{"id":306837,"date":"2026-05-24T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T10:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/306837\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T10:00:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T10:00:39","slug":"a-republican-bloodbath-in-the-texas-senate-primary-is-giving-democrats-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/306837\/","title":{"rendered":"A Republican Bloodbath in the Texas Senate Primary Is Giving Democrats Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Republican primary has been one of the most expensive in recent history, with both sides spending freely on attack ads. (\u201cKen Paxton has the ethics of a strip club owner\u201d; \u201cJohn Cornyn wants to take our guns.\u201d) The runoff has prolonged the conflict, with one pundit calling it a \u201cbloodbath\u201d and a \u201ccivil war.\u201d Meanwhile, the Democrats have settled on an appealing candidate, the fresh-faced state legislator and seminary student James Talarico<\/a>. All of this made the Golden Girls nervous. \u201cI probably shouldn\u2019t say this, but I am terrified of James Talarico,\u201d Mona said.<\/p>\n

Onstage, a man introduced Herrera, calling him Mr. YouTuber\u2014he gained fame as a firearms influencer before turning to politics\u2014and Herrera, in turn, introduced Paxton. \u201cIt\u2019s a little embarrassing when we have some of the least conservative so-called conservatives in the entire country,\u201d Herrera said. \u201cIt is my pleasure here to present the man who is going to finish this RINO-hunting venture, and get John Cornyn out of the Senate, and actually represent Texas the way it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican race has played out as a face-off between the power structures of conservative Texas politics. \u201cPaxton has his ear to the ground with the activist base. He\u2019s more in tune and connected with the right-wing-podcast influencer types,\u201d Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican political consultant based in Austin and Washington, D.C., said. \u201cCornyn is much more comfortable with, and supported by, the donor class, the Republican women\u2019s groups. Those are his people.\u201d (Steinhauser ran Cornyn\u2019s 2014 campaign, and has also worked for Angela Paxton.)<\/p>\n

Cornyn is tall, long-faced, and dignified, with the mien of an aging cowboy. (He is seventy-four.) He has characterized the race in ethical terms. \u201cMr. Paxton has a checkered background. He is a con man and a fraud, and I think the people of Texas know that,\u201d he has said. \u201cI am not going to turn over the Senate seat that was once held by Sam Houston to someone like him.\u201d He has referred to Paxton\u2019s campaign as \u201ca con man\u2019s vanity project.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a nonpartisan research group, has consistently rated Cornyn as among the Senate\u2019s \u201cmost effective\u201d members: his bills often address high-impact issues, and they become law at a notably higher rate than many of his colleagues\u2019. But Cornyn\u2019s willingness to work with Democrats to get legislation passed is increasingly seen as a liability within his party. It didn\u2019t help that, in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas<\/a>, Cornyn signalled openness to a mild form of gun control, or that he didn\u2019t vote to overturn the 2020 election. \u201cCornyn\u2019s supporters among the professional political class have had a hard time really taking to heart that, whatever they might think about it, Paxton resonates more with the Republican base right now,\u201d James Henson, the director of the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project, at the University of Texas at Austin, said.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s declaration of war against a capable, if not beloved, senator might have felt like a canny move in the first months of 2025, when Trump\u2019s election seemed to portend a sustained MAGA moment. But now that support for the President is flagging, even in Texas, it\u2019s looking more like Paxton has pushed a sure Republican win into uncertain territory. A few months after he announced his candidacy, the Cook Political Report moved the Senate race from \u201cSolid Republican\u201d to \u201cLikely Republican.\u201d If Paxton wins the nomination, Cook noted, that designation will shift again, to \u201cLean Republican.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s disruption of the established order, in a state where things had been working out quite well for Republicans, reportedly angered some of his long-term backers, including the West Texas oil tycoon Tim Dunn. Dunn, a longtime Paxton donor who has been credited with helping to shape (and fund) the state\u2019s hard-right turn, has apparently been sitting this race out, according to Texas Monthly<\/a>. Cornyn has raised much more money than Paxton, and has racked up many more prominent endorsements, including from the former governor Rick Perry. (The state\u2019s current leading Republicans, including Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, have not endorsed either man.) Paxton has attempted to frame the financial disparity as evidence of his grassroots bona fides. \u201cHe spent a hundred million dollars, and I spent five-point-eight,\u201d he claimed, after the primary. (In the first quarter of 2026, Talarico significantly out-raised both Cornyn and Paxton.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republican primary has been one of the most expensive in recent history, with both sides spending freely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2133,288,2424,13164,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-306837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-democrats","tag-elections","tag-republicans","tag-senate","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306837","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=306837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}