John Cornyn is one of the winningest politicians in Texas history. But he might not even make it out of the GOP primary this time.
We need to think more about the 2026 midterm elections and start preparing for them right now. That means doing more outreach and listening to the concerns of people in your community – and not just the folks you agree with 100% of the time.
While hard work and good organization are essential for victory, occasionally Republicans unintentionally help us out.
In Texas, there is a GOP primary for US senator which will pit a rightwing incumbent senator against an extreme far right challenger who has had a host of ethical issues. The latter is leading in polls.
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.
Ultra MAGA Texas Republicans don't see Cornyn as sufficiently pro-Trump.
[H]is 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. [ ... ] 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, 2021, 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.
Paxton sounds like a slightly less orange version of Trump.
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.
There is a potential third candidate in the GOP primary.
One potential GOP wildcard is Wesley Hunt, a two-term, millennial African American representative from metro Houston with a fondness for three-piece suits. [ ... ] 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.
I don't expect the Hunt candidacy to go anywhere. Pragmatism is not a big selling point for Republicans these days.
A primary where Paxton beats Cornyn but becomes less electable in a general election has Democrats seeing an opportunity.
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.
Let me make a suggestion to Texas Dems. Try to recruit actor Matthew McConaughey as a Senate candidate. He's a moderate Texan whose views on guns and civility are in tune with the Democratic mainstream. He's been courted by members of both parties in the past though he is not the sort of person who would feel comfortable as a Trump lickspittle.
