Texas GOP voters choose between Cornyn and Paxton

In Katy, Texas, MAGA supporters rallied around Attorney General Ken Paxton after President Trump endorsed him as the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate—setting up a high-stakes showdown that Democrats see as a real opening for the party and the Senate majority.

KATY. Texas — The music is blaring and the smell of smoked meats fills the air at an old-school barbeque joint that is quickly running out of seats. At this campaign stop for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. the crowd looks like the kind of Houston-area coalition that thrives on energy more than caution.

Ricardo Vidaurre and his wife dance to “YMCA” and other MAGA favorites, both smiling like the night has already gone their way. “He’s not your typical politician,” Vidaurre says in Spanish. “He has guts.”

A day earlier. the atmosphere changed again when President Trump endorsed Paxton as the state’s GOP nominee for U.S. Senate. Trump’s move has already become the most expensive primary in history. The reelection campaign for four-term Sen. John Cornyn—an establishment fixture in the Texas Republican Party—is now described as being on life support.

In Katy, the rally has already taken on the feel of an early victory party. “Voting for Cornyn is like voting for a Democrat,” Vidaurre said.

Paxton’s supporters argue Cornyn betrayed the party in recent years—particularly by working with Democrats on bipartisan gun legislation after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. Texas. They also say Cornyn should have helped “nuke the Senate filibuster” to make room for the Trump-backed SAVE Act. aimed at installing new voting restrictions.

For all the intensity, there is also a deeper fight underneath it: who gets to define what the Republican Party looks like after Trump.

Republicans have spent more than $100 million in a bitter fight that became a proxy battle for the future of the party. During both the GOP primary and the subsequent runoff, Cornyn and Paxton each made the case that they alone had the bona fides to lead the GOP into a post-Trump era.

Cornyn’s message to voters is that he voted with Trump more than 99% of the time. Paxton counters that his work leading Texas in lawsuits against Democrats and their policies in Washington eclipses Cornyn’s long tenure.

Standing in Katy, Paxton leaned into the comparison in a line designed to land with people who came to this fight already convinced. Paxton, 63, told the crowd, “That’s more stuff in one week than John Cornyn in 42 years.” He added, “That’s pretty pathetic.”

But Paxton arrives in this race with political baggage that refuses to fade.

Since he became a state official more than ten years ago. he has faced criminal indictments. whistleblower allegations. and an impeachment effort by the Texas House. In the Texas Senate, he was acquitted. His estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce last summer on “biblical grounds.”.

When the subject of the divorce accusations came up, supporters dismissed the turmoil as noise. “Gossip,” Ricardo Vidaurre said.

Cornyn tells a different story about what this primary has already revealed.

Cornyn, 74, argues the race exposed a crack in the red wall of Texas—one that has stayed unusually steady for decades. A Democrat has not been elected statewide in Texas since 1994. A Democrat also hasn’t represented Texas in the U.S. Senate since 1993.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said the contest reflects a broader national conflict. “The Republican Party is pulling itself apart ideologically,” he said. “This has been a long time coming. The wings of the party have been battling each other for a long while.”.

Rottinghaus described the primary as unusually raw. “The most dramatic, most mud-soaked of the primaries we’ve seen in Texas in a very long time,” he said, adding that “this race will define the future of the Texas Republican Party.”

He said a Cornyn win would reinforce influence from traditional conservatives and the business-minded governing wing of the party. A Paxton win, Rottinghaus argued, would signal that the MAGA populist faction rising within statewide GOP politics is more likely to dominate the future.

There’s another question looming for Democrats, and it isn’t just whether they can win—it’s whether the nominee is built for it.

Rottinghaus warned that whatever form MAGA takes, it could be harder to sustain in a general election. “John Cornyn’s most profound argument isn’t that he’s the best Republican in the primary, but he’s the best Republican in the general,” Rottinghaus said.

On the campaign trail, Cornyn has made the threat to the party’s Senate position personal. He warned that the path to a blue wave in Texas runs through Paxton and could cost Republicans control of the Senate. In a statement Cornyn made to NPR last week from a North Texas stop ahead of Trump’s endorsement. he said. “If a Paxton were the nominee. this would be the first chance they’ve had in 30 or 40 years or longer to pick up a statewide office. And one as important as the U.S. Senate.”.

Even after Trump blindsided Cornyn with the nod for Paxton, Cornyn and his campaign have kept pushing. Cornyn told supporters from a stop in Houston. “I represent the whole Republican Party right now. having been elected to office in the primaries and in a general election.” He said the race was “a matter of simple arithmetic. ” and described his political approach as inclusion—“addition. not subtraction”—arguing the party needs to “broaden and welcome people.”.

Not everyone buys the promise that unity will hold.

Vicki Fullerton, a Cornyn supporter, called Trump’s endorsement a betrayal. She worried that if Paxton is nominated, the party will have to divert critical resources from other close Senate races. “We’re going to have to pour so much more money in to protect the seat and they have a less viable candidate than John Cornyn. ” she said.

Cornyn has echoed the concern from another direction, arguing that spending and energy in Texas could drain momentum from close contests in Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.

That pressure builds on headwinds Republicans are already facing going into November: concerns over the economy, rising gas prices, and fallout from the Iran war. Add Republican infighting on top of that, and Democratic strategists argue the “red wall” could split.

Democratic Party strategist Chuck Rocha said the common thread among Texas voters is anger. “The commonality of all the voters in Texas are, they’re just pissed,” he said. “They’re pissed things cost twice as much. And they’re really pissed about the price of gas.”

Rocha argued that Democrats have been tempted by “blue mirages” in the past—examples he pointed to include Democrat Beto O’Rourke. who lost Senate. presidential. or governor races in Texas; MJ Hegar. who lost to Cornyn in 2020 despite hopes of a last-minute surge in Democratic turnout shifting the race; and state Sen. Wendy Davis, who failed in her bid for governor in 2014 despite support from the national Democratic Party.

This time, Rocha said, is different. He contrasted Republican infighting in Texas with Democrats’ decision to avoid a runoff in their own party’s Senate nomination, where state Rep. James Talarico emerged as the nominee.

He also said Democrats believe they’re seeing Latino voters who supported Trump return to the party, driven by concerns about the economy and what he called aggressive immigration policies.

There is, however, another worry hanging in the air. The article notes that recent NPR reporting suggests some swing voters hold negative perceptions of Democrats nationally, “in part due to party infighting.”

Even with that caution, Rocha and others argue that a Texas win could help Democrats win back the Senate come November, pointing to the divisions the expensive Republican primary has laid bare.

“The one thing you don’t do in politics is if your enemy is digging a hole,” Rocha said. “You don’t run over and take the shovel out of their hands.”

Texas politics Ken Paxton John Cornyn Trump endorsement U.S. Senate GOP primary SAVE Act voting restrictions Uvalde MAGA Democrats Chuck Rocha Ricardo Vidaurre