For weeks, as President Donald Trump has overseen a war in Iran and standoffs on Capitol Hill, his private conversations have kept straying back to something else: a Senate primary in Texas that he hasn’t been able to make up his mind on.
The president has quizzed donors, members of Congress and others with whom he has come into contact about the Republican Senate runoff in Texas, with his questions continuing into this week. In the runoff, his longtime ally Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, continues to outperform in primary polls against Sen. John Cornyn, the better-funded 23-year incumbent, whom Trump advisers and the Senate Republican leadership have urged him to endorse.
Many Republican leaders have viewed Cornyn as more electable in November than Paxton, who has been dogged by scandals involving accusations of infidelity and misuse of public funds. Paxton was impeached in 2023 by the Republican majority Texas House, but acquitted by the state Senate.
But the Trump-loving grassroots conservative base in Texas has raged against the incumbent, and the president has taken notice — quietly backing off a plan in early March to endorse Cornyn and try to push Paxton, a MAGA hero, out of the race.
The decision to stay hands-off — so far — amounts to a victory for Trump’s devoted MAGA base, from whom he has at times distanced himself this term as he mocked their calls to release the Epstein files and increased his focus on foreign affairs.
On his golf course in West Palm Beach on Sunday, Trump remarked that he believes his “base is with Paxton,” said a person with knowledge of the comment, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation with the president. He has peppered others with questions on the race in recent days and repeated the sentiment about his supporters largely favoring Paxton, according to three people familiar with those conversations.
Paxton got to charm Trump face-to-face earlier in the weekend in a conversation at Mar-a-Lago on March 20, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting, which was first reported by Politico. Paxton, who attended a Palm Beach Republican Party event held at Trump’s club, spoke with him there in a conversation that the two people said went well for the attorney general.
Earlier this month, Trump was prepared to take the advice of top Washington consultants and endorse Cornyn in the runoff, three people with knowledge of his thinking at the time told The Washington Post. On March 4, Trump brought up the Texas race during an otherwise unrelated meeting with Indiana state Senate candidates at the White House, according to a person briefed on his remarks. The same day, he fired off a Truth Social post saying he would be endorsing in the race “soon,” and “will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”
MAGA commentators and grassroots activists erupted. As Cornyn allies continued to urge the president to back him, Paxton declared that he would consider dropping out only if Cornyn and the Senate GOP leadership eliminated the Senate’s rules that allow filibusters to pass Trump’s SAVE America voting bill. The bill is a top priority for the president but has been stalled by a Democratic filibuster which Senate leaders believe they lack the votes to stop.
The endorsement statement for Cornyn that had been drafted was never issued, and the deadline in Texas for a candidate to remove their name from the ballot passed last week.
“The confidence among the Paxton base is so strong right now, that there’s not a lot of fear that President Trump would attempt to swoop in for a Cornyn rescue,” said Mark Davis, a popular conservative radio host in Texas. “Accurately or not, they perceive that Paxton is headed for a victory and that Cornyn’s fate is sealed. The attitude of the Paxton base, should Trump endorse Cornyn, is ‘Thank you, Mr. President, thank God you won, but we’ve made up our minds on this one.’”
A person with knowledge of the White House’s thinking on midterms strategy said officials there are “still letting it play out at this point.”
Cornyn’s supporters have argued that he would be a stronger candidate against the Democratic nominee, James Talarico. But as videos have surfaced of controversial, liberal comments by Talarico, the White House has grown increasingly confident that either Republican would win.
“Talarico is insane and will not be a U.S. senator,” the person with knowledge of the White House’s thinking said. Trump, meanwhile, signaled a similar belief, posting online in recent days about Talarico being a poor candidate for Democrats who could be defeated by “any human being running against him, sick, incompetent, close to death or, even a child.”
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, said he invited both Paxton and Cornyn to their conference this week in Grapevine, Texas, but that only Paxton accepted.
“I’ve talked to the president about it,” Schlapp told The Post, referring to the Texas Senate runoff. “Like with everything, he’s curious to know people’s opinions.”
Trump knows that CPAC will be conducting a straw poll on the crowd’s opinions on Cornyn and Paxton, Schlapp said. “I’m sure he’ll be looking forward to what the poll says about the race,” among other issues, he added.
Despite both candidates drastically scaling back television ad spending compared to the first round of the primary election, the Cornyn camp is still fighting to win the runoff. This week, Cornyn announced 19 new endorsements from Texas Republicans, including a few Texas congressmen.
But some top Republicans officials in the state are notably not among those endorsements. Cornyn’s colleague Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott so far have declined to make public declarations of support for either candidate. Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former physician who talks with the president regularly, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, another close Trump ally, have so far also kept quiet.
It’s unclear when Cornyn’s campaign and allies, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Leadership Fund, will begin pouring money back into the race on his behalf, after spending more than $70 million on television in the first stretch of the primary.
NRSC spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez told The Post that the committee still believes the fight to hold the GOP Senate majority “should not be fought in Texas,” and that Cornyn “is the only candidate who ensures that does not happen.”
A person working on the race in support of Cornyn said that if Paxton is the nominee, MAGA Inc., the primary super PAC affiliated with Trump, is expected to have to “fill in the gap” to boost Paxton in the general election.
Loyal Trump supporters in Texas — who took to social media earlier this month to say they did not believe Trump would actually go through with endorsing Cornyn, and begged him not to — said they believe the president hasn’t endorsed Cornyn because he knows it would betray his base.
“He hasn’t, because he’s in touch with us, and we told him ‘No,’” said Karen McCrary of Grand Prairie, Texas. As she roamed CPAC in Grapevine, Texas this week, McCrary was hoping to meet Paxton and said she planned to look into how to knock doors for his campaign this year. Cornyn, she said, “is a RINO of RINOs,” the acronym for Republican in Name Only.
Paxton, who has lagged behind Cornyn in fundraising and television spending, is scheduled to speak at CPAC’s annual Reagan dinner Friday night, a special ticketed event where some deep-pocketed donors are expected to be in attendance.
During an opening session at the conference on Wednesday, Mercedes Schlapp, another top leader in the organization, drew cheers from the crowd as she asked who liked Paxton. When she asked about Cornyn, after a quiet moment, a few cries rang out. “No!”
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