Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a loyal supporter of President Trump and the America First movement, announced this week that he will challenge Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary. Cornyn is up for reelection in 2026.
I remember voting for Cornyn the first time he ran for Senate in 2002. In those days, Washington's politicians—the crème de la crème of leadership—were all from Texas. George W. Bush served as president for two terms. Rick Perry was the governor and a future presidential candidate, having served as Bush's lieutenant governor before Bush ascended to the presidency in 2000. [Perry is the longest-serving governor in Texas history––for over 14 years. As energy secretary, he was one of the few members of Trump's cabinet to serve the entire term].
If the conservative belt ran through the South, Texas was its buckle. Over in the House, Tom DeLay, a firebrand conservative from Sugar Land, served for seven years as the Majority Whip, the third-most senior role in that chamber. Texas has a legacy of training its future Washington leaders in Austin. John Cornyn was no exception, although he came up through the ranks as an elected judge in Austin before becoming the state's attorney general.
Following the Republican victory in the 2002 midterm elections, DeLay rose to become the House Majority Leader. Caught in that wave, Cornyn easily won his Senate seat, running as an arch-conservative and taking over the seat of another conservative, Phil Gramm, who had announced his retirement in 2001.
Cornyn has served four terms in the Senate and is seeking a fifth. If he wins and completes his fifth term, he will be the longest-serving senator in Texas history and the fourth-longest-serving senator in GOP history (after Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, and Richard Shelby). We need a dose of new blood representing Texas in the Senate, and for this reason alone, Cornyn needs to go.
More importantly, Cornyn has not been a reliable conservative. He has often sided with Washington liberals on key issues and eschewed the views of Texas voters. During the Biden administration, he voted to pass many of Biden's priorities, including the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), a boondoggle that promised highway and port upgrades but mainly increased the deficit. Cornyn also co-sponsored the CHIPS and Science Act (2022), a $280 billion package of corporate subsidies that included $52 billion for chip production subsidies and research funding.
On Ukraine, Cornyn has voted to send more than $175 billion in aid to the war-torn country, siding with the Democrats on every Ukraine-related legislation. In 2022, he co-sponsored the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act with Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). In 2024, Cornyn voted with 21 other Republicans and Democrats to pass a $95 billion package, including $61 billion for Ukraine, alongside aid for Israel and Taiwan. It passed 70-29, with Cornyn joining Democrats like Mark Warner (D-VA) despite fierce opposition from President Trump and conservative Republicans like Ted Cruz, who tied it to border security demands. Cornyn's floor speeches have extolled the virtues of globalism and American investments in foreign wars to protect the international world order. He rarely talks about the perils of war––including death, injury, and strife––that the Russia-Ukraine war has brought to the region.
Ken Paxton is the polar opposite of Cornyn. Paxton served in the Texas House and Senate, where he was consistently ranked among the most conservative lawmakers. As Texas' 51st Attorney General, Paxton repeatedly sued the Biden administration in federal courts (over 100 times, his campaign website says) on every matter of federal overreach. His courtroom victories have brought substantial relief to Texas and other states.
In April 2021, Paxton sued the Biden administration for terminating the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as "Remain in Mexico," a Trump-era policy requiring asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico during U.S. court proceedings. Paxton won in federal court, and the Supreme Court upheld the ruling. Paxton is a diehard MAGA supporter and is likely to get Trump's endorsement. [Paxton led a high-profile, though unsuccessful, 2020 lawsuit to overturn the presidential election results in four states, drawing praise from Trump allies].
As Trump redesigns the entire federal bureaucracy, the world order for security, and the global rules of trade, he needs a reliable conservative in the Senate representing Texas. While the Lone Star State has voted for Trump during all three presidential runs, his 13.7-point victory in 2024 was his most dominant. It was the widest margin for a presidential candidate in the state since native son George W. Bush's 2004 reelection, reflecting a significant shift in public support for the MAGA movement in Texas.
Like Trump, Paxton has been frequently targeted by investigations, including on felony securities fraud charges for allegedly misleading investors in a tech company. This case dragged on for nearly a decade until he settled in 2024, paying $271,000 in restitution without admitting guilt. In 2020, eight of his top aides accused him of abusing his office to benefit Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer and donor, including claims of bribery and an extramarital affair with a woman Paul employed. An FBI investigation began, but was dropped before President Biden left office. A whistleblower lawsuit is still pending.
In February, before Paxton even announced his bid for the Senate, polling showed trouble for Cornyn. Among Republican-identifying voters, Cornyn had an approval rating of 48%—one of the lowest of statewide officeholders, according to a polling aggregate by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Paxton, meanwhile, had an approval rating of 60% among Republican-identifying voters.
The last time a Democrat from Texas won an election to the U.S. Senate was in 1988 when Lloyd Bentsen secured his fourth term. If Paxton wins the GOP primary, he will become the junior senator from Texas beginning in January 2027, a welcome relief for President Trump and the MAGA movement.
Rajkamal Rao is a columnist and a member of the tippinsights editorial board. He is an American entrepreneur and wrote the WorldView column for the Hindu BusinessLine, India's second-largest financial newspaper, on the economy, politics, immigration, foreign affairs, and sports.
