One week after Ken Paxton beat him by roughly 63-64% in the May 26 Republican primary runoff, Sen. John Cornyn returned to the U.S. Capitol on Monday and refused to walk back a word. Paxton is still a crook, still unfit for office, and will put the Texas Senate seat at risk in November — and Cornyn will vote for the Republican ticket anyway. The contradiction is not subtle, and Cornyn is not pretending it isn't one.
Cornyn Says What He Means, Then Does What the Party Requires
"I stand by everything I said during the whole campaign," Cornyn told reporters as he walked back into the Senate. That includes calling Paxton a crook, calling him unfit for higher office, and warning that Paxton's legal baggage would endanger a seat Texas Republicans have held for decades. None of that has changed. What changed is that Paxton won.
The outgoing senator's position is a familiar one in post-Trump Republican politics: say the true thing, then do the party thing. Cornyn spent a year running ads with titles like "Crooked Ken Paxton Is Soft On Radical Islam" and "What Else Happened Inside Ken Paxton's Office?" He built a case, backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that Paxton's 2023 impeachment by the Texas House, securities fraud indictment, and pattern of personal scandals made him unfit to serve. Texas Republican primary voters, at least the 7% who showed up, disagreed.
Paxton Won on Trump's Endorsement and Cornyn's Donor Network Is Now the Problem
Trump endorsed Paxton in the final days of the runoff, after early voting had already begun, and the margin tells the story. Cornyn had led Paxton 42-40.5% in the March 3 primary. By May 26, Paxton was winning by 20-plus points. The Trump endorsement moved votes, and Paxton's campaign framing — that Cornyn had been disloyal to the president when it mattered — stuck.
Now Cornyn's exit creates a structural problem for Paxton heading into November. Cornyn has functioned as a gatekeeper to many deep-pocketed Republican donors in Texas, and his comments Monday were not exactly a warm handoff. When asked whether he would help Paxton raise money, Cornyn said: "Texas is so big and expensive that I think the president has made his choice and he can use some of the money he's got to help. I'm going to focus on other areas."
That is not a ringing endorsement. Paxton was vastly outspent in the primary — Cornyn's campaign and allied super PACs spent more than $21 million on ads in the 11 weeks after the March primary, while Paxton and his allies spent nearly $7 million. The NRSC, which scrubbed its own anti-Paxton attacks from the internet after the runoff, established a joint fundraising committee with Paxton on Monday. But the party's institutional money and Cornyn's donor network are not the same thing.
