Trump is expected to endorse John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary runoff, which could reduce campaign costs and improve Republican chances against Democrats. This follows Cornyn's strong primary performance and efforts to mend their strained relationship.
Key Takeaways
•Trump's expected endorsement of Cornyn aims to make the Texas Senate race less expensive and competitive for Republicans.
•Cornyn's better-than-expected primary finish and voting alignment with Trump's agenda have increased the likelihood of endorsement.
•Paxton's scandals and higher fundraising needs could make him a weaker general election candidate compared to Cornyn.
•Republican strategists warn that a Paxton nomination could cost an extra $80-200 million due to Democratic fundraising.
•The endorsement decision is not final, as Trump is known for last-minute changes and has personal ties to other candidates.
Republican strategists hope the endorsement will make the Texas Senate race less expensive and less competitive. Illustration by The Atlantic.* President Trump’s political advisers expect him to endorse Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s May 26 Republican-primary runoff election following the incumbent’s better-than-expected finish against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the first round of voting yesterday, three people briefed on the deliberations told us.
Trump declined to get involved in the race before the first round of voting, and Republican Senate strategists had been worried that he wouldn't endorse Cornyn, who has been critical of the president in the past. Strategists have also warned that Paxton, a scandal-scarred favorite of Trump’s MAGA base, would need more money from top GOP donors than Cornyn would require to defeat the Democratic nominee, James Talarico. Estimates of the added cost of Paxton being the nominee in the general election range from about $80 million to more than $200 million, according to several top strategists, given the Democrats’ ability to raise massive sums of money in the state from individual donors if the race is perceived as winnable.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Punchbowl News this morning that an early Trump endorsement “saves everybody a lot of money.” “If the president can weigh in, it would make it enormously helpful,” Thune told the outlet. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Republicans have been working for months to rebuild the relationship between Cornyn and Trump, culminating in an invitation last week for the senator to ride on Air Force One with the president from Washington to a rally in Texas. The trip happened asTrump gave the green light for the U.S. attack on Iran. “It takes a lot of political courage, because, you know, these things are easier to start than to end,” Cornyn told CBS News Saturday about his conversations with the president about the strikes. “I told him I really respected the fact he would take the chance—the political risk, really—to strike Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.”
The three people we spoke with noted that they have long expected Trump to endorse Cornyn in a runoff—a prospect made even more likely by Cornyn’s strong showing last night. Paxton consistently led Cornyn in polls leading up to the primary, but Cornyn eked out a top-place finish, albeit not a resounding enough victory to avoid a runoff. The president has not yet made a final decision, however, and is prone to last-minute vacillation, they noted. Both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Thune, have supported Cornyn’s reelection. Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, two top political advisers to Trump’s 2024 campaign, have been working for Cornyn’s effort as well.
“I just haven’t made a decision on that race yet. It has a ways to go,” Trump told reporters in February about his endorsement decision. “Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. And you’re supposed to pick one.”
Trump personally likes Representative Wesley Hunt, the third candidate in the Republican primary, and was reluctant to weigh in against him, even though Hunt was unlikely to make it to the runoff, let alone win outright.
A mid-January Emerson poll found that Cornyn was slightly stronger in a hypothetical matchup with Talarico, with Cornyn beating the Democrat by about three points and Paxton drawing even. But strategists on both sides say the difference in their prospects is likely wider, given the significant baggage that Paxton would bring to a general-election fight.
Paxton was impeached by the Republican-led Texas House of Representatives in May 2023 on charges including bribery, abuse of the public trust, and obstruction of justice, after Paxton was accused of persuading a donor to hire a woman with whom he was having an affair. He was later acquitted by the Texas Senate. Paxton’s wife, Angela, filed for divorce from her husband in 2025, citing “biblical grounds” as the justification and “recent discoveries” as the cause. A pro-Cornyn ad last week called Paxton “the wife cheater and fraud.”
Steven Law, who for a decade headed the Senate Leadership Fund—the top super PAC for Senate Republicans—told us in a text message that if Cornyn is the nominee, Democrats will be much less likely to regain control of the Senate. “Republicans would be able to focus entirely on exposing Talarico’s far-left views rather than wasting time and money on fixing Paxton’s problems,” he wrote “There are few certainties in politics but this happens to be one of them.”
But Cornyn has a rocky past with Trump. After Cornyn won reelection in 2020, he was one of the few Republican senators who pushed back early against Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Cornyn was critical of Trump’s decision soon after the 2020 election to fire Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, after Krebs said Trump’s claims of election fraud were “unsubstantiated.”
“Who is a worse Senator, John ‘The Stiff’ Cornyn of Texas, or Mitt ‘The Loser’ Romney of Massachusetts (Utah?)? They are both weak, ineffective, and very bad for the Republican Party,” Trump posted on social media in 2023, after Cornyn told a reporter that he doubted Trump’s ability to win the 2024 campaign.
Gregg Keller, a spokesperson for the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC, told us in a statement that Paxton has a strong chance of winning the runoff, noting that polls show he’s more “more popular with the MAGA base than Cornyn.”
“Insurgent Ken Paxton is the prohibitive favorite heading into the May runoff after coming within a point of defeating career RINO John Cornyn in the primary and being outspent 10-1,” Keller said. “Runoff electorates are substantially more conservative than in the general election.”
In recent weeks, Trump advisers have been pointing to Cornyn’s voting record, which is closely aligned with the president’s agenda, as a reason for an endorsement, and have tried to facilitate communication between the two men.
LaCivita, who is working for an independent group supporting Cornyn, warned Paxton and his political consultant Jeff Roe last night about the coming runoff battle, writing on X: “The second wave is going to be a bitch …”
*Sources: Brandon Bell / Getty; Cell Genes / Anadolu / Getty; Sepia Times / Getty
