Telling Republicans you vote with President Donald Trump 99 percent of the time, it turns out, is not enough.
John Cornyn, the four-term Republican senator who rose to become one of the most powerful figures in the chamber, lost his primary runoff on Tuesday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — a man Cornyn has called corrupt and a liability for his own party. Trump endorsed Paxton just one week before the election ended.
The result is the latest signpost in a spring that has exposed just how completely Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. In the last month alone, Trump has purged Republican elected officials up and down the ballot for insufficient loyalty: five Indiana state senators who defied him on congressional redistricting, the U.S. senator from Louisiana who voted to convict Trump in the post Jan. 6 impeachment trial, the Kenucky congressman who challenged him on foreign policy, the Epstein files and fiscal matters. Now, one of Washington’s most seasoned Republican dealmakers has been added to the list.
What happened Tuesday in Texas may prove to be the most striking of the bunch, as Trump made a late gambit supporting the much-maligned Paxton. Trump’s case against Cornyn wasn’t as clear cut as the other people his political allies have targeted this primary season. Aside from his major role on a bipartisan gun safety law after the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, one would be hard pressed to find a damning vote where Cornyn defied the president in a way that could actually resonate with large swaths of voters. And yet, Paxton not only won handily, he may have been able to win without the president picking a side, having run a base-friendly campaign that repelled the fortune of money and support pro-Cornyn forces marshalled to tout the incumbent’s record at a time when a lengthy career as an elected official is no longer the electoral asset it once was.
“I just want to replace Cornyn,” said Tom Myers, a voter who supported Paxton.
In a red state like Texas, and in today’s Republican party, Cornyn was never going to win by trying to separate himself from the president. As voters made their choices Tuesday, Cornyn’s campaign website continued to show a photo of the senator side by side with Trump, both giving a thumbs up and smiling, next to a claim in large type that “Sen. John Cornyn Votes with President Trump 99% of the Time.”
Instead Trump’s political case against Cornyn seemed to rest more on the perception of the Texan as someone willing to legislate in Washington, a task in a typically tradition bound Senate that means sometimes working with one’s political opponents.
Between Trump’s first term as president and his second one, not much has changed about Cornyn. In 2019, Cornyn was touted by the president on social media as having “done an outstanding job for the people of Texas” and rewarded with his endorsement.
Come 2023, an out of office Trump labeled Cornyn “hopeless,” And in a hesitation that may have meant a lot or nothing much at all, Cornyn waited to embrace Trump’s ambitions to try and return to the White House until after GOP presidential nominating contests started in January of 2024.
Trump’s intervention in Cornyn’s fate this year took awhile to come to fruition. The initial March primary Cornyn and Paxton advanced from happened without the president making a solid show of support, and despite his raising the prospect of picking a side soon after, his endorsement of Paxton didn’t come until a week before Tuesday’s runoff.
Since then, Trump’s tenor towards Cornyn has grown more aggressive. A few days before the runoff ended, Trump leveled the claim that “Ken’s opponent was VERY disloyal to me, as President.”
In his runoff victory speech, Paxton underlined what the race showed about today’s GOP.
“President Trump is the leader of our party and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics,” Paxton said.
Before this year, Cornyn had routinely turned away challenges to his seat, both within his own party and against Democrats. Running for re-election in 2020, he even got more Texas votes in the November general election than Trump himself.
Standing in defeat Tuesday night, Cornyn told reporters, “I’ve always supported the Republican ticket, and I intend to do so again in this general election.”
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Paxton was impeached by the Texas House, and then acquitted by the state Senate, in 2023 over a series of articles that included allegations of bribery, violating the duties of his office as well as misusing his official power and public resources. His political survival was Trump-like. And while Cornyn’s style was more in the mold of the traditional politician, Paxton resonated in ways much less traveled but more in vogue to today’s base voter.
“He’s fighting for Texans more so than Cornyn has been,” Paxton voter Steve Belies told MS NOW.
Back in the March primary, Democratic voters picked State Rep. James Talarico to run for the Senate seat. While Republicans sticking with Cornyn would have made a difficult race even harder for Democrats, Paxton being the Republican to beat instead is expected to make the race more winnable for the left given the controversies of the state’s attorney general.
Talarico was quick to offer Cornyn’s voters an alternative on Tuesday night, saying in a social media post “to Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”
But in Texas, Democrats have suffered years of false momentum and misplaced hope. After a close loss in the 2018 U.S. Senate race and momentum in 2020, the party lost ground in the last presidential election and reinforced skepticism that a statewide losing streak stretching back to the 1990s could realistically be broken soon.
One senior Senate Republican strategist said “it’s going to cost the party a ton of resources. I do think Ken will probably pull it off … but I also think we’ll have implications for down ballot races too.”
Cornyn’s message of integrity against Paxton did resonate with its share of people in Texas. And the tone that the soon to be former senator relied on may come to be copied by Paxton’s opponents as well before too long.
Joe Phillips, a Republican who supported Cornyn, called Paxton “a slime,” before polls closed Tuesday.
“It amazes me that people continue to vote for him,” Phillips said.
Jake Traylor, Soorin Kim, Rosa Flores and Sara Weisfeldt contributed reporting to this article.
Hunter Woodall covers politics for MS NOW. He’s reported on politics and presidential campaigns for The Associated Press and CBS News and reported on Congress for The Minnesota Star Tribune.