Texas just had a primary election, and the message from voters could not have been clearer: A large share of Republicans are done with incumbent Senator John Cornyn.
After years of frustration with the longtime senator, voters forced a runoff between Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn may have finished with the largest vote total, but the numbers behind that result tell a more revealing story.
Cornyn will now have to defend his record directly to Republican voters who have grown skeptical of his leadership.
Cornyn received roughly 907,000 votes out of more than 2 million total votes cast in the Republican primary. That means over a million Texans showed up to vote for someone other than the incumbent senator. The difference between Cornyn and Paxton was only about 26,000 votes — a razor-thin margin in a state as big as Texas.
Then there is Wesley Hunt, who drew nearly 293,000 votes. Combine the Paxton and Hunt totals, and more than 1.1 million voters cast ballots against John Cornyn.
After all the money Cornyn poured into the race, that should have been the headline.
Cornyn and his allies reportedly spent close to $100 million between campaign spending and super PAC support. Nearly $100 million to hold onto a Senate seat — and the result was a runoff. Paxton spent a fraction of that amount, about $4 million, and still came within striking distance.
That is not the performance of a senator who commands overwhelming support in his own party. It looks like a political establishment trying to prop up a candidate who has worn out his welcome with grassroots voters.
Yet despite the message voters sent, Washington may be preparing to rescue Cornyn anyway.
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he would soon make an endorsement in the runoff and would ask the candidate he does not choose to drop out of the race immediately.
You would struggle to find many people who have been as outspoken in support of President Trump as I have. I have defended him when the media attacked him and stood by him through years of political backlash. But I still take offense at anyone in the federal government trying to manipulate a Texas election.
Texas has a runoff system for a reason. When no candidate receives a majority, the top two candidates go back to the voters. It forces candidates to earn a true majority rather than slide through a divided field.
Cutting that process short to protect an incumbent senator who just failed to win an outright majority defeats the entire purpose.
It also ignores a political reality that has fueled so much frustration: Cornyn has spent years drifting away from the conservative voters he is supposed to represent.
Cornyn has cultivated a reputation as a Washington dealmaker, working across the aisle and negotiating major legislation with Democrats. That may earn praise from Senate leadership and the political class in Washington, but it has increasingly alienated conservatives back home.
Cornyn’s relationship with Trump has also been anything but consistent. During the lead-up to the 2024 election, Cornyn questioned Trump’s ability to win a general election and suggested Republicans might need a different nominee. He said Trump’s “time has passed him by” and argued the party needed someone who could appeal beyond Trump’s base.
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Statements like that do not disappear just because campaign season arrives.
Ken Paxton’s record with Trump tells a different story. When the political establishment turned on the former president after the 2020 election, Paxton stood with him. He challenged election procedures in court and took enormous political heat for doing so. Paxton absorbed the backlash anyway.
That loyalty is one reason grassroots conservatives rallied behind him in the primary.
And it brings the conversation back to the runoff itself.
Primary night showed that a majority of Republican voters were willing to vote for someone other than John Cornyn. Even after nearly $100 million in support, the incumbent could not clear the threshold needed to avoid a second round.
That fact should make Washington pause before rushing in to protect him.
The runoff exists so voters can finish the conversation they started on primary night. Cornyn will now have to defend his record directly to Republican voters who have grown skeptical of his leadership. Paxton will argue Texas deserves a senator who fights the establishment rather than manages it.
Those arguments belong in Texas, in front of Texas voters.
Cornyn has had decades in Washington to prove himself. The primary results suggest a growing number of Texans think that time has passed him by.
