MAGNOLIA, Texas — Unlike many of the Texans packed into the Angry Elephant last week, Phillip Mori wasn’t completely sold on Senate candidate and state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Mori, a 64-year-old mortgage banker and ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, came to the Republican-themed bar hoping to hear Paxton talk about how he would address border security. Paxton laid out the case for his primary challenge against GOP Sen. John Cornyn and his experience taking on Democratic presidents as attorney general, but Mori thought he focused too much on the past.
Even so, Mori still said he’d likely be voting for Paxton by “default” in Tuesday’s primary. He feels that he cannot support Cornyn, who “seems like he’s conservative when it’s time to run for office,” Mori said.
“There’s a lot of people that wear the name Republican [who] are more Bush-era people and Romney people than they are out for America First,” said Mori, noting that he counts Cornyn among those Republican relics.
Voters like Mori are making Cornyn’s primary the toughest fight of his political career. And even though Trump remains neutral in the primary, the dynamics underscore the practical effects of the GOP’s transformation in Trump’s image over the last decade, with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement elevating more combative and bombastic candidates.
These include Paxton, who beat back an impeachment push in 2023 and whose supporters are quick to liken him to Trump. Those supporting Paxton question Cornyn’s conservative credentials and say they don’t view him as a true MAGA believer — and plenty of rank-and-file Republicans agree, according to conversations with roughly two dozen voters in recent days. And a third primary candidate, Rep. Wesley Hunt, has positioned himself as a “bridge” to the next generation of MAGA candidates.
Cornyn and his allies, meanwhile, have already spent tens of millions touting his support for Trump’s policies. He has warned that Paxton could put the Texas Senate seat and state congressional battlegrounds in danger.
But that hasn’t convinced Trump to jump into the race. The president said earlier this month that he supports “all three” contenders. And a source familiar with Trump’s thinking about the contest said he is unlikely to endorse a candidate in a primary runoff. If no candidate wins a majority of the primary vote on Tuesday, the top two vote-getters advance to a primary runoff on May 26.
The person said that Trump makes endorsement decisions based on a number of factors, including electability, his personal connection with the candidate, loyalty and a gut feeling. And in this case, Trump’s gut feeling is off, and he is inclined to stay out of the race.
“The president knows he can trust me to be there to support him and his agenda, and I appreciate that. But it’s going to be up to him to make that call,” Cornyn told reporters after a campaign event in Austin last week when asked if it was a mistake for Trump to stay out of the race.
“I think he kind of likes a good fight, and he’s going to see one right here in Texas,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn, Hunt and Paxton will all be at Trump’s event in Corpus Christi on Friday, according to sources familiar with their plans.
Cornyn’s case
Recent public surveys have suggested that Paxton is likely to advance to a runoff, with him running in first place in most available polling. Cornyn and Hunt are competing for that second spot, although the senator and his allies are confident he will advance, particularly as Hunt has faced a barrage of attack ads from outside groups.
Cornyn and allied outside groups have been blanketing the airwaves for months, spending nearly $70 million on ads so far, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. That’s more than three times what the other campaigns and outside groups have spent on ads combined.
A recent TV ad from a group tied to Cornyn’s campaign describes Cornyn as “tough as nails on illegal immigration” and notes he “votes with Trump 99% of the time.” Another TV ad, from Texans for a Conservative Majority, a super PAC backing Cornyn, knocks Hunt for missing House votes and says Cornyn is “the man President Trump can trust.”
Cornyn, 74, was first elected statewide in Texas in 1990, and he’s been dogged by some of his past comments about Trump. These include 2023 comments that Trump’s “time has passed him by,” suggesting Trump was not the most electable presidential candidate in 2024, and that the criminal charges alleging that Trump mishandled classified documents were “very serious.”
Although Cornyn has cast himself as a Trump ally, he acknowledged on the campaign trail that he keeps a lower profile than some of his flame-throwing colleagues in the nation’s capital.
“Sen. Phil Gramm said I was a workhorse, not a show horse,” Cornyn said at the campaign stop in Austin, referring to his predecessor.
“Kind of hurts my feelings,” Cornyn joked. “I can live with that. I can live with being a workhorse and not a show horse. We got too many show horses in Washington, D.C. We need candidates who can produce results.”
That “workhorse” mentality certainly appeals to Cornyn’s supporters.
“He’s a proven winner. He’s experienced, intelligent, a man of great character. He’s always done a great job for Texas,” said Robert Dieter, an 80-year-old retired attorney who attended Cornyn’s event at Serranos Cocina y Cantina in Austin.
“I think the Democrats are going to come hard at this election, and Republicans can’t afford to take a chance on someone else,” Dieter said.
Cornyn’s supporters have also been drawn to the incumbent because they have issues with the other candidates in the race, particularly Paxton, who was impeached in 2023 on bribery and corruption charges and whose wife filed for divorce “on biblical grounds.” Paxton was acquitted by the state Senate.
Cornyn has been hammering at Paxton’s controversies on the campaign trail and on the airwaves, recently launching an ad describing “dirty deeds from crooked Ken” and highlighting his divorce and other issues.
Paxton released his own ad that features his daughter saying her father is “a really good guy, loves God, loves his family and loves his country.” His daughter also authored an op-ed, writing: “When his opponent can’t win on policy, he goes after character. But anyone who has spent real time with my dad knows that the attacks bear no resemblance to the man they claim to describe.”
But Paxton’s critics say they are concerned about his character.
“There’s a moral concern that I can’t reconcile,” said James Witherow, a Cornyn supporter who attended the senator’s event at the Forth Worth Police Association last week. If Paxton is the nominee, Witherow said, “It means I’d have to leave another blank.”
Voters like Witherow are why Cornyn has been sounding the alarm that his Senate seat would be at risk if Paxton is the party’s nominee. Cornyn has pitched himself as a safer bet, having won a fourth term in 2020 by 10 points, outperforming Trump’s 6-point win in Texas that year.
A Paxton candidacy, Cornyn warned last week, would amount to “an Election Day massacre” for Republicans.
Cornyn’s challengers
Paxton doesn’t buy that he would be a drag on other Republican candidates.
“Since I started running, I’ve been victorious. Trump went through the very same thing. Look where he’s at. It’s going to be the same way for me. We overcame all of them. You can make up whatever you want to make up. But the allegations are the allegations, and the truth is the truth,” Paxton told reporters at the Angry Elephant.
Chris Jakubson, who voted for Paxton at a polling place in Magnolia last week, said he was supporting the attorney general because “he’s more aggressive. He doesn’t take any crap from anybody. And his reputation is not the best, but I still think he was very effective as attorney general.”
“It’s kind of like Trump,” added Jakubson, who said his wife, Julie, also voted for Paxton. “A lot of people don’t like him, but he gets stuff done.”
And Paxton’s supporters are set in their opposition to Cornyn, with several saying that they would continue to back Paxton even if Trump weighs in for the senator.
Sharon Burgoon of Montgomery said after casting an early ballot for Paxton in Magnolia that she would not change her mind if Trump backs Cornyn, whom she described as “wishy-washy,” while describing Paxton as “a bulldog.”
But Kim Sheets, also from Montgomery, said Trump’s endorsement would sway her toward Cornyn despite her vote for Paxton last week, since it would signal whom Trump wants on his team.
“Trump has an agenda, and we like his agenda. … And I’d want to know that the team is going to work together to accomplish the agenda,” Sheets said.
Trump’s decision to stay neutral in the race has kept it competitive and left the door open for Cornyn’s challengers. including Hunt, the two-term congressman who officially launched his Senate campaign in October.
“I gave deference to the White House,” Hunt told a group of around 30 Republicans gathered at the Smith County GOP office in Tyler last week. “And if they would have weighed in on this race, then I’d have stayed in the House. … I will never disclose my conversations I’ve had with the White House or the president, but please know that I would never have gotten in this race if the president told me not to.”
The 44-year-old congressman pitched himself as a “bridge” to the next generation of MAGA candidates. He slammed Cornyn as a “Bush RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” pointing to Cornyn’s work on a bipartisan gun bill in the wake of multiple mass shootings, including one at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. Hunt’s case against Paxton, who is 63 years old, is largely based on age and his claim that Paxton is “a career politician.”
Hunt is facing attacks from groups backing both Paxton and Cornyn, which he says is a sign that he could make the runoff. But some did say they were bothered by the campaign ads pointing out that Hunt has missed a slew of votes in Congress.
Hunt has said he missed votes for his child’s birth, his role as a Trump campaign surrogate and his Senate campaign.
If Hunt doesn’t make the runoff, the question becomes where his supporters go. Some could back Paxton, like Chris Drake, who left the Smith County GOP meeting with a Hunt campaign sign. Drake, who noted he volunteered for Cornyn’s first Senate campaign in 2002, said Cornyn’s work on the gun measure was proof he “lost touch with what the conservative voters want in Texas.”
The 46-year-old mortgage company owner was drawn to Hunt in part because of Hunt’s willingness to openly discuss his Christian faith, and he said he was concerned about Paxton’s divorce. But Drake said he would ultimately support Paxton in a runoff if he had to choose between the attorney general and Cornyn.
“I think it’s time for a change,” Drake said.
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