Sen. John Cornyn and his Texas Republican primary challenger are busy courting a voter who doesn’t live in their state.
Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who are locked in a runoff, are vying for the endorsement of President Donald Trump. Two weeks ago, the president promised to make his pick known soon, but he so far has withheld his support for either candidate in one of the most expensive and closely watched primaries of the cycle.
Cornyn, who has criticized Trump in the past, has since embraced the president’s agenda, even abandoning his long-standing defense of the Senate filibuster as Trump presses Republicans to evade it to pass a voting bill. Meanwhile, Paxton and his allies are launching ads that cast Cornyn as a traitor to the MAGA movement. Some will air in the region that includes Trump’s Florida residence.
Cornyn, a four-term senator who came close to being elected majority leader in 2024, came out slightly ahead in the state’s Republican primary against Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. Supporters of Cornyn and Paxton acknowledge that Trump’s endorsement would be substantial in the May runoff in a state where the president enjoys high support among Republicans.
But when asked Tuesday by reporters whether he was expecting a Trump endorsement, Cornyn said: “We’re preparing for combat on May 26th, and it’s not changing anything we’re doing. But if the president decides to endorse, I certainly would welcome that, but we’re not waiting around.”
Texas’s deadline for a candidate to withdraw from the ballot was Tuesday evening. Neither candidate dropped out.
Cornyn was initially seen among Senate Republicans as more competitive in a general election against the Democratic candidate, state Rep. James Talarico, owing to Cornyn’s seniority and Paxton’s numerous legal and personal scandals. But Paxton has attracted a devoted following among the state’s right-wing base, and recent polling shows he is more competitive against Talarico than initially expected.
Cornyn has cast himself as one of the president’s biggest supporters in the Senate. He touts a voting record that aligns almost perfectly with Trump’s agenda, going back to Trump’s first term when Cornyn served as Republican whip.
The senator has another opportunity to deliver for Trump with the Save America Act, a sweeping voter identification bill that would also bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports and restrict gender-transition care for children. Trump has touted the bill as his top legislative priority, pledging not to sign any other legislation until the bill passes and urging senators to eliminate the Senate filibuster to get it done. The Senate is debating the bill this week.
Cornyn previously supported the filibuster, the Senate procedure that requires 60 votes for bills to advance, as a way to foster bipartisan cooperation and to block Democrats from running wild when they have majority of the chamber. But he changed tack and came out in support of lifting the filibuster to pass the bill last week.
“Texans don’t need more endless discussions over Washington rules that Democrats have already promised to break. Talk is cheap,” Cornyn wrote in an op-ed in the New York Post announcing his evolved position on the filibuster. “I respectfully urge the remaining handful of my Republican colleagues still holding on to the old position that I used to share to reassess the new reality and update their thinking.”
Trump told NBC News that he could issue his endorsement as soon as this week and is keeping his eye on how the Save America Act advances in the Senate.
Cornyn denies that he changed his position solely to secure Trump’s endorsement, but his critics in his party’s right flank accuse him of doing just that. Cornyn came out with the change of heart less than a week after Paxton said he would consider withdrawing from the race if Senate Republican leadership eliminated the filibuster and passed the the Save America Act.
Several of Paxton’s supporters aren’t convinced that Cornyn earnestly believes in eliminating the filibuster.
State Rep. Steve Toth, a Paxton supporter who defeated an incumbent Republican in his own primary this year against U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, called Cornyn’s op-ed “innocuous at best.” Toth said he needed to see drastic action from the senator, including openly demanding an end to the filibuster or requiring Democrats to physically filibuster from the Senate floor.
“Ken’s a servant. He’s got a servant’s heart. He demonstrated with his willingness to drop out of the race if Cornyn would push for an up and down vote in the senate on President Trump’s legislation,” Toth said. “Unfortunately John Cornyn has not stepped up and committed to doing the same thing.”
Gregg Keller, who runs a super PAC supporting Paxton, said the MAGA base in Texas would not believe in Cornyn’s conviction on lifting the filibuster until “he has success.”
“The attorney general did not call on John Cornyn to engage in Kabuki theater, as he appears to be now,” Keller said. “The attorney general and the conservative MAGA grassroots in Texas called on him to do something about this. And as of now, he has done absolutely nothing other than offer up weak, flip-flop words.”
Keller’s super PAC, Lone Star Liberty PAC, is also directly courting Trump’s support and aired ads near the president’s Florida estate last weekend listing the ways Cornyn has “betrayed” Trump. The ad attacked Cornyn for supporting or praising some of the president’s personal enemies, including President Joe Biden’s attorney general Merrick Garland, deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco and former FBI director James B. Comey. Paxton also launched his own ad late last week listing the times Cornyn has cast doubt on Trump’s electability.
In response to the ads, Cornyn said: “I’ve had a long career in the Senate, and it’s easy to cherry-pick things out of context.”
Cornyn previously cast doubt on Trump’s electability, telling reporters in 2023 that time had “passed him by” and that the party should choose another candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
“What’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win,” Cornyn said at the time, adding that Trump had difficulty appealing to voters in a general election. “So believing that, I think we need to come up with an alternative.”
Cornyn said in an interview with The Post this year that he was wrong to doubt Trump’s electability. He endorsed Trump in 2024 after the New Hampshire primary.
Cornyn’s allies also have been pushing for Trump to endorse him. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), who has urged Trump for months to endorse Cornyn, said Tuesday that he did not know whether Trump would end up backing him.
“I can’t speak for the president or his timing, but I would love an endorsement,” Thune said.
Theodoric Meyer and Kadia Goba contributed to this report.
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