runoff

ALLEN, Texas — President Trump on Tuesday endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, supercharging his effort to oust incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a Republican primary runoff.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on social media.

When news of the endorsement broke, Paxton supporters began cheering and dancing to “YMCA,” a Trump campaign anthem, at an event in Allen, Texas, where the attorney general was scheduled to speak.

Paxton and Cornyn qualified for the May 26 runoff after a March 3 primary, while Rep. Wesley Hunt finished third and did not advance.

Although the four-term Cornyn has backed Trump’s agenda in Washington, Paxton pitched himself as a political warrior for the Make America Great Again movement. Trump’s endorsement puts him at odds with his party’s establishment, which is convinced that Cornyn is the better candidate for November’s general election. The Democrats nominated Texas State Rep. James Talarico as their candidate for Senate.

In response to Trump’s endorsement, Talarico said in a statement that “it doesn’t matter who wins this runoff. We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system.”

Cornyn’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, the senator said he believed that Trump had decided not to weigh in with an endorsement.

“I think the president doesn’t want to disappoint some of his own political base, and some of the Paxton people have been talking to him and encouraged him to support him, I think that was a bridge too far for the president so he’s just opted to say out of the race,” he said.

Cornyn also argued that Paxton is a liability in a general election, where Democrats hope to flip the seat blue, and “Ken Paxton would hand it to them on a silver platter.”

Trump, in his social media post, said Cornyn was “a good man” but “he was not supportive of me when times were tough.” He complained that “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”

The runoff between Cornyn and Paxton had been shaping up as a bitter and expensive battle for the future of the Republican Party, and one that was diverting resources from other competitive races elsewhere in the country.

Trump frustrated some Republicans by declining to endorse earlier in the race. On the Friday before the March 3 primary, he said that he had “pretty much” decided whom to support — but declined to say who — when asked by reporters on a visit to Corpus Christi.

On the day after the primary, Trump promised to make an endorsement and said he would expect the candidate without his support to drop out. Paxton had said that he would not leave the race.

Trump has had an at-times cool relationship with Cornyn, notably after the senator suggested in 2023 that Trump could not win the presidency again in 2024 and that his “time has passed him by.”

Cornyn also was an early critic of Trump’s plan for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — a project he now supports.

A former state attorney general and state Supreme Court judge, Cornyn was first elected to statewide office 36 years ago. His understated style and judge’s temperament contrast with the fiery rhetoric of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement.

Cornyn has had support from Senate Republican leadership, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who warned that “it is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee.”

Some Republican leaders have worried the party will need to spend much more money to defend the seat if Paxton is the nominee — money they could be spending on Senate races in more competitive states. Paxton was acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. He also reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.

Trump stoked the competition on Feb. 27 in Corpus Christi, noting there’s “a little bit of a race,” while acknowledging their attendance.

“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.”

“It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people,” he added.

Trump mentioned the third candidate, Hunt, after running through the long list of Texas lawmakers present.

“Another friend of mine who is doing very well, Wesley Hunt,” he said. “Wesley Hunt, what a good job.”

Beaumont, Bedayn and LaFleur write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas.

May 15 (UPI) — Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes finalized the official vote count Friday after 33 days of scrutiny and legal challenges, confirming that right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez will compete in a presidential runoff June 7.

The final tally of the mid-April voting placed Fujimori first with 17.18% of valid votes.

The main battle centered on second place, where Sánchez secured 12.03% and narrowly overtook conservative candidate Rafael López Aliaga, who finished third with 11.90%, trailing by just 21,210 votes.

“The race for the runoff produced a scenario similar to 2021, with a contest between the left and the right,” electoral law expert José Tello told RPP Noticias.

The dispute over second place shifted dramatically as vote counting progressed in Peru’s remote regions. Early results favored López Aliaga, whose strongest support came from Lima, the capital and largest urban voting bloc.

However, after more than 90% of ballots had been processed, returns from rural and highland regions in southern Peru boosted Sánchez’s candidacy, repeating voting patterns seen in the 2021 election, when then-little-known rural teacher Pedro Castillo advanced to the runoff and later won the presidency.

The final outcome depended on Peru’s Special Electoral Juries, which reviewed 653 disputed and challenged voting records before electoral authorities could release the definitive results.

After the official figures were announced, López Aliaga led a protest outside the headquarters of Peru’s National Jury of Elections, rejecting the outcome, alleging fraud and demanding an international audit, according to Diario Gestión.

With the official count completed, Peru’s National Jury of Elections is expected to formally certify the runoff candidates Sunday ahead of the second-round vote that will determine who governs the country for the 2026-2031 constitutional term.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican who has occasionally asserted his independence from President Trump, failed to advance in Saturday’s GOP primary runoff in Louisiana, as a Trump-backed foe and another candidate finished in the top two spots.

U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow won the most votes, capitalizing on the power of Trump’s endorsement in his latest attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal. State Treasurer John Fleming came in second to join her in the next round of voting.

Trump supported Letlow over Cassidy, one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, even though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.

By receiving less than 50% of the vote, Letlow and Fleming, a former U.S. House member and Trump administration official, were unable to avoid the runoff, which will take place June 27. The winner will almost certainly take the November general election because of the state’s Republican leanings.

The Louisiana primary comes in the middle of a month of campaigns by Trump to exact retribution on politicians he views as having crossed him. On May 5 he helped dislodge five of seven Indiana state senators who rejected his partisan gerrymander plan.

Next Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky will face a Trump-backed challenger, Ed Gallrein, in another Republican primary. Massie angered Trump by opposing his signature tax legislation over concerns about the national debt, pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposing his decision to go to war with Iran.

The president leveled insults at Cassidy on Saturday morning, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy” on social media. In the evening he followed up with: “Congratulations to Congresswoman Julia Letlow on a fantastic race, beating an Incumbent Senator by Record Setting Numbers.”

Jeanelle Chachere, a 66-year-old nurse, said she considers Cassidy “a phony” and voted for Letlow solely because Trump endorsed her.

“I’m going by what he says, because I like what he does,” she said.

Election changes stir concern

The election was scrambled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision focused on Louisiana gutting a part of the Voting Rights Act that affects how congressional maps are drawn. Although the Senate primary is moving forward, Louisiana leaders decided to delay House primaries until a future date to allow them to redo district lines ahead of time, a shift that threatened to cause confusion for voters Saturday.

Mary-Patricia Wray, who has consulted for Republican and Democratic candidates in Louisiana, said before the vote that the change could weigh against Cassidy by dampening turnout among voters who are less fervently pro-Trump.

“Suspending the congressional primaries hurts Cassidy,” she said. “Some people believe the Senate primary is canceled.”

Cassidy also complained that a new primary system enacted last year confused voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the all-party primary previously in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.

“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters Friday.

Dadrius Lanus, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said his team fielded hundreds of calls from voters statewide who said the changes undermined their ability vote as they planned.

“A lot of the information should have gotten to voters well in advance,” Lanus said. “It’s literally been a whirlwind of confusion.”

A costly primary

Cassidy waged an aggressive campaign to convince voters he should not be counted out. Wray was among the political consultants who, as election day neared, gave the senator a chance of pulling off an upset.

The senator’s campaign was expected to have spent roughly $9.6 million on advertising through May 16, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And Louisiana Freedom Fund, a super PAC supporting him, was on track to spend $12.3 million.

By comparison, Letlow’s campaign, which launched Jan. 20, spent roughly $3.9 million, while a super PAC backing her, the Accountability Project, spent about $6 million.

Fleming’s campaign spent about $1.5 million.

Cassidy and Louisiana Freedom Fund ran ads attacking Letlow within days of her entering the race for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has tried to root out of the federal government.

Letlow, a college administrator before her election to the House, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020.

The ads, an attempt to characterize Letlow as a progressive trying to pass as a conservative, were one way Cassidy tried to flip the script in a race where he was on the outs with Trump.

Trump’s campaign

The senator’s vote in favor of convicting Trump after his 2021 impeachment has shadowed Cassidy throughout his second Senate term.

John Martin, a 68-year-old retired engineer in south Louisiana, said he would vote for Letlow because he was still upset by Cassidy’s decision. He waved a flier from Letlow’s campaign showing her standing alongside the president.

“I know a lot more about Cassidy than I do about her,” Martin said. “But if she’s endorsed by Trump, I’m going to believe that.”

Cassidy steered clear of Trump’s ire last year, supporting Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his public reservations about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views.

Mark Workman, a 75-year-old retired infectious disease physician in the New Orleans suburbs, said he backs Fleming. Had Cassidy “stood up and blocked RFK,” Workman said, he would have supported the senator for taking a strong and courageous stance.

“He had the ability to stop him,” Workman said, “and he was too weak to do that.”

As chair of the Senate Health Committee, Cassidy has been more publicly critical of Kennedy, including over funding cuts for vaccine development.

Trump blamed Cassidy for the failed nomination of his second choice for surgeon general, Casey Means, who raised doubts about vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, a practice Cassidy supports. Trump withdrew the Means nomination and decried Cassidy.

Challenger waited for Trump’s backing

Letlow considered running last year but only entered the race after Trump announced his endorsement in January.

By that time Fleming, who was elected state treasurer in 2023, was already in the race as a Trump devotee. But Landry was looking for a better-known challenger, and he suggested Letlow to the president.

Letlow had an unconventional and tragic entry into politics.

In 2020, while she was a college administrator, her husband, Luke, was elected to the U.S. House but died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in. Letlow ran for and won the seat in a March 2021 special election and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.

Beaumont and Brook write for the Associated Press and reported from Des Moines and Baton Rouge, respectively

April 15 (UPI) — Leftist candidate Roberto Sánchez has moved into second place in Peru’s presidential vote count, positioning himself for the runoff election as officials continue to tally ballots from the general election.

With about 90% of ballots counted, official results from Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes show Keiko Fujimori leading with 16.9% of the vote, securing her place in the runoff. The race for second place remains extremely close.

After three days of slow vote counting, Sánchez climbed to second place with 12,05% of the vote, edging far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga, who has 11.94%.

Ballots in Peru are processed in the order they arrive, favoring candidates with stronger support in major cities during the early stages of the count. That has kept the country in suspense, as the remaining rural vote could solidify Sánchez’s lead, La República reported.

Sánchez, a congressman and head of the leftist Juntos por el Perú party, ran as the political heir to former President Pedro Castillo, under whom he served as trade minister. During the campaign, he adopted Castillo’s signature wide-brimmed hat in public appearances.

His platform calls for sweeping state reforms through a constituent assembly, Peru’s entry into the BRICS bloc and greater state control over strategic resources without expropriation, seeking support in the Andean south and rural regions.

If Sánchez advances to the June 7 runoff, the result would echo Peru’s 2021 presidential election, when Castillo, then a little-known union leader, unexpectedly reached the second round against Keiko Fujimori with 18.9% of the vote.

As Sánchez gained ground, López Aliaga called the election a “systematic fraud” and demanded the vote be annulled, alleging manipulation in the electoral authority’s data transmission system and logistical chaos, El Comercio reported.

Election observation missions Tuesday backed the integrity of the process, describing the vote as credible and transparent despite logistical problems that caused delays and forced some polling stations to remain open longer, according to France 24.

Peru’s comptroller general also warned of serious problems in the distribution of tally sheets and election materials during the 2026 vote, which reportedly delayed polling station openings in parts of the country, Latina TV reported.

Election authorities said the prolonged count is largely due to the technical complexity of processing ballots that combined five simultaneous elections: president, national senators, regional senators, lower house lawmakers and Andean Parliament representatives.

Voters were asked to choose among 35 presidential candidates and nearly 10,000 candidates for Congress and the Andean Parliament.

Facing criticism and legal complaints over the delay, the electoral office director, Piero Corvetto, defended the process and urged calm as officials continue counting ballots from Peru’s most remote rural areas.