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Vice President JD Vance revealed a truth about the Republican Party on Tuesday as he explained the president’s endorsement of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton for Senate: “When it really counted, Ken Paxton was there for the country, was there for the president.”
Vance’s implication was that incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn failed to sufficiently support President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election — or, as Trump put it, “when times were tough.”
Yet Trump’s loyalty standard is not evenly applied. That’s something Vance, a former Trump critic, can personally attest to, as can many GOP lawmakers in Congress who have questioned one of Trump’s decisions or social media posts.
There isn’t a lot that sitting Republicans can do about that harsh reality, other than mourn Cornyn’s likely defeat.
“It saddened me,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told Semafor of Trump’s decision. “I don’t know what you can complain about on John Cornyn, he’s such a significant part of what we’re able to get done here. And a leader: Probably no senator that has done more to support other Republican senators. And I don’t know anything that he’s done that’s offensive in a significant way to the president.”
Sandbagging Cornyn a week before his runoff for years-old statements is a bigger act of potential self-sabotage than acting on an even older grudge against Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy in a red state. Trump’s decision to back Paxton, whom Maine Sen. Susan Collins promptly described as “an ethically challenged individual,” is almost certain to make Republicans’ midterm campaign harder.
It was unclear what exactly changed Trump’s mind to weigh in on the race now, though he told reporters that he had “pretty much always known who I was going to endorse, but I just thought this was a good time, you know, the voting starting.”
Now, it’s all but guaranteed to make the Texas Senate seat more expensive to hold against Democratic nominee James Talarico, diverting resources that Republicans would have spent elsewhere. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., estimated the seat would be three times costlier to defend with Paxton as the nominee — a doable task, but one with wide-reaching ramifications across the Senate map.
Graham himself would also be out of luck if past Trump criticism were always politically fatal. He repeatedly warned against nominating the president in 2016 and even briefly jumped off the bandwagon after Jan. 6, 2021: “Count me out.” Trump has endorsed Graham for reelection this year.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., even endorsed Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., over Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. A year later, Trump endorsed Rounds for reelection, before Rounds had even decided to run again and after Trump vowed to “never endorse this jerk again.”
Cornyn’s sin, in the end, was a 2023 challenge for the GOP to “do better” than Trump: “The basic problem is, President Trump hasn’t figured out how to expand his appeal beyond his base,” Cornyn said at the time. He also thought the former president couldn’t win and “time has passed him by.”
After the Capitol riot and as Trump wracked up legal woes, those comments were not outside the GOP mainstream. But Cornyn’s Trump doubts haunted him in more ways than one: Republicans think they clouded his campaign to be Senate majority leader, a race he narrowly lost to Thune shortly after Trump’s second victory.
Cornyn ceased all subtle Trump criticism after 2024, saying he was happy to be wrong about the president’s general-election appeal. He conspicuously read The Art of the Deal and joined Trump’s campaign against the legislative filibuster. Thune spent countless conversations trying to convince Trump to endorse Cornyn as a sure bet in November.
None of that mattered. Trump is “looking backward now. And he’s looking at people who were not there when he needed them the most. And he has the right to do that,” Graham said.
That doesn’t mean every Republican has to agree. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Semafor “of course” he still supports Cornyn but is “still digesting” Trump’s decision.
“I don’t understand it,” Collins said. “John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and deserved, in my judgement, the president’s support. Obviously it’s the president’s call, but I’m disappointed that he did it.”
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It would be a mistake to suddenly discount Paxton’s chances against Talarico; Republicans can’t afford to do that, anyway. Without Texas, their path to keeping the Senate majority shrinks substantially — and they still think they can hold the seat, albeit at a much higher price.
Cornyn’s allies in Congress had argued that his appeal outside the party base made him the best choice to help keep the Senate and allow party cash to go to other states. Cornyn himself alluded to his general-election polling advantages after Trump’s endorsement, calling Paxton “a weak nominee who jeopardizes everything we care about.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said that, “based on the numbers that I’ve seen,” the seat is far more at risk with Paxton running against James Talarico.
“How does that help strengthen the president’s hand when we lose a state like Texas?” Murkowski asked. “Maybe he thinks, with the strength of the endorsement, Paxton can win. I think this puts that seat in jeopardy.”
The View From Democrats
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., told Semafor that Trump’s endorsement is “good news” for Democrats.
“There’s just a lot more negative on Paxton. You think of the baggage he brings to the race. Everybody recognizes it … it’s definitely a better story for Talarico than if he’s running against Cornyn,” Heinrich said. For Trump, he added, “there’s not a strategy. There’s just narcissism. It’s about him.”
Room for Disagreement
By 2027, Murkowski may be the only senator left who survived a Trump-backed challenge from the right. She beat back Kelly Tshibaka in 2022 by capitalizing on her appeal to the state’s independents in Alaska’s unique ranked-choice voting system.
Not that she thinks “about those kinds of things … I’m thinking about ice breakers today, I’m thinking about typhoons and coastal erosion,” Murkowski said.
“I don’t get caught up in the, ‘Does the president love me today or hate me today?’ If I did, I’d be a crazy woman. And I’m not a crazy woman,” Murkowski said.
Burgess’s view
This one stings far more than Cassidy’s loss in Louisiana or a potential Rep. Thomas Massie loss in Kentucky. Both parties think Texas will be competitive with Paxton as the nominee.
But step outside the Senate battleground map, and you can see more cascading damage as the president tightens his grip.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., chose to retire rather than walk the Trump tightrope, freeing him to block nominees and oppose security money for Trump’s ballroom. Cassidy on Tuesday said he agreed with Tillis (as did Murkowski), putting the security money Trump wants in serious jeopardy.
If Cornyn loses his primary, that’s three GOP senators with nothing to lose in a 53-seat majority. Add in moderates like Murkowski and Collins, and you shouldn’t expect much GOP synergy this election year.
Notable
- I reported 18 months ago, just after Trump’s victory in 2024, on the high risk of challenges from the right to any Republican senator who strayed.
Shelby Talcott contributed.