in a social media post <\/a>a week before the runoff. He called the attorney general a \u201ctrue MAGA warrior\u201d while writing that Cornyn \u201cwas not supportive of me when times were tough.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cAfter a public service career lasting more than four decades and 18 consecutive campaign wins, tonight, we\u2019ve come up short in this primary runoff,\u201d Cornyn said in his concession speech in Austin.<\/p>\n
Paxton will face Democratic opponent James Talarico in November. The outcome of that race could determine control of the Senate and possibly impact the second half of Trump\u2019s term.<\/p>\n
Political experts say the typically red Senate seat may be more competitive now and require more investment, pointing to past scandals that Paxton has faced.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a litany of baggage, having been impeached, allegations of bribery and misuse of office and his wife divorcing him on biblical grounds, which everyone understands to mean infidelity,\u201d said Jessica Taylor, Senate and Governors Editor for the Cook Political Report. \u201cRepublicans are going to have to spend a lot of money to try to keep this seat in their column that I don\u2019t think they would have had to have spent if Cornyn had been the nominee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cornyn has seven months left in his current term and said he intends to finish it out.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Gray DC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (Gray DC) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the state\u2019s GOP U.S. Senate primary runoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,3309,1967,66824],"class_list":["post-311885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-texas-senate-primary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311885","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=311885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}