Republicans Confront a Senate Primary From Hell

Sen. John Cornyn is anathema to many Republican primary voters. Ken Paxton, a state attorney general, may be too tarred by scandal to win a general election.

Ten months out, the Texas Senate primary is shaping up as the GOP trainwreck of the 2026 election cycle, a cash-burning demolition derby that threatens to fracture the party, force the White House to intervene and perhaps even put an otherwise safe seat at risk in November.

“I hate to see that kind of internecine warfare in my party,” said Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas). “It’ll be an ugly one.”

For Cornyn, a pillar of the GOP establishment who only recently fell just short of being elected the Republican leader in the Senate, it’s an awkward position to be in after close to four decades in statewide elected office.

He’s maintained a consistently conservative voting record and rarely broken with President Donald Trump on issues of substance. He’d be a strong favorite to win a fifth term if he were the GOP nominee. But increasingly, Cornyn’s become out of step with primary voters in a state party that is now effectively more Breitbart Republican than Bush Republican.

Much of his problem is stylistic — Cornyn looks, talks and acts like a traditional politician; he’s one of the few senators for whom it takes little imagination to envision serving in a different era.

But his brand of Republicanism is also viewed by many in the party as insufficiently MAGA. Cornyn was booed at the 2022 state GOP convention for working on a bipartisan gun safety deal in the Senate in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre. His skepticism about Trump’s electoral prospects — expressed as recently as 2023, when he told reporters, "I think President Trump's time has passed him by” — hasn’t endeared him to the party grassroots.

Yet while elements of his voting record are a sore point, Cornyn is by no means a political heretic — no one could ever mistake him for moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and he invariably has voted with the Trump administration. As one Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, pointed out, “You’re going to replace a guy who votes with Trump all the time for another guy who will vote with Trump all the time.”

Paxton, however, has nearly flawless MAGA credentials. He lacks Cornyn’s senatorial mien but is a Trump loyalist who played a key role in the president’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election — even speaking at the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse that preceded the attack on the Capitol.

But the dogged devotion to Trump — whose third presidential bid he endorsed in November 2022, at a time when most elected Republicans were skeptical of Trump’s political prospects — isn’t what truly makes Paxton beloved among the conservative grassroots.

Instead, it’s that he has the ultimate credential of MAGA authenticity. Like Trump, Paxton has been subject to his own FBI raid and his own impeachment trial.

The Texas attorney general has faced multiple investigations by state and federal authorities for misconduct, culminating in his 2023 impeachment by the Republican controlled Texas House of Representatives. After an extended pressure campaign by Trump allies, where Paxton repeatedly likened himself to the then-former president in being persecuted by RINOs and the deep state, the attorney general was acquitted by the state Senate after a trial over allegations that he abused his power, accepted bribes and obstructed justice.

The experience left Paxton with diehard support on the hard right of the Texas Republican Party, which has been embroiled in a civil war with more traditional conservatives. Among his backers: GOP Rep. Troy Nehls, the cigar-chomping Trump enthusiast from suburban Houston, who told reporters recently, “I just don't think that John Cornyn can be trusted.”

Paxton’s misdeeds, though, have made him loathed by many establishment Republicans — particularly Cornyn, who has gone after his successor as state attorney general in pointed, personal terms. The baggage Paxton brings to the race would make him a far dicier GOP nominee than Cornyn in a midterm election where Democrats are likely to turn out in force.

One potential GOP wildcard is Wesley Hunt, a two-term, millennial African American congressman from metro Houston with a fondness for three-piece suits.

First elected in 2022 as a Trump acolyte after losing a bid two years before as a more traditional Republican, Hunt is considered a political striver even by the thirsty standards of Capitol Hill. He stumped in Iowa for Trump before the 2024 caucuses and, in a sign of even higher ambitions, recently appeared in New Hampshire in support of local Republicans.

The argument for Hunt is that he is far more palatable to MAGA diehards than Cornyn but without the toxic miasma of allegations that taint Paxton with general election voters.

Hunt has already met with top White House political aides to lay out the case for his candidacy, and an associated super PAC is spending on television ads to build up his name ID. However, in a state as big as Texas, the PAC’s television buy is still a drop in the bucket. No sitting House member from Texas has won a major statewide race since Phil Gramm in 1984, and Hunt is still far better known at Mar-a-Lago than in Midland.

While Cornyn has consistently trailed Paxton in primary polls, the senator is by no means a dead man walking — he is expected to have a massive financial advantage over his rival. However well-regarded Paxton might be at the moment among primary voters, that may not last after Cornyn carpet bombs the airwaves against him.

“Theoretically, they would know him well, but they don't,” said longtime GOP state political consultant Craig Murphy, who is not working for any candidate in the race. “They don't know him like they'll know him after” a negative ad blitz on Cornyn’s behalf.

Jesse Hunt, a former top staffer at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, noted that a free-spending Texas Senate primary could have unwelcome spillover effects on the national Senate map.

“Texas is a very expensive state to run a campaign in, and resources are not unlimited,” he said. “A lot of the people who may be asked to get involved in that sort of intra-party feud in a state like Texas, could also be asked to help fund efforts to flip Georgia and flip other Democrat held states.”

A fractious primary could also put an otherwise safe seat in play on a Senate map that features few pickup opportunities for Democrats. According to a recent poll released by the Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP-leadership aligned super PAC, both Cornyn and Hunt led former Democratic Rep. Colin Allred by single digits in a head-to-head matchup. Paxton, however, trailed Allred, who is mulling a run, by a percentage point.

Looming over everything is Trump, and the potentially catalytic effect of his endorsement.

The result, as one Texas Republican operative pointed out, is that the race is currently playing out as two parallel campaigns. In Washington, it is a scramble to attract the all-important Trump imprimatur, as well as to get the various powerful GOP-affiliated outside groups to start spending in the race. Paxton has never been considered a formidable fundraiser, and the first FEC reports of both his campaign and super PAC will be heavily scrutinized. Cornyn has recently been zealously positioning himself as a Trump supporter, even posing for a photograph while reading The Art of the Deal.

Further heightening the stakes, Paxton has hired Axiom, the firm led by prominent political consultant Jeff Roe, to guide his campaign. Axiom, which has long had Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as a client, is uniquely divisive in the GOP — the company helped steer Glenn Youngkin’s successful 2021 gubernatorial campaign in Virginia and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ far less successful 2024 presidential campaign. Its work for DeSantis in particular has made the firm persona non grata in corners of Trump world, even while it remains an institution in Texas Republican politics.

Paxton used the firm for his 2022 primary race, where he trounced political dynast George P. Bush, a contest in which Paxton received an enthusiastic endorsement from Trump.

Its involvement has added another level of complexity for a race that is being fought as much in Old Town Alexandria — a hub of GOP political and advocacy shops — as in Amarillo, as national consultants try to game out big picture strategy to avoid an expensive fiasco while local activists bicker over Cornyn’s voting record and Paxton’s rap sheet.

However bruising the primary is shaping up to be, with two political heavyweights pounding each other in the run up, there’s a real chance the field could completely shift before ballots are printed.

There’s already ample speculation that Cornyn’s name will not appear on the ballot next year and that the septuagenarian incumbent will not risk ending his political career by losing to an opponent he despises. However, Cornyn has brushed it aside — tartly asking one major Texas donor who floated the possibility on Twitter, “What are you smoking?”

If Cornyn bows out, not only does it line things up for Hunt to jump in but potentially other candidates as well in a state where heated multicandidate primaries usually end in runoffs.

However, the filing deadline isn’t until December, and the primary isn’t until March 2026. For now, only one thing is for sure: As of right now, John Cornyn, who has never before faced a competitive Senate primary, appears to be the underdog.

Cornyn though has remained unfazed. “His lead is shrinking already and the battle has just begun!” the senator tweeted Monday, in response to the SLF poll, which showed him trailing Paxton by 16 points. “He must be getting nervous.”