paxton

If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they’ll need all the stars to align. This almost never happens, because politics has a way of scrambling the constellations. But on Tuesday, the first star blinked on.

I’m referring to state Rep. James Talarico’s victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. Most political prognosticators agree that Talarico, an eloquent young Democrat who speaks openly about his Christian faith, is their best hope in a red state that Donald Trump won by 14 points.

The second star was Crockett’s conciliatory concession — far from a foregone conclusion after a nasty primary — in which she pledged to “do my part,” adding that “Texas is primed to turn blue, and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

The third star — a vulnerable Republican opponent — has not yet appeared over the Texas sky, although forecasters say it might.

Most observers agree that scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton would be beatable in the general election, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would present a much tougher challenge. Cornyn is the kind of steady, conventional politician who tends to win elections, and so, of course, modern voters are extremely suspicious of him.

In the GOP primary on Tuesday, Cornyn’s 42% share of the vote edged out Paxton by about a point. Unfortunately for Republicans, neither candidate garnered enough votes to avoid a May 26 runoff election.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when a majority of Republican voters choose someone other than the incumbent in the first round of voting, an even greater majority will inevitably break toward the challenger in the runoff. If that happens, Paxton would become the nominee, and Democrats would get their third star to align.

Even better for Democrats — a fourth star, so to speak — would be for this protracted runoff to become a “knife fight,” as one Texas Republican predicted, in which Paxton staggers out of the fight as the battered GOP nominee.

The only problem is that Republicans can see these stars aligning, too.

And while the Texas Senate seat matters a lot on its own, it matters even more in the context of nationwide midterm elections, in which a Texas win would help Democrats take back the Senate.

Enter the cavalry — or, more accurately, President Trump, who is now entering a second war in the span of a week, this one a civil war in the Lone Star State.

The day after the primary, Trump announced that he would be “making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”

Reports suggest Trump may endorse Cornyn in order to save the seat for Republicans. But who knows? Trump is famously unpredictable. And it’s likely he admires Paxton’s ability to survive scandals that would have caused most normal politicians to curl up in the fetal position. As they say, “game recognizes game.”

Whomever he backs, conventional wisdom also says Trump should make his endorsement “soon,” as he promised. That would save Republicans a lot of time and money. But Trump currently has enormous leverage. Right now, people are coming to him, pleading for his support.

Do you think he wants to resolve that situation quickly?

Me neither.

With Trump, you never know what you’re going to get. In 2021, he helped torpedo Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate. The following year he backed football legend Herschel Walker in another Georgia Senate race, which did not exactly work out great. Democrat Raphael Warnock won and holds that seat, though Walker is now ambassador to the Bahamas so that’s something.

This is to say: Trump’s political assistance does not always assist.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s endorsement would be dispositive — and whether he could muscle the other Republican out of the primary race.

Paxton, for example, initially vowed to stay in the race, no matter what. (He later suggested he would “consider” dropping out if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote.)

There’s also this: Trump’s endorsements tend to either be made out of vengeance or to pad the totals of an already inevitable winner, so his track record is probably overrated.

Case in point: While most of his endorsed candidates won their Texas elections, his endorsed candidate for agriculture commissioner lost reelection. And according to the Texas Tribune, “at least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.”

Another issue is that Cornyn needs more than a perfunctory endorsement: He needs a clear, full-throated endorsement.

In a 2022 Missouri Senate race, Trump endorsed “ERIC,” which was awkward because two candidates named Eric were running.

More recently, he endorsed two rival candidates in the same 2026 Arizona gubernatorial race — like betting on both teams in the Super Bowl.

This is all to say that the only thing standing between Texas Democrats and a rare celestial alignment may be the whims of the Republican Party’s one and only star.

Sure, establishment Republicans can beg Trump to quickly step in and settle the race, and maybe he will. But it’s entirely possible the president will find a way to blow up his party’s chances for holding the U.S. Senate — and there’s nothing they can do to stop him.

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Winner of May run-off between Republicans John Cornyn and Ken Paxton to face Democrat James Talarico.

James Talarico has topped States Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in an expensive and fiercely contested Senate Democratic primary in the United States state of Texas.

Who Talarico will face depends on a May run-off between longtime Republican Senator John Cornyn and MAGA favourite Ken Paxton – a race expected to get increasingly nasty over the coming months and that could hinge on whether or not President Donald Trump offers an endorsement.

Texas, along with North Carolina and Arkansas, on Tuesday kicked off midterm elections with control of Congress at stake and against the backdrop of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

A jubilant Talarico told supporters in Austin before the race was called: “We are not just trying to win an election. We are trying to fundamentally change our politics. And it’s working.

“This is proof that there is something happening in Texas,” he said, adding that the state “gave this country a little bit of hope”.

Crockett’s campaign said she planned to sue over voting issues in Dallas, and she spoke only briefly on Tuesday night to warn that “people have been disenfranchised.”

Republicans head to round 2

Cornyn, meanwhile, is seeking a fifth term but is facing a tough challenge from Paxton, the state attorney general. Cornyn hopes to avoid becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history to seek re-election and not be renominated.

The GOP contest also featured Representative Wesley Hunt, who finished a distant third and conceded. But his making it a three-way race made it tougher for any candidate to reach the 50 percent vote threshold needed to win the nomination outright and avoid the May 26 run-off.

All three campaigned on their ties to Trump, who did not make an endorsement in the race. Now both Cornyn and Paxton will again fiercely compete to curry the president’s favour.

Cornyn was facing a tough enough battle that he did not hold an election night party. Instead, in comments to reporters in Austin, he sought to make the case that a run-off win by Paxton would leave “a dead weight at the top of the ticket for Republicans”.

“I’ve worked for decades to build the Republican Party, both here in Texas and nationally,” Cornyn said. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years.”

Addressing supporters in Dallas, Paxton made a point of saying he felt like he had during a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.

He also proclaimed: “We proved something they’ll never understand in Washington.

“Texas is not for sale,” he said.

SAN ANTONIO — A heated U.S. Senate race in Texas entered its final stretch Sunday with candidates from both parties making final pitches to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the nation’s first big contest of the 2026 midterm elections.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn is trying to avoid being the first incumbent GOP senator from Texas to lose a primary, fighting challenges from Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Democrats, hungry to win a Senate race in the state for the first time since 1988, see an opening, but have their own knotty race to figure out.

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a rhetorical brawler and regular antagonist to President Trump, is stressing her federal experience and was scheduled to meet voters in the Dallas area with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. Crockett was endorsed Friday by former Vice President Kamala Harris.

State Rep. James Talarico, a soft-spoken seminarian who emphasizes his crossover appeal to Republicans, was set to hold a rally in San Antonio as part of a final tour that he describes as a movement.

But Cornyn’s precarious stature as an incumbent vulnerable in his party’s primary has been the focus of a majority of the the massive sums spent by both sides in the run-up to Tuesday’s balloting.

“Complacency is a killer,” Cornyn told voters Saturday at a seafood restaurant in the Woodlands, a Houston suburb. “It kills relationships. It kills careers.”

Senate Republican leaders in Washington, working to hold their thin majority, have worried out loud for months that Democrats could have a shot at a long out-of-reach Texas seat if Republicans nominate Paxton, who is popular with Trump voters but has had years of legal problems, which led to his impeachment three years ago. He was acquitted.

Talarico, who has raised more money than Crockett, is part of the Texas primary’s record fundraising pace. His campaign has spent $13 million on television advertising since the start of the year, the most of any single entity in the crowded field of groups spending on either side, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Heading into Tuesday’s primary elections, the cost of advertising and reserved advertising time had topped $110 million, the most ever for a Senate primary. Most of it — more than $67 million — had been spent by Cornyn’s campaign and allied groups, much of it attacking Paxton, but also lately trying to keep Hunt from advancing.

If no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote Tuesday, the primary proceeds to a runoff between the top two vote recipients on May 26.

A late visit to Texas on Friday by Trump, who used the Port of Corpus Christi as a backdrop for a speech highlighting energy production, drew all of the top Republican candidates. And while the president said Friday he’s “pretty much” decided whom to endorse, he declined to name him.

“We have a great attorney general, Ken Paxton. Where’s Ken? Hi, Ken,” Trump said. He continued, “And we have a great senator, John Cornyn. Hi, John.”

Noting that they’re in a “little bit of a race,” Trump added: ’It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people.”

Despite his long career in Texas politics, Paxton has painted himself as a Washington outsider and a staunch supporter of Trump.

“I’m not going up to Washington, D.C., to join the swamp club,” Paxton said at a campaign event in Fort Worth. “I will go up there and fight for you.”

Beaumont and Murphy write for the Associated Press and reported from San Antonio and Oklahoma City, respectively.

WASHINGTON — President Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.

So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post-State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.

Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.

Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.

Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.

Paxtonbeat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.

“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.

Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.

Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.

Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.

Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.

“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.

The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.

Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.

Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”

Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.

Kim and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Ia. AP writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.