{"id":329241,"date":"2026-06-09T15:01:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/329241\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T15:01:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:01:11","slug":"texas-republicans-won-by-going-all-in-on-maga-now-they-have-to-sell-it-to-everyone-else-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/329241\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Republicans won by going all-in on MAGA. Now they have to sell it to everyone else \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"'MAGA\u201cMAGA power\u201d led to the end of political careers for longtime incumbents like Sen. John Cornyn, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, and even Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright. (Julia Reihs | KUT News)<\/p>\n

The most conservative Republicans continue to win in Texas; from U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton<\/a>, to nominee for railroad commissioner Bo French<\/a>, and attorney general nominee \u201cMAGA\u201d Mayes Middleton<\/a>, as he likes people to call him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is the consolidation of MAGA power,\u201d Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told the Texas Newsroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMAGA\u201d is shorthand for the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement spearheaded by President Donald Trump and refers to the president\u2019s brand of conservative to far-right politics.<\/p>\n

Out with the old<\/p>\n

That \u201cMAGA power\u201d led to the end of political careers for longtime incumbents like Sen. John Cornyn<\/a>, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, and even Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re seeing essentially the last of the old guard being swept away,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAnybody who is not 100% MAGA, 100% committed to Trump, is viewed as disloyal and therefore must be purged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Adams, a political scientist at Texas Southern University, told The Texas Newsroom he agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sent a clear signal, I think, to the Republican Party that the [George] Bush or the [Rick] Perry wing of the Republican Party \u2014 what we know as the institutional Republican part of the traditional wing \u2014 I think that has been put to rest,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n

One of the most obvious examples is Attorney General Paxton\u2019s win over incumbent Sen. Cornyn. A day into early voting, Trump, the leader of MAGA, endorsed Paxton over Cornyn<\/a>, who claimed to vote with Trump 99% of the time.<\/p>\n

Will MAGA power win in November?<\/p>\n

But Nancy Sims, a political scientist at the University of Houston, believes while being the most MAGA in the primaries was a winning strategy, she isn\u2019t too sure what it\u2019ll look like going forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to be their challenge,\u201d Sims said. \u201cThey moved so far to the right to win their nominations, that they\u2019re gonna have to live with the commercials they made side-by-side with Trump. All the MAGA promises they made for the general cycle are not gonna be popular with independent voters, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s several reasons for that. Trump\u2019s approval rating is low<\/a>, the economy is in bad shape, gas prices are soaring and the country is at war.<\/p>\n

But MAGA candidates are ignoring those topics and instead focusing on hot-button social topics like gender identity, immigration enforcement and stoking fears over Islam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While that strategy worked during a Republican primary where only 1.4 million voters participated, political scientist Jeronimo Cortina isn\u2019t sure it\u2019ll be so successful with the general electorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, I don\u2019t know 97% of folks that did not participate in the runoff election, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, support that type of rhetoric or not,\u201d Cortina said.<\/p>\n

Uphill battle for Democrats<\/p>\n

Even with all that in Democrats\u2019 favor, polls show, at best, Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate James Talarico may beat Paxton by a few percentage points<\/a>, while others predict it to be dead even. And with months to go until voters begin casting ballots, Sims isn\u2019t too sure that\u2019ll be the same if things change.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, if you ask me, I would say it looks like Texas may be competitive for the first time in 30 years,\u201d Sims said. \u201cBut that could shift if Trump\u2019s popularity begins to rise again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until then, Democrats have their work cut out for them. They haven\u2019t won a statewide race in more than three decades. But Taylor believes it\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas is not truly a red state,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cIt\u2019s a low-turnout state in which you\u2019ve got Democrats who, if they would ever get off their butts and actually mobilize, could actually win elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while the conditions are there for Democrats to win in November, an engine doesn\u2019t run on good design alone \u2014 it needs ignition, and for Democrats that ignition is voter turnout.<\/p>\n

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here<\/a>. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org<\/a> and KUT.org<\/a>. Thanks for donating today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMAGA power\u201d led to the end of political careers for longtime incumbents like Sen. John Cornyn, U.S. Rep.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2135,6481,223,287,27,29,28,13029],"class_list":["post-329241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-james-talarico","tag-kut","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329241","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=329241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}