2014 are supporting Paxton.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s supporters see the chilly reception Paxton gets from the political establishment as proof of concept for his politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cKen stood up to the Bush folks and they have been after him ever since,\u201d said state Rep. Wes Virdell<\/a>, R-Brady. \u201cThey despise that Ken defied them and they despise an independent person who doesn\u2019t take a knee to their kind. The swamp would love to see Ken lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of Cornyn\u2019s backers are incredulous that their fellow Republicans would cast out a party stalwart in favor of someone whom they believe would put the seat at risk \u2014 and who some see as ethically compromised.<\/p>\n

Burgess said he wouldn\u2019t vote for a Democrat in the general election. But he said Paxton had burned too much trust with him, and that he could not go to his grave knowing he voted for \u201csomeone like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no way in the world that I\u2019m casting a vote for General Paxton \u2014 ever, for anything,\u201d Burgess said. \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that my friends and neighbors will do the right thing. Senator Cornyn deserves the nomination, and he should get it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2133,145,3309,102308,1967,98584,109436,109437,2424,2647,7883,27,58142,29,28,2134,6748],"class_list":["post-301229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-john-cornyn","tag-kay-bailey-hutchison","tag-ken-paxton","tag-michael-burgess","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-phil-gramm","tag-republicans","tag-rick-perry","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas","tag-texas-alliance-for-life","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-senate","tag-well-b-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301229","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=301229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}