Cornyn loses Texas Senate primary to Paxton
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- John Cornyn lost his Texas Senate Republican primary runoff to Attorney General Ken Paxton by double digits on Tuesday, becoming the latest GOP incumbent to fall after crossing President Trump.
- Trump endorsed Paxton last week as "a true MAGA Warrior" and called Cornyn "VERY disloyal to me," capping weeks of backing primary challengers in Indiana, Louisiana, and Kentucky against incumbents who broke with his agenda.
- Cornyn's campaign and allied groups spent nearly $100 million on the air war, including a summer ad where Cornyn said he "voted with President Trump 99% of the time" and a homepage photo of the two men with thumbs up.
- Cornyn proposed renaming a stretch of interstate from the Texas Gulf Coast to Montana as "Interstate 47" — the "Trump Interstate" — and in March reversed his long-held support for the filibuster in a New York Post op-ed to advance Trump's voting restrictions.
- Cornyn championed $11 billion for border wall work in Trump's signature tax-and-spending bill, despite calling the wall project "naive" during Trump's 2016 campaign, and in May 2023 told reporters "Trump's time has passed him by."
- Former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican Trump critic, said watching Cornyn's repositioning was "rather painful to watch" and added, "No office is worth that."
Why it matters: Cornyn's loss is the costliest demonstration yet that Trump can end a senator's career through a late endorsement: a four-term incumbent with 23 years of Senate experience, nearly $100 million, and a willingness to reverse his signature institutional position on the filibuster still lost by double digits. The pattern now extends across four states (Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas), reshaping the cost calculus for any Republican considering breaking with the president.
