FORT WORTH — Barely a year ago, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) came close to becoming the Senate’s most powerful Republican. A former top lieutenant to Sen. Mitch McConnell while the Kentuckian was majority leader, Cornyn has built a reputation over more than two decades in the Senate as a staunch conservative who could still compromise with Democrats, an enormously prolific fundraiser and an architect of the Republican takeover of what is now the country’s biggest red state. He demolished every primary challenger he faced in three reelection races.
On Tuesday, he could lose it all.
Cornyn, 74, is facing formidable Republican primary challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt despite Cornyn’s enormous spending advantage. Cornyn and his allies in Washington have poured $69 million into ads in his defense, helping to make the primary one of the most expensive on record, according to AdImpact.
Still, polling shows Cornyn lagging behind or running even with Paxton, despite the attorney general’s numerous legal and personal controversies, such as his 2023 impeachment by the state House of Representatives on charges including bribery and abusing his office to cover up an affair.
A University of Texas-Texas Politics Project poll conducted last month and released last week found a tight race, with 36 percent of likely primary voters backing Paxton, 34 percent backing Cornyn and 26 percent backing Hunt.
Cornyn says losing to Paxton would threaten his life’s work — and Republicans’ hold on his seat.
“I can’t, in good conscience, turn this job over to somebody as corrupt as Ken Paxton, someone who will jeopardize what I’ve worked on for decades now, which is to build the Republican Party in Texas,” Cornyn said in an interview.
The stakes may be higher than Cornyn’s career. Paxton and Hunt are widely seen as more vulnerable in the general election than Cornyn, who has easily won reelection even in strong Democratic years. The prospect of Paxton in particular as the nominee has given Democrats hope they could win a Senate seat in Texas for the first time in nearly four decades.
Two high-profile Democrats — Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico — are facing off Tuesday for the nomination, and Democrats see above-average turnout in early voting as a positive sign for November.
Cornyn is also a major financial asset for his party. He is one of the most effective fundraisers to ever serve in the Senate, bringing in more than $414 million for fellow Republicans during his tenure.
In this year’s primary, he has the endorsement of many of his Senate peers, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But the one endorsement that could save Cornyn — President Donald Trump’s — has eluded him.
It’s not for lack of effort. Thune has urged Trump to endorse Cornyn, arguing that Republicans would probably need to spend millions more to hold the seat if Cornyn loses his primary.
“Almost every time we talk, we talk Texas,” Thune told reporters last week.
Paxton’s allies have countered that Cornyn might not be as strong in the general election as party leaders expect. Gregg Keller, who runs a super PAC backing Paxton, said much of the Republican base in Texas detests Cornyn and could stay home in November if Cornyn ekes out a primary victory.
“These Texas MAGA voters — they will not turn out in the general election for John Cornyn,” Keller said.
Unlike Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), whom Trump is working to defeat in his primary in May, Cornyn voted to acquit Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial. But Cornyn suggested afterward that Trump could not win the 2024 election, saying he thought “President Trump’s time has passed him by.”
Trump, in turn, derided Cornyn as a “RINO” — a Republican in name only — and warned that he would lose his next election with “even modestly skilled opposition.” Cornyn is “always quick to surrender to the Dems, giving them anything they want,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023.
Cornyn said that he regretted doubting Trump, though he pointed out that other Trump allies — including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — had clashed with him in the past.
“Look, in the heat of battle, people sometimes say things that they later come back to regret or reconsider,” Cornyn said. “The president, he’s a force of nature. He’s still going strong, and I think he’s done a lot of good things for the country. So I hate to admit it, but I was wrong.”
If Cornyn loses, he would be the first sitting senator from either party to succumb to a primary challenger in nearly a decade. But polling suggests Cornyn is unlikely to lose outright on Tuesday because the primary will go to a May 26 runoff if no candidate wins a majority of the vote — raising the prospect of 12 more expensive weeks of Republican infighting as Democrats likely start consolidating around a nominee.
Many of Cornyn’s vulnerabilities in a Republican primary stem from what made him a formidable character in the Senate. His work on a bipartisan gun safety bill has been panned by the right in a state where the Second Amendment is politically sacrosanct. Paxton also blasted Cornyn’s work helping refugees settle in the United States and for calling Trump’s border wall “naive” in 2016.
“He’s been doing this for 24 years. People are just ready for a change, ready for someone that has more energy and that has the ability to go fight for them in Washington,” Paxton said shortly after a Saturday rally in Fort Worth. “John Cornyn doesn’t do that.”
Hunt, who supports term limits and says he would serve no more than two, described Cornyn in an interview as “a Lincoln Project, Bush-era Republican — which is fine, but the days of that ilk and the days of that type of politician, they’re over.” (The Lincoln Project is a political action committee founded by Republicans who oppose Trump.)
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), who supports Paxton, said Cornyn is a “nice gentleman” whom he would never disparage. But Republican primary voters “will walk through fire to vote for [Paxton] on Tuesday,” he said.
Even Cruz, whom Cornyn steered $500,000 toward during his difficult 2024 reelection campaign, declined to endorse Cornyn, saying, “I trust the voters of Texas to make that decision.”
Cornyn said he doesn’t regret his work on bipartisan legislation, including the gun bill. He argues it has been mischaracterized as a gun-control measure, when it mostly focuses on mental health and school security. He still votes in line with Trump 99 percent of the time.
“It used to be that trying to come up with bipartisan solutions was generally applauded,” Cornyn said. “When you agree with somebody eight times out of 10, what do you call them? You call them a friend and an ally, not a 20 percent traitor. Well, in this environment, people tend to focus on the 20 percent, and I think that makes it very hard to legislate.”
Cornyn also has pointed to Paxton’s scandals as a sign of untrustworthiness.
The state House impeached Paxton in 2023 over corruption charges that he abused his office to conceal an affair, though the state Senate later acquitted him.
His wife, Angela Paxton, last year said she would divorce Paxton on “biblical grounds” citing “recent discoveries” and infidelity.
Paxton was separately under federal investigation over bribery allegations, though the Justice Department declined to prosecute in early 2025. He also settled a state securities fraud case, paying nearly $300,000 in restitution.
Paxton supporters brush off the controversies.
Anita Sheppard, a Paxton supporter from Fort Worth who has supported Cornyn in the past, said she felt Paxton’s allegations of malfeasance were settled in the state Senate with his acquittal.
“I’m a big Christian,” Sheppard, a devout Methodist, said at the Paxton rally Saturday. “It’s dirty laundry, you know. But at the same time, my interest in Paxton is what he can do to help Trump. That’s my main interest.”
During a Cornyn rally Saturday in the Woodlands, a prosperous Houston suburb, Nelda Blair blamed the rise of social media for making conservative voters jaded about revelations that in years past would have tanked Paxton’s campaign.
Blair, a real estate lawyer and longtime Cornyn supporter, voted early for Cornyn. But she said conservatives she knows in surrounding Montgomery County — among the reddest in the state — were “still very divided” between Cornyn and Paxton.
Leonard Chan, another Cornyn supporter at the Woodlands rally, said he would rather vote for Talarico in the general election than support “a standard-bearer in the party who’s so corrupt.”
Cornyn ran to succeed McConnell as the Senate’s Republican leader in 2024 but lost to Thune. (Paxton vocally opposed Cornyn.) His loss led to speculation that he might not run for reelection. But when asked if he ever considered retiring, Cornyn released a hearty guffaw.
“I’m healthy and I still enjoy the job, and there’s, frankly, nothing else I’d rather do,” Cornyn said. “I’m probably never going to get rich, and as long as I continue to contribute and represent the state I love, then I don’t see any reason to hang my spurs up.”
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
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