President Donald Trump on the eve of Texas’ Republican Senate runoff endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn, jolting a race that had been shaped for months by money, establishment backing and a fight over loyalty inside the GOP.
The runoff was set for Tuesday. Cornyn is a four-term incumbent and had held a lopsided advantage in campaign finance disclosures before Trump chose sides, while at least $76 million in campaign contributions and outside spending had already flowed into the contest over the course of the primary.
Trump made clear that he saw the race through the lens of personal allegiance. He said Cornyn was “very late” in backing him in what turned out to be a “Historic Run for the Republican Nomination, and then, the Presidency,” and added that Cornyn was not supportive of him when times were tough. Cornyn’s campaign website says he voted with Trump 99.2% of the time, but that did not matter once Trump lined up behind Paxton.
The endorsement immediately upended what had been a conventional Republican primary dynamic. Cornyn, a longtime Senate figure who had cultivated the image of an elder statesman rather than a flamethrower, had the backing of Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Tim Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Even some in Trump’s orbit had been working for Cornyn, including Chris LaCivita, who was advising a pro-Cornyn super PAC and had criticized Paxton while promising an aggressive race after the March contest.
Paxton enters the runoff with his own political baggage. He is the Texas attorney general, but he was also impeached by the Republican-controlled Texas House and is facing adultery allegations amid an ongoing divorce. Trump’s endorsement gives him a powerful edge in a race that had already become a referendum on whether party loyalty to the president outweighs everything else.
The Texas contest fits a pattern that has sharpened in recent weeks. On May 5, Trump ousted five state senators in Indiana who opposed his push to gerrymander the state ahead of the November elections. On May 16, he defeated two-term incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial. On May 19, he knocked out seven-term incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a frequent critic of Trump. The Paxton-Cornyn race is the newest and perhaps clearest test of how far that grip reaches in a Senate primary.
The tension in the race is that Washington Republicans had largely settled around Cornyn before Trump moved. Paxton is the more disruptive choice, and Trump’s decision to side with him after months of establishment consolidation shows the president is willing to blow up party consensus even in a race where the odds and the fundraising had pointed the other way. What happens in Texas on Tuesday will tell Republican senators whether institutional support can still hold when Trump decides it cannot.
