Inside Texas Republicans’ civil war: MAGA Paxton vs. Establishment Cornyn
May 26 is perhaps the most consequential night of Sen. John Cornyn’s political career.
He’s been in the U.S. Senate since 2003 and in an elected office for four decades. “He’s been in office since I was in college, and I’m 63,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton likes to remind campaign trail spectators.
But the longtime senator’s winning streak could come to an end this month when he faces Paxton in the Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate. Early voting starts May 18 and runs through May 22.
Cornyn, 74, officially announced his bid for a fifth term in March 2025, offering himself as “a battle-tested partner” to President Donald Trump. Paxton announced his campaign in early April of that year, telling Fox New’s Laura Ingraham it’s “definitely time for a change in Texas.”
U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican, was also in the field of leading candidates in a primary that was marked by massive ad spending, declarations of conservative credentials and courting Trump and his supporters.
Cornyn narrowly clinched the first place spot on March 3 with 42% of votes to Paxton’s 41.5%. Hunt captured 13.5%. Neither candidate secured more than half of votes, the threshold needed to win outright, pushing the heated contest into overtime.
In the three months since the primary, the race has continued to draw national eyes as Cornyn tries to keep his seat in his toughest primary season to date.
The winner of the May runoff faces Democratic nominee James Talarico in the November general election.
Cornyn’s campaign has focused on the senator’s experience in Congress and electability in November while pouncing on Paxton for scandals in his personal and professional life.
The Paxton camp has highlighted the attorney general’s support of Trump and track record in court as a Republican fighter, as they cast Cornyn as an ineffective member of the Washington establishment.
Who’s ahead is hard to say. The candidates are in a “technical tie,” said Rice University political science professor Mark Jones.
A University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll fielded between April 28 and May 1 found that 48% of likely Republican runoff voters plan to vote for Paxton and 45% plan to vote for Cornyn. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.
“Regardless of where the polls are, it’s all within, sort of, a rough range where both Cornyn and Paxton have a realistic prospect of both winning and losing on May 26,” Jones, who worked on the survey, said in an interview ahead of its release.
The candidates’ playbooks
Paxton has spent his time on the campaign trail urging the state’s most active conservative voters to go to the polls in May.
He was in Grapevine in April, fresh off headlining a dinner at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine the month before. Members of a local Republican club gathered in an upstairs conference room at Stacy Furniture and Design to hear from the runoff candidate.
After outlining his introduction to politics (including a campaign stump story about being stood up for lunch with a state House candidate that he then decided to challenge), Paxton got to his pitch.
“Can you name one great or even good accomplishment — not bad, I don’t want to hear the bad ones; we all know those — of John Cornyn in his 40, let’s take the whole 40, plus years?” Paxton said.
Cornyn began his political career in 1984 when he was elected as a Bexar County district court judge and went on to serve on the Texas Supreme Court and as Texas attorney general before heading to the U.S. Senate.
“Do you know, no one’s ever given me an answer?” Paxton said. “Not even his supporters.”
Paxton has served as Texas attorney general since 2015. Before that he represented parts of North Texas in the state House and Senate.
Paxton told the crowd that Cornyn is “not a Trump guy” and touted election integrity as his top issue. Paxton directed onlookers to his time as Texas attorney general, supporting Trump and taking on the Biden and Obama administrations, as well as “big tech” and “big pharma.”
“It’s time for a change,” he said, rounding out the speech.
Cornyn’s had his chance, Paxton said.
“He’s not proven himself,” he said. “Texas deserves better.”
Cornyn has also been on the attack.
“We think that the comparison between Cornyn and Paxton favors us, particularly as … voters learn more about Paxton’s indefensible record both in office and personally,” said Cornyn spokesperson Matt Mackowiak.
Paxton’s campaign did not return interview requests.
Paxton’s tenure as attorney general has been ridden with ethical complaints, including 2023 impeachment proceedings and related whistleblower complaints in which he was accused of using his office to benefit a political donor. He was ultimately cleared of the impeachment charges after a Senate trial.
His personal life has also been the subject of scrutiny amid a public divorce on “biblical grounds” that involves allegations of infidelity, creating plenty of fodder for Cornyn’s camp to capitalize on.
In recent weeks, voters have been presented with a Mother’s Day-themed advertisement asking Texas moms: “Would you want your daughters to marry a man like Ken Paxton?” Another ad accuses Paxton of claiming to be tough on crime as attorney general but letting child predators off easy.
A plasticken.com site affiliated with Cornyn’s campaign plays on the idea of a Ken doll from Barbie, offering different versions of Paxton-dolls like a “crooked edition,” a “commie Ken,” a “clueless Ken” and a “mortgage fraud Ken.”
The senator teased the tactic in March on election night (sans dolls.)
“Over the next 12 weeks, Texas Republican primary voters will hear more about my record of delivering conservative victories in the United States Senate and learn more about Ken’s indefensible personal behavior and failures in office,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn’s campaign and Republican leadership in Washington see the senator as Republicans’ best shot to beat Talarico come November as they try to keep their majority in the U.S. Senate.
“John Cornyn is a battle-tested conservative with a proven record of working with President Trump to deliver for Texans, and we know he’ll defeat ‘God is nonbinary’ James Talarico handily,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Joanna Rodriguez in a written statement.
A recent Texas Politics Project poll put Talarico ahead of Paxton by eight percentage points and ahead of Cornyn by seven points. A poll from Texas Public Opinion Research had Talarico 5 points ahead of Paxton and 3 points ahead of Cornyn.
The lead up to May 26
The election season patter from both campaigns is to be expected.
And really, the runoff race is just starting, said Republican political consultant Craig Murphy, who isn’t working on either campaign. The runoff election is dependent on negative messages, which lose their teeth the more they’re heard.
“I think both campaigns have had incentive to keep working, but not to shoot all of their weapons before people are starting to vote,” Murphy said.
If you’re Cornyn’s team in the coming weeks, you keep hammering the idea that Paxton will be a liability for Republicans in November and Paxton’s ethical issues, Jones said — issues that will also be attacked by Democrats in the fall if the attorney general advances to the November ballot.
If you’re Paxton’s campaign, you drum that Cornyn is insufficiently conservative, including in the Senate for two decades, he said.
Paxton can also use his position as attorney general to announce investigations and file lawsuits to generate headlines that conservative voters see as positive news, Jones added.
In recent weeks, the attorney general has announced investigations into Lululemon for the possible presence of “forever chemicals” in its clothing and school district compliance with state laws related to school prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Paxton also sued Netflix for allegedly spying on users, accused a Democratic fundraising platform of lying to customers and challenged what his office describes as a “birth tourism” operation in the Houston area.
Cornyn’s team questions the timing.
“Not every lawsuit is one that we would quibble with, but he’s obviously ramped up that activity during campaign season, and I think that, in and of itself, ought to tell voters everything,” Mackowiak said.
Traditionally devoted, partisan voters are the most likely to show up for a primary runoff.
“The more the electorate looks like the March electorate, the better Cornyn’s likely to do,” Jones said. “Whereas, the more the electorate looks like a traditional May runoff electorate, the better Paxton is likely to do.”
However, this runoff is also more high profile than others in recent years: “We really haven’t had a Republican primary runoff of this level of visibility and interest in recent history,” Jones said. He looks back to 2012 when Sen. Ted Cruz faced former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst as the most contemporary flashpoint.
The key for Cornyn will be convincing voters who typically don’t make it to the polls for runoffs to cast their ballot for him, Jones said.
Cornyn does have the financial edge. The senator’s campaign has raised more than Paxton’s and has $7.6 million left on hand to spend, it announced Monday. Paxton has $2.1 million on hand as of March 31, per FEC records.
“I don’t know anyone anywhere that predicted us finishing first on March 3, and we did,” Mackowiak said, later adding: “We’ve shown that we can over perform. We’ve shown that we can turn votes out. We’ve now got to do that again, a second time.”
The Trump factor
Hanging over the race is the question of whether Trump will endorse.
The president previously praised both candidates and teased an endorsement after round one of voting, but has yet to weigh in.
Paxton has made a point to raise Cornyn’s storied history of support for the president with potential voters, while Cornyn’s team has stressed that the senator has voted in support of the president’s policies more than 99% of the time.
Mackowiak declined to comment on the endorsement odds.
Murphy, the Republican consultant, doesn’t think the president will at this point.
“Even though Cornyn consistently does better than Paxton in the November polls, it’s not a huge amount, so the urgency is less there,” he said.
Republican leadership is reportedly still in talks with Trump about his involvement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, has spoken to the president about the endorsement as recently as the first full week of May, according to Punchbowl News.
“I still don’t know where he’s headed,” Thune reportedly said.
