On paper, John Cornyn should be unbeatable in a Republican primary race. Since he first took office in 2002, the senior senator from Texas has been a right-wing stalwart. He swiftly made a name for himself in 2004 by comparing same-sex marriage to a “union of man and box turtle.” In the Donald Trump era, Cornyn has been a loyal MAGA soldier, backing every ridiculous Trump nominee to the Cabinet and voting in line with the president’s agenda over 99% of the time.
The lone exception was the 2020 presidential election. Cornyn accepted Joe Biden’s victory as legitimate, and he pushed back — “gently,” in the words of the Texas Tribune — in the weeks after the election when Trump fired Chris Krebs, an election security official at the Department of Homeland Security who called the president’s claims of fraud were “unsubstantiated.” Still, Cornyn voted against Trump’s impeachment following Jan. 6. But three years later, after the president declared his candidacy for president in 2024, he said “President Trump’s time has passed him by.” (He later admitted he was wrong about that.)
