Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton defeats four-term incumbent John Cornyn and puts Texas in play for Democrats

President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, defeated four-term incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff for the Republican primary on Tuesday evening.

Paxton, the scandal-marred ultra-MAGA attorney general of Texas, easily dispatched Cornyn, 74, in a race that had turned intensely personal. Trump did not weigh in on the race until very late in the game, last week. Cornyn conceded the race on Tuesday evening.

The two were forced into a runoff after neither Cornyn nor Paxton, 63, won a majority of the vote in the March 2 primary. Republican senators had hoped that Trump would endorse Cornyn to avoid spending a substantial amount of money on a baggage-laden non-incumbent in a state Trump won by 13.7 points in 2024.

Trump finally endorsed Paxton at the 11th hour despite Cornyn’s repeated overtures to the president, such as shooting a photo of himself reading The Art of the Deal and taking a photo of himself in front of a fast-food restaurant named Trump Burger.

In his endorsement, Trump called Cornyn “a good man” but said the square-jawed, silver-haired Texan “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

Cornyn voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, which Trump still falsely insists was stolen from him in favor of Joe Biden. Cornyn did not, however, vote to impeach Trump over the subsequent Jan. 6 riot and storming of the Capitol, something that led Trump to endorse against Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost his primary earlier this month.

In 2023, as Trump prepared another run for president, Cornyn said Trump’s time “has passed him by,” though he would come to endorse Trump in early 2024.

By contrast, Paxton filed a lawsuit after the 2020 election to throw out the results in the swing states President Joe Biden won, an action that the Supreme Court later threw out.

Conservatives, meanwhile, dinged Cornyn for working with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) to negotiate a bipartisan gun control bill with Democratic senators after a gunman opened fire and killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of the mass shooting in Uvalde.

Tillis announced he would not run for re-election after he clashed with Trump last year over Medicaid cuts in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

Cornyn and other Texas Republicans had warned that Paxton could be a weight on Republicans down the ballot who could cost Republicans a seat in a state where Democrats have not won since 1988.

But on Tuesday in a half-empty election night party where not even most of the chairs in front of the lectern where he spoke were filled, Cornyn said he would support Paxton.

“I’ve spent most of my time in the Senate building the Republican Party in Texas, and he’s in the US Senate, and I’ve always supported the Republican ticket, and I intend to do so again this general election,” he said.

In 2023, the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives impeached Paxton on corruption charges, though the Republican-controlled state Senate voted to acquit him. The impeachment came after four of his staffers abused his office’s power to benefit a donor, real estate developer Nate Paul, in exchange for in-home renovations and employing a woman with whom Paxton allegedly had an extramarital affair.

In addition, Paxton’s wife, Angela, a Republican state senator herself, announced last year that she would divorce Paxton “on biblical grounds,” a further sign of his alleged infidelity since the Bible allows for divorce in the case of adultery.

Paxton will now square off against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, who defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett with an outright majority in the March primary.

A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico’s campaign has bet that his invoking Christianity can appeal to suburbanite Republicans who find Paxton repulsive but at the same time might have voted for Trump and will vote for three-term Gov. Greg Abbott, who preceded Paxton as attorney general.

“This election will be an indictment of the broken, corrupt political system that Ken Paxton embodies — the system that makes everything more expensive for working Texans by prioritizing billionaire mega-donors over people,” Talarico said in a video statement.

“If we the people can come together to defeat the most corrupt politician in America, we can defeat this entire corrupt system,” he said in a video.

Talarico’s campaign has also made an express appeal to young people and Hispanic voters, campaigning earlier this month with former president Barack Obama.

But Republicans have sought to paint Talarico, who represents the suburbs of Austin, as an out-of-touch liberal, hitting him for saying at one point that there are at least six biological sexes.

Lone Star Liberty PAC, a pro-Paxton outside spending group, ran an ad calling the Texas Democrat “Low-T Talarico,” a frequent attack on the right that references his having low testosterone.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee hit Talarico in its statement about the race and said Texas will stay Republican come November.

“A state President Trump won by nearly 14 points isn’t going to elect James Talarico — a radical leftist who thinks God is nonbinary and that Texas should be a welcome mat for illegals,” NRSC regional spokesperson Samantha Cantrell said in a statement. “He is the most dangerous flank of the far left. Texas isn’t swapping brisket for open borders.”

Cantrell’s statement did not mention Paxton by name.