The last time John Cornyn was in a primary runoff, it was 28 years ago and he easily won.
Things have changed a bit since then.
Texas is a far redder state, President Donald Trump is the undisputed kingmaker and primary voters are more conservative and willing to look past candidates’ scandals and personal baggage. All those changes are coming to a head as Cornyn enters a runoff against Attorney General Ken Paxton in his bid for a fifth term in the Senate.
The two Republican heavyweights finished just over one point apart in Tuesday’s primary, but neither reached the majority threshold to win outright. In the overtime round, Paxton is betting Republicans will behave like they usually do in a runoff, turning out in smaller numbers and favoring the candidates they see as more conservative. Cornyn, however, is staking his political fate on a riskier bet — that the intense spotlight on the race will juice turnout, to his benefit, and that the contest will be a referendum on the challenger rather than the usual focus placed on the incumbent.
On Wednesday morning, Texas GOP operatives agreed on one thing: It will be nasty.
“This is going to be a knife fight in a phone booth,” said Enrique Marquez, who previously served as chief of staff to former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan. “This runoff is not going to be business as usual.”
Marquez cited the massive amount of money expected to be spent in the runoff, the “personalities” involved — two men whose contempt for one another may only be surpassed by that of their strategists — and the stakes for November, when Democrats are aiming to win their first Senate election in Texas since 1988.
One person who could scramble the traditional assumptions about a runoff is Trump, who said Wednesday he would make an endorsement “soon” and expect the candidate he does not back to drop out.
Both Cornyn and Paxton wasted little time framing the runoff in their primary night remarks, with Cornyn promising to shed more light on Paxton’s “indefensible” personal life and predicting a “robust” turnout compared to the typical skimpy participation in May contests. And allies of Cornyn believe he has a stronger case to make for a race-altering endorsement from Trump, who has refused to weigh in so far.
Paxton, leaning into a more traditional view of a runoff, was particularly bullish on Tuesday night. He cast his close second-place finish as a coup in the face of Cornyn’s staggering spending advantage, and told supporters at his watch party that he has never lost a primary runoff by less than 30 percentage points — “and I don’t plan on starting now.”
Paxton reiterated his confidence during a Wednesday morning radio interview — but also acknowledged where he has his work cut out for him. He said he hoped he could “get closer on the money,” gain the support of third-place finisher Wesley Hunt and draw out “more conservative voters.”
The radio host, vocal Cornyn critic Chris Salcedo, told Paxton he thought Cornyn “overperformed” and lamented that primary voters did not seem fully informed of Cornyn’s record. Paxton did not entirely disagree.
“Some Republicans, MAGA Republicans, were fooled by his ads,” Paxton said. “We’re going to have to continue to educate people.”
Strategy moving forward
For Cornyn allies making the case to Trump that he should endorse the senior senator, Tuesday’s results bolstered their case.
Cornyn is poised to finish first, beating the expectations of most public polls. The margin between the two is razor thin, increasing the value of Trump’s endorsement in the runoff. And state Rep. James Talarico won the Democratic nomination over Republicans’ preferred candidate, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
“I’ve been making that case for a long time, and we’ll make it again, and today, I think even more emphatically given the outcome last night,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, told reporters Wednesday, calling it a “good night” for Cornyn.
For the Republican establishment groups and the donor class that seeded the $70 million in spending on behalf of Cornyn in the primary, the results are evidence that money still matters and that their strategy — honesty about Cornyn’s tough position in the beginning of the contest — was validated.
Moving forward, the Cornyn campaign predicts high turnout will carry the senator to victory — and that they have the resources to make it happen.
At last count, Cornyn’s campaign apparatus had over $14 million in the bank, dwarfing Paxton’s war chest of nearly $4 million. There is no telling how much more could be waiting in the chamber: A significant chunk of Cornyn’s support came from dark money, or contributions from political nonprofits that do not have to disclose donors or cash-on-hand figures. Former Gov. Rick Perry, who leads one of those nonprofits, has said his group will spend “whatever we need” on Cornyn’s race.
Cornyn has promised to make the runoff a painful experience for Paxton. In the first round, much of the spending from Cornyn’s orbit was on positive ads touting the incumbent’s pro-Trump voting record, accompanied by a large surge of attacks against Hunt. But the runoff could bring a deluge of negative ads detailing Paxton’s ethical baggage. A late primary ad from Cornyn previewed what some of those attacks might be, going after Paxton’s divorce, alleged affair and accumulation of assets while in office.
“He believes that all his misbehavior and his scandals are sort of baked in the cake, and he’s won a couple of elections since much of that has come out,” Cornyn said. “But there is much more that will come out in the runoff and which will demonstrate his unfitness for office and his liability, of his potential liability of him being the nominee in November.”
But the Paxton camp has noted that the negativity cuts both ways. They have yet to launch significant anti-Cornyn spending aimed at undercutting his conservative image, with ripe targets including his role in a bipartisan gun safety bill in 2022 and past skepticism over both Trump’s electability in 2023 and his signature border wall proposal a decade ago.
Questions remain over whether the Paxton camp can marshal the resources needed to make a robust case against Cornyn. But his supporters believe there’s no meat left on the bone for incoming attacks. Paxton overcame a flurry of opposition research in his last runoff, against George P. Bush in 2022, to win handily, and he has withstood years of scandal, casting himself as a Trump-esque victim of political persecution.
“Cornyn’s talk of ‘unleashing new attacks’ in the runoff is bluster,” a pre-primary memo from pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC said. “The truth is that from day one, his forces fired every bullet they had. There are no new attacks left — only more of the same, at ever-greater cost and with ever-diminishing returns.”
Higher turnout in GOP primaries generally benefits more mainstream Republican candidates, while runoffs, which typically have a smaller electorate dominated by the most devoted conservatives, tend to reward insurgent or hard-right office-seekers. In the days leading up to the primary, Cornyn took heat from Paxton for acknowledging in a TV interview that the race would be a challenge for himself “if only the most radical people show up.”
But the Cornyn campaign believes the high interest level in the race can boost turnout in the runoff and carry him through.
“Our own internal modeling data shows that Senator Cornyn outperforms Ken Paxton in high-turnout elections, which is what the runoff will be in May,” the Cornyn campaign’s memo said.
In his election night speech, Paxton noted that even despite the massive spending disparity, a majority of voters still pulled the lever for someone other than Cornyn. In the runoff, he said he plans to draw clear contrasts between the two.
“After all the personal attacks, which there were many, and after all the lies, you listened to what John Cornyn was selling,” Paxton told supporters. “And you weren’t buying it.”
The Trump factor
While Trump has thus far stayed out of the primary — despite months of pressure from all sides to drop his neutrality — he has suggested he could finally get involved in the overtime round. Such a development could throw all conventional wisdom about runoffs out the window.
Allies of Cornyn believe his case for a Trump endorsement was strengthened on two fronts Tuesday. He beat expectations by finishing first, demonstrating that his initial base of support is larger than Paxton’s, even if by a small margin. And on the Democratic side, state Rep. James Talarico — perceived by many Republicans as a bigger threat than his rival, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett — emerged as the Democratic nominee, focusing attention on the need to nominate a Republican who gives the party their best shot in November.
“The Dems did the smart thing. The question is, will we do the same thing?” said one Republican strategist supporting Cornyn who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the GOP dilemma.
Thune told reporters Wednesday morning in Washington that Cornyn had a “great night” and that Talarico’s primary win “absolutely” made it more important for Cornyn to represent the GOP in November.
“If the president endorses early, saves everybody a lot of money, and a lot of, you know, just 10 weeks of a spirited campaign on our side that keeps us from spending time focusing on the Democrats,” Thune said.
In teasing an endorsement Wednesday, Trump gave voice to the November concerns that Cornyn has raised. Referring to Talarico, Trump said Republicans must “TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively.”
What will Hunt do?
One big question for the runoff is whether U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston, who finished a distant third in the primary, will make an endorsement in the runoff. Hunt received 14% of the vote but had considerable money backing him — much of it from undisclosed sources — suggesting his donors could be a key bloc up for grabs.
The Cornyn campaign’s post-primary memo argued that he would have won outright had Hunt never joined the race. Throughout the primary, players in the pro-Cornyn donor class made no secret of their immense frustration at Hunt’s late entry to the race, believing he would only prolong the internecine warfare — and the amount it would cost.
A pro-Cornyn strategist said they expect Hunt voters to follow the president’s lead in the runoff.
Both Cornyn and Paxton complimented Hunt in their primary night speeches, and Paxton spoke with him by phone afterward. It was not immediately clear whether Cornyn also spoke with Hunt.
“His decision is his decision, and I respect that,” Paxton said in the radio interview. “I’m certainly hopeful that he’ll help us defeat John Cornyn.”
In his Tuesday night speech, Hunt did not say whether he would endorse in the runoff but made clear he plans to remain involved in politics, promising it would “not be the last time you see my name on a ballot.”
Cornyn’s efforts to court Hunt’s supporters could be tainted by the vitriol that Cornyn’s backers in Washington couldn’t help letting loose on Tuesday. After it was clear that Hunt would not advance to the runoff, the Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP super PAC in Senate races, released a statement deriding his third-place finish and blasting him for launching a “career-ending vanity tour without any substance.”
