Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has defeated Sen. John Cornyn for the Republican Senate nomination, NBC News projects, the latest challenger backed by President Donald Trump to unseat an incumbent.
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Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in a November race that could become key to the fight for the Senate majority.
Trump endorsed Paxton last week, giving him a last-minute boost in his bid to oust Cornyn, who has served in the Senate since 2003. Cornyn and Paxton faced off Tuesday in a head-to-head runoff after no candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the initial multicandidate March primary.
Paxton’s victory is the latest in Trump’s successful efforts to oust sitting Republicans who he has perceived as insufficiently loyal as he attempts to tighten his grip on the party. Earlier this month, Trump backed Republican primary opponents who defeated Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy and several Indiana state senators.
Paxton told The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show on Tuesday that Trump’s endorsement is the “gold standard,” noting, “I’ve never seen an endorsement matter more since I’ve been paying attention to politics.”
Cornyn and his allies, including Senate Republican leadership, had for months pushed Trump to back the four-term senator instead, arguing that Paxton would be a weaker general election candidate. But the president ultimately sided with Paxton, whom Trump described as “a true MAGA warrior.”
Some of Cornyn’s Senate colleagues have long expressed concerns that Paxton’s multiple controversies could put the Senate race in Republican-leaning Texas in play, diverting party resources from other Senate races, even though Trump won the state by 14 points in 2024.
Paxton was impeached on bribery and corruption charges in 2023 by a GOP-controlled state House, though the state Senate acquitted him. Paxton’s wife also announced last year that she was divorcing him on “biblical grounds.”
But Paxton and his team have argued that he has a unique ability to energize Trump’s faithful supporters, who often stay home in midterm election years.
“This is the same argument they made against Donald Trump,” Paxton told The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show when asked about concerns about his “baggage.”
“What people should really care about is back to my message: What have you done for the people of Texas when you have served them? And the answer for John is, ‘I’ve done nothing good for you. I listened to Mitch McConnell. I wasn’t there for you. I was not there for Trump,’” Paxton later added.
Cornyn has said he would back Paxton in November if he loses the primary runoff, telling Fox News on Tuesday, “I’ll support the ticket. I’m a Republican. I’ve worked most of my life to build the Republican Party.” But some Republicans may still hesitate to support the attorney general, given his controversies.
Asked about his message to those voters back in February, Paxton said, “Look, people can choose to vote on whatever they want. We have a president who went through all kinds of supposed legal issues. I have too, and I’ve come out on top. All I can say is, I’ve been acquitted. I’ve been redeemed.”
Trump has said that both Paxton and Cornyn could defeat Talarico. But polling showing Paxton ahead of Cornyn in the runoff factored into Trump’s endorsement decision, according to a person close to the president.
While Cornyn cast himself as a Trump ally, the president said he “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
Cornyn stayed neutral in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, and in 2023, as Trump was running for a second term, Cornyn said his “time has passed him by.” (Cornyn eventually endorsed Trump.) Cornyn also said the criminal charges alleging that Trump mishandled classified documents were “very serious.”
Paxton stressed his loyalty to Trump throughout the Senate primary, noting that he led a lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results.
Paxton and his allies are already gearing up to take on Talarico. Lone Star Liberty PAC, a super PAC supporting Paxton, released a TV ad featuring Trump calling Talarico “weird” and highlighting a slew of his past statements about God and race.
A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico once said “God is nonbinary,” comments he defended in an interview with Semafor last year. He said that the remark “is not theologically controversial, that God is beyond gender. Maybe the way I phrased it, I can understand why it would get some people upset. But I would think that all of my fellow Christians would agree with that statement, that God is beyond gender, or, as the Apostle Paul says: In Christ, there is neither male nor female. That’s not me, that’s Ephesians.”
Talarico, meanwhile, has said his campaign would not hinge on his GOP opponent, suggesting he would make the same case against Paxton or Cornyn.
“We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system,” Talarico said in a statement last week, saying that both GOP candidates “have embodied a broken politics that enriches wealthy donors while costs skyrocket for the rest of us.”
“Our movement to take back Texas for working people rises above party politics — because the biggest fight in this country is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom,” he added.
The general election in Texas is expected to be expensive, with some Senate Republicans warning that it could take more money to prop up Paxton. So far, Talarico has raised more than $40 million, though he has already spent most of those funds as he won a hotly contested primary, reporting nearly $10 million in his campaign account at the end of March. Paxton has raised $7.6 million, and his campaign had $2.3 million left to spend as of May 6.
But Paxton’s victory on Tuesday came despite being outspent in the 11 weeks since the March 3 primary. Cornyn’s campaign and an allied super PAC spent more than $21 million on ads since the March 3 primary, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Paxton and an allied super PAC spent nearly $7 million.