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| If Trump can survive scandals, so can Ken Paxton. |
President Donald J. Trump finally endorsed a candidate in the Texas U.S. Senate Republican primary runoff.
He throws his support to Ken Paxton, the controversial Texas Attorney General over longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). The failure to pass that SAVE Act and his tepid support for several of his nominees led to the Paxton endorsement.
Republican were angry over this endorsement. They wanted the president to stay out of the race.
Trump on Tuesday endorsed Ken Paxton in the Republican runoff for U.S. Senate in Texas, ending over a year of furious lobbying and giving the attorney general a significant boost in his campaign against Sen. John Cornyn.
“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on social media, praising Paxton’s support for ending the Senate filibuster and the GOP’s signature voting restrictions bill, and dinging Cornyn for being late to support his 2024 presidential bid.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump said. “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination, and then, the Presidency, itself, both of which were Landslide Victories and, more importantly, gave us the Country that we have today.”
In a statement, Paxton said he was honored by the endorsement and looked forward to “championing his America First agenda in the Senate.”
“I have consistently stood by President Trump, even when the Washington establishment and career politicians like John Cornyn turned their back on the President,” Paxton said. “Now, I look forward to winning this critical Senate seat and delivering victory after victory for the people of Texas.”
The endorsement comes more than two months after Trump initially pledged to weigh in on the race and with just a week to go until the election. Tens of thousands of ballots have already been cast during the state’s early voting period, which began Monday and will run through the end of the week.
The day after the March primary, Trump said that he would endorse “soon” in order to stop a primary battle that, he said at the time, “cannot, for the good of the party, and our Country, be allowed to go on any longer.”
Despite promising to intervene quickly after March 3, when Cornyn finished narrowly ahead of Paxton, Trump kept both campaigns on edge for months. He initially said he would ask his non-endorsed candidate to drop out, but his neutral stance meant the opportunity to do so came and went.
Instead, the two camps and their allies have spent nearly $25 million on advertising in the runoff, much of it used for the two candidates to bash each other in intensely personal terms. It brings the total ad cost of the Republican primary to nearly $125 million, most of which has come from the pro-Cornyn side.
In teasing the endorsement Tuesday morning, Trump said he’s “had my mind made up for a long time.”
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| Thune and McConnell are angry that Trump picked Paxton over Cornyn. |
The endorsement is a serious blow to Cornyn and his political allies, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who have repeatedly pushed the White House to back their colleague both publicly and privately. On the trail, Cornyn has hugged Trump closely, boasting of his 99% voting record with the president’s position and going so far as to propose a bill last week to rename U.S. Highway 287 as Interstate 47 in honor of Trump.
The Cornyn camp has made the case that Paxton’s candidacy, given his ethical and personal baggage, would endanger Republican control of both the Senate seat and down-ballot races, including the U.S. House seats that the Legislature redrew last summer to elect Republicans. Cornyn allies put out a memo detailing nine such districts, and 25 Texas House seats, where Paxton’s presence at the top of the ticket creates a big enough drag to put the districts in jeopardy.
In a statement Tuesday, Cornyn emphasized his pro-Trump voting record, noting that the president “has consistently called me a friend in this race,” and asked Republican voters to consider the general election stakes.
“It is now time for Texas Republican voters to decide if they want a strong nominee to help our GOP candidates down ballot and defeat [Democratic nominee James] Talarico in November, or a weak nominee who jeopardizes everything we care about,” Cornyn said. “I trust the Republican voters of Texas.”
News of Trump’s endorsement frustrated Senate Republicans, who have routinely advocated for Cornyn.
“None of us control what the president does,” Thune said Tuesday. “That doesn’t change the way I feel. I am certainly supportive of, continue to be supportive of, Senator Cornyn and his re-election.”
The president’s decision to endorse Paxton reflects his confidence that Talarico is a weak candidate. The Austin Democrat has polled ahead of both Cornyn and Paxton on numerous occasions this cycle, leading those in Cornyn’s camp to urge voters to nominate the senior senator, who has outrun fellow Republicans on numerous occasions.
Trump initially said in early March that Republicans needed to come together to “focus on putting him away, quickly and decisively.” But in the weeks since, Trump has bashed Talarico over his liberal social views and said that either Cornyn or Paxton should beat him easily.
“I believe that any human being running against him, sick, incompetent, close to death or, even a child, would win,” Trump said in late March.
Talarico reacted to the endorsement by renewing his contention that “it doesn’t matter who wins this runoff.”
“We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system,” Talarico said in a statement. “For decades, John Cornyn and Ken Paxton have embodied a broken politics that enriches wealthy donors while costs skyrocket for the rest of us.”
Democrats have made no secret of their preference for Paxton, who they believe is beatable. In a statement, Senate Majority PAC, the campaign arm for Senate Democrats, noted Paxton’s prior scandals and the fact that Trump endorsed against a candidate backed by some $100 million from Republican establishment groups and donors.
“With all the baggage, it’s no wonder that one-in-four John Cornyn voters say they’ll vote for James Talarico if Paxton is the nominee,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said. “Talarico has $27 million, leads in the polls, and has never once had his own staff call the FBI on him. We’ll take those odds.”
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| Happy trails. |
Trump has backed challengers to Republican incumbents on numerous occasions this cycle. He endorsed against Indiana state senators who voted against his redistricting push and is currently trying to force out Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who frequently votes against the Republican majority. Trump also successfully weighed in against Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict the president in his 2021 impeachment trial and finished third in his primary on Saturday.
But Trump’s endorsement against Cornyn represents a new phase of his reshaping of the GOP. Unlike others, Cornyn routinely votes with the GOP majority, voted to acquit Trump in both impeachment trials and was part of the Senate Republican leadership team during Trump’s first term.
In throwing his weight behind Paxton, Trump is rewarding a loyal soldier who led the legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election and spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021. Like Trump, Paxton has faced federal prosecution and impeachment, and survived both. And Paxton has similarly raucous support among the MAGA base that has powered Trump’s political career — a constituency that came out in full force to loudly protest Trump’s reported inclination to endorse Cornyn more than two months ago.
The president noted that loyalty in his endorsement.
“Ken Paxton has gone through a lot, in many cases, very unfairly, but he is a Fighter, and knows how to WIN,” Trump said. “Our Country needs Fighters, and also Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness. We can never allow what happened to the United States of America during the Corrupt Biden Administration, to happen again.”
On the trail, Paxton has routinely tagged Cornyn as a career politician with limited accomplishments, saying that Texas can do better. He’s also highlighted Cornyn’s rare breaks with Trump, including his support for a bipartisan gun safety bill Trump opposed and Cornyn’s doubts about Trump’s electability in 2023.
In 2023, Cornyn said that Trump’s time “has passed him by,” saying, “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”
Cornyn ultimately endorsed Trump’s presidential bid in January 2024, after he had won nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. That hesitancy appears to have been decisive in Trump’s endorsement.
Trump’s decision to weigh in now for Paxton also validates an ultimatum the attorney general proposed shortly after his second-place finish in the primary.
Paxton offered to consider dropping out of the race if the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, a voting restrictions bill that is a top priority of Trump’s.
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| This is going to be a challenge. Talerico has a 40% of winning. |
Senate passage is inhibited by the legislative filibuster, a procedural tool that requires 60 votes to end debate on most legislation. Unless Senate Republicans end the filibuster, which the conference lacks the support to do, passage of the SAVE America Act is effectively impossible.
But Paxton’s play centered the race on the bill. Though Cornyn dropped his longtime opposition to ending the filibuster in mid-March, saying he would support scrapping it in order to pass the elections bill, Trump remained mum on the runoff during the critical period in which a candidate could have dropped out.
Trump directly shouted out Paxton’s anti-filibuster stance in his endorsement.
“Ken is a Strong Supporter of TERMINATING THE FILIBUSTER and, very importantly, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, something which polls at 87%, including Dumocrats [sic], and yet can’t seem to get approved,” Trump said. “Perhaps Ken can help move these important elements of Government forward.”
Polling of the runoff has shown a tight race between Cornyn and Paxton, with most surveys indicating a tie or a narrow Paxton lead. Cornyn finished first in the primary with 42% of the vote to Paxton’s 40.5%.
Rep. Wesley Hunt, who finished third with 13.5% in the March primary, endorsed Paxton shortly after Trump did Tuesday, and asked his supporters to unite behind the attorney general.
“He has the total and complete endorsement of President Donald Trump, and he has mine as well,” Hunt said. “NOW is the time to come together, fight TOGETHER, and deliver a strong America First victory for Texas and for our nation.”
Win or lose, Cornyn will still be in the Senate for the rest of the year, when the chamber is set to take up various Trump priorities including judicial and cabinet nominees and funding for a White House ballroom.
