{"id":305874,"date":"2026-05-23T12:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/305874\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T12:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:17:08","slug":"inside-the-closing-week-of-the-texas-gop-senate-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/305874\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the closing week of the Texas GOP Senate runoff"},"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 Thirteen months, $135 million, hundreds of endorsements, numerous AI-generated ads and an uncountable number of ad hominem attacks later, the bruising primary battle between John Cornyn<\/a> and Ken Paxton<\/a> will finally come to an end Tuesday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a battle that nominally began last April<\/a>, but whose contours were set long before \u2014 in 2023, when Cornyn cast doubt on President Donald Trump\u2019s electability and Paxton faced an impeachment from members of his own party; in 2022, when Cornyn negotiated a bipartisan gun safety bill and Paxton was one of just two elected officials to show up at Trump\u2019s presidential campaign launch; or perhaps in 2020, when the attorney general led the legal charge to overturn Trump\u2019s presidential election loss.<\/p>\n

At stake is the soul of the Texas Republican Party, which has been caught in a tug-of-war over the past several cycles as insurgents have worked to oust the old guard. The outcome will also shape what looks to be a competitive general election, deciding who will be the GOP\u2019s standard-bearer against Democratic nominee James Talarico<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s runoff will be the biggest, most consequential test of whether Texas Republican voters are willing to support an elder statesman and self-described Reagan Republican over a \u201cMAGA warrior,\u201d in the words of Trump, whose ethical and legal baggage have made him simultaneously a hero and pariah to different segments of the GOP.<\/p>\n

Trump made his highly-coveted endorsement<\/a> earlier this week, when he threw his weight behind the attorney general, citing Paxton\u2019s loyalty and Cornyn\u2019s lack thereof \u201cwhen times were tough.\u201d The decision went against the advice of Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the Republican political machine in Washington, who have spent tens of millions of dollars boosting Cornyn. <\/p>\n

\"PresidentPresident Donald Trump speaks at the Port of Corpus Christi on Feb. 27, 2026. Pete Garcia for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

The incumbent senator finished first in the March 3 primary, at 42% to Paxton\u2019s 40.5%. But with U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt<\/a> pulling 13.5% of the vote, no candidate clinched the nomination outright, sending Cornyn and Paxton to an overtime round.<\/p>\n

Runoff electorates tend to be smaller and more hardline, a natural advantage for Paxton. But the Cornyn camp\u2019s strategy has been to press its significant financial advantage to bring the senator\u2019s supporters back out and bury Paxton under a deluge of negative ads.<\/p>\n

Numerous GOP operatives said Cornyn still has a path to victory after the endorsement, but the realities of runoff electorates and the Trump endorsement have created a powerful advantage for Paxton.<\/p>\n

\u201cRunoff voters as a group \u2014 independent of demographics, of region, even to a certain extent of high or low levels of vote history in primaries \u2014 the primary runoff electorate is just skewing to the right, or towards Paxton anyway \u2026 in a way that just conforms pretty strongly to the conventional wisdom,\u201d said Ross Hunt, a GOP operative and pollster who is uninvolved in the contest.<\/p>\n

Throughout the race, Cornyn and Paxton have maintained consistent pitches to the voters. <\/p>\n

Cornyn has leaned into the electability argument \u2014 that he\u2019s the best candidate to extend the Texas GOP\u2019s three-decade statewide winning streak in what\u2019s expected to be a difficult cycle for Republicans. In the eyes of Cornyn and his establishment allies, he is a reliable pro-Trump vote, and if Republicans reject him, they would jeopardize the Senate majority needed to pass Trump\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n

\"U.S.U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks to members of the press after casting his vote on the first day of early voting for the Texas primary runoff elections at the Circle C Community Center in Austin on Monday, May 18, 2026. Joel Angel Juarez for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

\u201cI won in 2020 by 10 points, and President Trump won that same year [in] Texas by six points,\u201d Cornyn said in an interview with The Texas Tribune Monday. \u201cSo I think I\u2019ve demonstrated that I can help the ticket up and down the ballot, and Paxton would be an albatross \u2014 and also divert hundreds of millions of dollars that would be spent trying to salvage this Senate seat that could be used in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Paxton, whose brand has long been fighting the Republican establishment, frequently derides Cornyn and his fellow Republican senators for their deference to conventions like the legislative filibuster, while promising himself to take a \u201csledgehammer\u201d to such customs. His stump speech typically begins by challenging voters to name an accomplishment of Cornyn\u2019s, contrasting the senator\u2019s record to his own history of suing the Biden administration and left-leaning organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MAGA agenda is dead under John Cornyn,\u201d Paxton said on Fox Wednesday. \u201cHe kills it every time, just like the Republican Senate that he\u2019s part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s decision to endorse Paxton Tuesday was ostensibly the most consequential moment yet in a contest between two well-known, longtime partisans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know for a fact what will happen on election day, but any observer will acknowledge that President Trump\u2019s endorsement makes it significantly more likely that Ken Paxton wins,\u201d Sen. Ted Cruz<\/a>, who has stayed out of the contest, said on his podcast Tuesday. \u201cHow much more likely, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, in interviews and on the trail since the endorsement, Paxton has begun to pivot to the general election. His campaign and the main super PAC supporting him, Lone Star Liberty PAC, have switched to airing positive ads touting the president\u2019s endorsement. The PAC went up with an anti-Talarico spot Friday, its first that has looked beyond the GOP primary.<\/p>\n

\"TexasTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton delivers a speech during a campaign event at Hog Heaven in Dripping Springs on Thursday, May 21, 2026. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

At a rally in Dripping Springs Thursday, a few days after receiving the president\u2019s endorsement, Paxton appeared to be in a good mood.<\/p>\n

He first tested nicknames for Talarico to laughs from the crowd of about 30 people. He said an aide had come up with one she was proud of, \u201cLow-T Talarico,\u201d and asked her to share it. Paxton said it was like \u201cLow Energy Jeb,\u201d Trump\u2019s moniker for Jeb Bush during the 2016 presidential primaries. He also tested \u201cTofu Talarico,\u201d knocking the state representative for a baseless claim that he\u2019s vegan. Meanwhile, former GOP state Rep. Rick Green shouted \u201cTalafreacko.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s 20-minute stump speech largely focused on his political journey, from moving to Texas to deciding to run for U.S. Senate. He struck a confident tone and encouraged people to take their friends and family with them to vote because of anticipated low turnout.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can win this with people, people that care about what\u2019s happening in Texas, people that care about sending a message to Washington that it\u2019s time to have two senators fighting,\u201d he said, standing in front of an American and Texas flag.<\/p>\n

Cornyn, meanwhile, has staked his chances on expanding the electorate, posting a video Thursday in which he appealed to registered voters who did not vote in either primary to turn out in the Republican runoff.<\/p>\n

At his final get-out-the-vote event in Corpus Christi Friday, Cornyn was resolute that he could win the runoff \u2014 if a broader group of voters than those who typically vote in runoffs showed up to the polls.<\/p>\n

Still, he acknowledged that this contest \u201cis kind of a strange position for me to be in,\u201d noting that he\u2019s been through plenty of contested elections, \u201cbut in many ways I feel like there\u2019s never been more at stake in an election than this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cornyn said his campaign\u2019s efforts to mobilize voters had surpassed that of any of his prior races, and he predicted the runoff would end in a \u201csimilar surprise\u201d to the primary, when he finished first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the small fraction of people who actually vote [in runoffs] are not necessarily representative of the whole state and all voters, so that\u2019s the reason why we\u2019re working [as] hard as we can to try to get a broader base to the electorate to make that choice,\u201d Cornyn said. \u201cBecause I believe that character does still matter, and it is on the ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

How we got here<\/p>\n

The seeds of Tuesday\u2019s runoff were planted long ago, as Paxton\u2019s profile grew and Cornyn cast doubts on Trump\u2019s electability as he was weighing a 2024 bid.<\/p>\n

Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas Republican strategist who managed Cornyn\u2019s 2014 reelection, said Paxton was \u201cemboldened and empowered\u201d after defeating an impeachment push from his own party.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gave him some political momentum, and he felt like the feedback from a lot of the activists in the party was in support of him \u2014 even though the House had voted to impeach him by a pretty wide margin,\u201d Steinhauser said. \u201cI think that he felt emboldened, and it just set all this in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Paxton announced last April that he was joining the race, he started from a position of strength, leading Cornyn by double-digit margins in early polling. <\/p>\n

But Cornyn, an adept fundraiser with decades-long relationships in Texas and Washington, closed the gap by majorly outspending Paxton, much of it paying for ads touting that he voted with Trump\u2019s stated position 99% of the time and that he was the choice of the Border Patrol union and other law enforcement groups.<\/p>\n

After finishing first in the primary, Cornyn appeared to be on the precipice of earning Trump\u2019s endorsement. But two critical things happened that first week of March. First, news of the potential Cornyn endorsement leaked, bringing a massive wave of backlash from Paxton supporters. And then, Paxton took a political gamble that changed the course of the runoff \u2014 he offered to consider dropping out of the race if the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, a voting restrictions bill at the top of Trump\u2019s agenda that cannot advance because it lacks the requisite number of votes to overcome a filibuster. Paxton allies and unaligned observers alike see the episode as crucial to the attorney general\u2019s success in securing the endorsement months later.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy floating the idea of dropping out, and essentially making himself a martyr for the cause of voter integrity, with leverage that he did not have, he showed that he would go further for Trump than most other Republicans \u2014 and at the very least, probably further than Cornyn was willing to go,\u201d said Joshua Blank, the research director at the Texas Politics Project. \u201cI think Paxton\u2019s move there was really adept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in March, Cornyn dropped his longstanding support of the filibuster, expressing his openness to reform in order to pass the SAVE America Act. <\/p>\n

But that didn\u2019t seem to be enough, in Trump\u2019s eyes, to match Paxton\u2019s resolve for smashing the system. Trump backed off his endorsement pledge until this week, when he specifically cited Paxton\u2019s support for terminating the filibuster and his championing of the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the people of Texas want is a senator who doesn\u2019t have to be dragged to the right during the Republican primary just to get them to do their job,\u201d said Rep. Brandon Gill<\/a>, R-Flower Mound, who endorsed Paxton in April. \u201cAnd I think the president recognized that.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the runoff, Cornyn\u2019s camp hit Paxton from every direction. Some ads criticized his divorce over an alleged affair. Others attacked the wealth he\u2019s accumulated in office. Numerous spots tackled allegedly soft plea deals the attorney general\u2019s office made in sexual abuse cases.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s negative ads capitalized on the anti-incumbent fervor in both parties, calling out the length of Cornyn\u2019s political career and the senator\u2019s old comments expressing skepticism about Trump\u2019s plan for a border wall.<\/p>\n

While over $135 million in advertising was spent throughout the primary, operatives said both candidates are so well-defined that the race became more like a general election \u2014 where it\u2019s difficult to persuade voters to drop their beliefs about either.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublican primary voters are not gullible,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cThey don\u2019t think that John Cornyn is a huge moderate. They also don\u2019t \u2014 even before the Trump endorsement \u2014 they didn\u2019t think that he was President Trump\u2019s best friend. And both of those things are true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early voting tea leaves<\/p>\n

Most of the runoff vote has already been cast, with a week of early voting in the books \u2014 making some inferences about the runoff possible.<\/p>\n

With opinions about both candidates relatively calcified, turnout, rather than persuasion, will drive the runoff results. Two major factors are at play \u2014 where Wesley Hunt\u2019s voters go, and which voters from March will come back to the polls for a second go-round.<\/p>\n

The Trump endorsement may be most meaningful for Hunt voters, who make up a sizable chunk of the dwindling stable of undecided voters. Hunt himself endorsed Paxton in quick succession after Trump and urged his supporters to vote for the attorney general.<\/p>\n

Steinhauser said the Trump endorsement is unquestionably a boost for Paxton, but noted that the attorney general still needs to ensure it\u2019s communicated in advertising this week and over the weekend for election day voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to make an impact, but it still takes time and money to get the message out about the endorsement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ross Hunt, the GOP data guru, said his analysis of the early voting electorate demonstrated that \u201cthere is no big headline\u201d \u2014 no obvious advantage for either candidate. <\/p>\n

\u201c[If you\u2019re] squinting, you can see a tiny advantage for Cornyn relative to his Round One early vote distribution, but you\u2019ve got to squint pretty hard,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cIt\u2019s basically just a wash.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Cornyn were to pull it off, Hunt said, he would need high turnout in the Austin area, selective mobilization of the precincts where he overperformed in Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas, and for Paxton voters to stay home \u2014 the latter of which may be unlikely because primary turnout was robust for both candidates.<\/p>\n

Hunt also said that in his analysis of the first two days of early voting, 85% of those who turned out were voters returning from the March primary. Only 3% were new voters who had not previously voted in any primary.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Kayla Guo and Alejandro Serrano contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

\"TexasTexas businessman B. R. Israel\u2019s MAGA hat, signed by President Donald Trump during a visit to Mar-a-Lago, sits on a chair before Paxton\u2019s campaign event in Dripping Springs on Thursday. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune<\/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":305875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[155,2133,145,2135,3309,1967,2424,110835,7883,27,29,28,6473,6474],"class_list":["post-305874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-corpus-christi","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-james-talarico","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-republicans","tag-rick-green","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-well-a-homepage","tag-wesley-hunt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305874","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=305874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}