Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate-nomination victory Tuesday has underscored how, even at a time of low favorability for President Donald Trump, MAGA zeal remains the driving force of the Republican Party base.
Mr. Paxton notched a landslide victory to become the Republican nominee in one of this year’s marquee Senate races, unseating four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn to end a bitter and protracted primary.
Mr. Paxton’s win – with over 60% of the vote, despite a significant fundraising disadvantage – now tees up a general election contest against Democratic nominee James Talarico, a progressive state representative from the Austin area. With the GOP defending a four-seat majority in the Senate, the race could determine whether Democrats win control of the chamber in November. It could also signal Republican voters’ appetite for another shift to the ideological right.
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Texas’ polarizing attorney general easily bested the veteran senator, underscoring President Donald Trump’s sway with GOP voters. November’s general election, against Democrat James Talarico, may be a tighter race.
Mr. Paxton is more ideologically conservative than Senator Cornyn, says Renee Cross, a political scientist at the University of Houston. But it’s not just policy that has fueled Mr. Paxton’s popularity with Texas conservatives.
The state attorney general “has not shown any interest in working across the aisle, or even working with the more moderate members of his party,” she adds.
The March primary, which Mr. Cornyn won by one point, and the subsequent runoff amounted to more than $130 million, one of the most expensive primaries in modern history. The general election is likely to attract even more eyeballs, and even more eye-watering sums of money.
With the political winds in midterm elections typically favoring the party outside the White House, Democrats will be hoping for an added boost from Mr. Paxton’s scandal-ridden career to date.
Shortly after his first election victory as attorney general in 2014, he was indicted on federal securities fraud charges (he settled them in 2024). In 2023 the Republican-controlled state House impeached him on allegations of corruption and bribery; the Republican-controlled state Senate acquitted him. Last year, his wife announced that they were getting a divorce “on biblical grounds.” In court filings, she alleged adultery.
Senator Cornyn made the controversies central to his campaign, calling his opponent “Crooked Ken” and warning that his scandals would imperil what has for decades been a safe Republican seat. Leaders of the National Republican Senatorial Committee reportedly pleaded with Mr. Trump to endorse the incumbent and tip the race in Senator Cornyn’s favor. The NRSC also pumped millions of dollars into the Cornyn campaign.
Instead, Mr. Trump gave an 11th-hour endorsement to Mr. Paxton. Senator Cornyn, with a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage, lost. On Tuesday night, Lauren French – spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, a fundraising arm for the Democratic Party – made note of the intraparty conflict in a statement.
“Washington Republicans burned nearly $100 million trying to stop Ken Paxton – and still lost,” she wrote. “Even members of his own party call Paxton too corrupt and too damaged for Texas. Now he’s the GOP standard-bearer. Good luck with that.”
In a social media post, Representative Talarico shared a message thanking Senator Cornyn “for his years representing our state.”
He added: “To Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”
In addition to attacking Mr. Paxton over his controversies, another favorite line from Senator Cornyn’s campaign has been that he’s voted with Mr. Trump “more than 99% of the time.”
Mr. Paxton’s victory indicates that, for the Republican base, that number needs to be 100%. Unlike Senator Cornyn, the state attorney general had been an early supporter of the president, and Mr. Paxton proved his unwavering loyalty after the 2020 election when he led a legal attempt to decertify the election results in four states that Mr. Trump lost. In the hours before the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, he stood on a stage with the president at a “Stop the Steal” rally.
In his message endorsing Mr. Paxton last week, Mr. Trump described the state attorney general as “a true MAGA warrior.” Senator Cornyn, meanwhile, “was not supportive of me when times were tough,” he wrote.
Tuesday night’s result illustrates the weight of that endorsement. Mr. Paxton appeared to be in the lead beforehand, “but Trump put him on rocket fuel,” says Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist.
“Trump endorsements aren’t gold, they’re platinum,” he adds.
Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor
After voting for Mr. Paxton in the small central Texas town of Bastrop, Chuck Acree said he wasn’t worried about losing the seat to the Democrats in the fall.
Mr. Paxton “has baggage,” says Mr. Acree, a longtime GOP voter who moved here from Nevada three years ago. “But what he’s done in office aligns with our values.”
In other primary results Tuesday night, Democratic Rep. Christian Menefee defeated long-serving Rep. Al Green in the race to represent a Houston district redrawn by state Republicans after a bitter mid-decade redistricting fight. And Democratic Rep. Colin Allred defeated Rep. Julie Johnson in a primary to represent a redrawn Dallas-area congressional district. Maureen Galindo – a Democratic nominee who called for Zionists to be imprisoned in immigrant detention centers – lost her primary to represent a redrawn central Texas district stretching from Austin to San Antonio.