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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he will challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections, setting up a barnburner clash of two Republican titans that is sure to reverberate across state and national politics.
The contest, teased by Paxton for months, promises to be among the most heated and expensive Republican primaries in the country and in recent Texas history. It also marks the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the Texas GOP’s hardline, socially conservative wing — which views Paxton as a standard-bearer — and the Cornyn-aligned, business-minded Republican old guard.
Appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show, Paxton said it was “time for a change in Texas” as he announced his Senate bid and blasted Cornyn’s “lack of production” over his 22 years in the upper chamber.
“We have another great U.S. senator, Ted Cruz, and it’s time we have another great senator that will actually stand up and fight for Republican values, fight for the values of the people of Texas, and also support Donald Trump in the areas that he’s focused on in a very significant way,” Paxton said. “And that’s what I plan on doing.”
Paxton’s candidacy poses the most serious threat to Cornyn’s political career in decades. It would mark a watershed moment in the Texas GOP’s factional struggle if Paxton — not long removed from an array of career-threatening legal battles and impeachment by his own party — managed to topple Cornyn, a mainstay of Texas politics who had an early hand in the state’s Republican takeover and reached the upper rungs of Senate GOP leadership.
The four-term senator has easily fended off competition from the right even as his party has taken a sharp turn in that direction. But now, Cornyn is facing more serious heat over his support for military aid to Ukraine, his public skepticism about Trump’s electability ahead of the 2024 election, and his role leading Senate negotiations on a bill restricting firearm access after the 2022 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School.
Still, Cornyn has remained defiant in the face of Paxton’s long-expected challenge and after losing his bid to become the next Senate majority leader — the first defeat of his political career.
Since then, he has taken on new committee assignments, putting himself on several key panels that will oversee major priorities of President Donald Trump. He ended last year with $4.1 million cash on hand, then launched his reelection bid last month with a video touting his time as Senate GOP whip “delivering the votes” for Trump’s “biggest wins” in the first years of his presidency. Those included Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
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During Trump’s first term, Cornyn voted more than 92% of the time with the president’s agenda and voted for every one of Trump’s executive and judicial appointees. He has followed a similar pattern since Trump won back the White House, again backing all the president’s nominees, including controversial picks who attracted skepticism from GOP lawmakers.
“Ken Paxton is a fraud,” a spokesperson for Cornyn’s campaign said in a statement. “This will be a spirited campaign and we assure Texans they will have a real choice when this race is over.”
As the Cornyn-Paxton clash gets underway, perhaps the biggest looming question is whether Trump will throw his support — and considerable clout in primaries — behind either candidate. The president’s endorsement has helped boost numerous GOP candidates in crowded Texas primaries since he became entrenched as the party’s most popular figure nearly a decade ago.
Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump’s 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.
Paxton’s loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers, including then-Land Commissioner George P. Bush — who, like Cornyn, went to great lengths to court Trump.
Trump also came to Paxton’s defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform.
Early polling points to a competitive race between Cornyn and Paxton. A January statewide survey by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 36% of GOP primary voters “definitely would consider” pulling the lever for Paxton, compared to 32% for Cornyn. More voters said they “might consider” voting for Cornyn than Paxton, however, and a higher percentage said they “would never” vote for Paxton — 19%, compared to 15% who said the same about Cornyn.
Paxton is starting with stronger approval than Cornyn among conservative voters, according to a February poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. The survey logged 62% approval and just 12% disapproval for Paxton among those voters, compared to 45% approval for Cornyn and 26% disapproval. The attorney general was in especially good standing with voters who identified as “strong Republican,” a group that wields outsized clout in Texas’ low-turnout primaries; just 5% of them said they disapproved of Paxton, compared to 18% for Cornyn.
Katharine Wilson contributed to this report.
Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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