Ken Paxton Beats John Cornyn—and Blows a $250 Million Hole in Trump’s Senate Map

For more than a year, Republicans beseeched President Donald Trump’s advisers in the White House with a simple ask: if he couldn’t find his way to endorsing Sen. John Cornyn, could he at least keep his mouth shut? 

Of course, he could not. Trump last week endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and on Tuesday Paxton made it through his contentious, costly run-off and into the general election this November. Senate Republicans spent $90 million on defending their amiable colleague and sinking the scandal-soaked Paxton. They failed, and are now left with the jarring reality that they had hoped to avoid: $250 million. That’s the internal price tag being circulated among Republicans for the task of helping Paxton to hold the seat—all at the expense of chasing flipping Democratic seats in places like Georgia, Michigan, or New Hampshire.

Trump’s latest intra-party purge may end up being a bigger deal than some of his others of late. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in almost 40 years. If Republicans end up investing a small fortune to help Paxton defeat Democrat James Talarico and still come up short, it would be a stunning end to the longest Democratic dry spell in the nation, and Trump would take a good share of the blame. 

It’s no exaggeration to say that Establishment Republicans are steamed that Trump’s pettiness is going to take as much as a quarter-billion dollars off the map simply because the President didn’t think Cornyn was MAGA enough, voting record be damned. Cornyn handled the nose-count for Trump’s first term, helped him confirm both Cabinets and all three Supreme Court nominees—all while voting with Trump 99.2% of the time, a number that makes him more loyal than Texas’ other Senator, Ted Cruz.

Trump did not care. He liked that Paxton used his office of Attorney General to troll Democrats, and that his style of politics at times flirted with burn-it-down nihilism. Cornyn, but contrast, is a gentleman who works with Democrats where he can and an institutionalist who refused to heed Trump’s call to end the Senate tradition of the filibuster. It came to style over substance, personality over policy. If you’re not wearing a red MAGA hat, you’ve gotta’ go.

Cornyn, who was a contender to lead the Senate Republicans just two years ago, was seen as a safe candidate heading into his re-election bid. Republicans—both in the Senate and back in Texas—warned that the state’s epic winning streak would be threatened with Paxton as the nominee given the long, long history of unseemly allegations against him involving corruption, marital infidelity, abuse of power, securities fraud, and bribery—so much of a litany that the Republican-controlled Texas state House voted to impeach him in 2023. (He was acquitted by the Republican-controlled state Senate.)

And in Paxton’s nomination, Democrats see a much more plausible path for their nominee, state Rep. James Talarico. (To read my dispatch on the road with Talarico in West Texas, look here.) In Paxton, Democrats have a ready-made foil whose attack ads practically write themselves. Cornyn couldn’t stop talking about the ways in which Democrats would weaponize Paxton’s oppo file, even as he and his allies tried to do the same without success. 

Well before Tuesday’s primary runoff, it was clear this is still Trump’s Republican Party. Earlier this month, Trump took out five GOP state lawmakers in Indiana because they did not bow to the White House’s campaign to redraw U.S. House districts to boot Democrats. He refused to endorse Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana over his vote to impeach Trump during his second trial in the Senate; instead, he backed a primary challenger who won. And Rep. Tom Massie is heading home to Kentucky early next year after Trump led a primary against him for such sins as championing accountability for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Taken together, it’s clear Trump is both at his weakest point with the general electorate but his strongest at enforcing party purity with his base. His polling among all Americans is in the gutter but his pulpit with the GOP is mighty high. So as Trump flails with his unpopular war in Iran, seems unable to combat the corresponding high costs of gas, and continues to launch rhetorical attacks against his perceived enemies, the President is left with a revenge agenda that he can control. 

By sacrificing Cornyn and giving Democrats even the longest of openings, he’s leaving one more seat exposed. What’s more, a hypothetical Talarico win at the top of the ticket in Texas could help boost Democrats in House races down ballot. So this move could end up boosting the chances of Democrats gaining control of both the House and Senate. It’s a self-own whose consequences Trump might not fully realize until the new Congress is gaveled in next year and the subpoenas start coming from the oversight panels.

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