Cornyn is looking to Congressman Hunt and President Trump for support against Paxton
U.S. Senator John Cornyn told CBS News Texas that he has reached out to Houston Congressman Wesley Hunt and his supporters as he attempts to hold onto his seat against Attorney General Ken Paxton in the upcoming GOP primary runoff, May 26.
Hunt came in third during the March 3 primary. A new poll by Quantus Insights showed nearly 58% of those who voted for Hunt are now backing Paxton.
Cornyn said, "I assume the people who supported Wesley Hunt could not abide by a corrupt public figure like Ken Paxton. So, I don't expect them to go rushing to support somebody that they rejected on March 3rd." A Hunt representative did not respond to our request for comment.
Cornyn said he continues to reach out to President Trump, who has dangled an endorsement, but hasn't followed through.
"We don't know exactly when or if the President is going to make an endorsement in this case. But we've made the argument to him, which I think he finds compelling, that I would be a much stronger top of the ticket than would Ken Paxton. In fact, Ken Paxton would represent a vulnerability for Republicans and potentially lose to Talarico. Even if he didn't lose, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and he wouldn't win by the kind of margin I would be expected to win by. I won by 10 points in 2020."
When asked what he thinks Trump will do, Cornyn said, "Only one man knows the answer to that, and it's not me."
The same Quantus Insights poll of 1,218 likely GOP voters found Paxton leading Cornyn 48.8% to 41.3%. A Paxton spokesman said the poll speaks for itself about the Attorney General's momentum.
Cornyn said, "There's a lot of different polls generated from a lot of different people, based on different samples, some biased, some incomplete. As you know, I won first place on March 3rd, and we continue to work very hard to earn the vote of everyone who's going to come back to the polls on May 26th. But eventually, what's going to count the most is not some poll like this two months out, it's going to be who actually shows up to vote, and I'm encouraged by what we're hearing."
Cornyn's campaign has continued to blast Paxton for his political, ethical, and moral lapses in a series of ads. Paxton has run an ad implying that Cornyn isn't as pro-Trump as he claims to be. Cornyn downplayed the claim.
"You've heard about my voting record, 99.3%. I don't know how much better you could get. It's better than Ted Cruz's percentage. But there are a number of people who've had disagreements with the President over time, and he's apparently forgiven them: People like J.D. Vance, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio. I've got a good relationship with the President. He's called me a friend, and I am somebody who wants to see him succeed."
Cornyn said he supports the ongoing war against Iran, now one month old.
"I think President Trump should be commended for not tolerating the development of nuclear weapons by the number one state sponsor of terrorism, which is Iran, together with all of its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the Shia militias, and the like that have threatened American troops overseas. The prospect of a nuclear Iran is just untenable, and I applaud the President for taking the steps necessary."
The Pentagon has recently requested an additional $200 billion for the war. Cornyn said he agrees with the request.
"I do. I think we need to replenish the interceptors and the counter-drone technology and other weapons that have been expended in this conflict. We have a problem anyway with the fact that our defense industrial base is not producing what we need in order to replenish our stocks against a potential conflict somewhere, let's say, like at the Indo-Pacific. This is something we need to pay attention to, but particularly this has made it more urgent."
Earlier last week, Cornyn was encouraged by a potential deal between Senate Republicans and Democrats to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security. In the overnight hours of Friday morning, the Senate voted by voice vote to fund most of the DHS, including the
TSA, whose employees haven't been paid for weeks. The President signed an executive order that will pay the TSA officers. More than 500 of them have quit because they didn't get paid as airport security lines have grown longer at certain airports, including Houston. The President sent ICE agents to the airports to help relieve the lines.
But House Republicans said they aren't going along with the Senate bill because it didn't fund parts of ICE and Customs and Border Protection that weren't funded in last year's GOP reconciliation bill.
Cornyn blamed Democrats for causing the DHS shutdown.
"One of the ironies of this shutdown are that the Democrats say their complaint is about ICE. We've already pre-funded ICE for a number of years, and so punishing the innocent TSA agents, the Coast Guard, the FEMA, and all these others was really taking the wrong hostage. I know too many people have missed paychecks, and too many people have been inconvenienced by this political stunt by our Democratic colleagues."
The President, along with House and Senate Republicans, wants to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and then show ID when voting.
Cornyn said, "We are going to continue to fight for that. We will deal with it either on the floor, using the current procedure, or we will deal with that as part of reconciliation. But we're going to get there, one way or the other."
