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.
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