Cornyn, Paxton fight in GOP runoff for Texas Senate seat: "A battle for the soul of the Texas Republican Party"

For more than one year, the battle between Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton has been the most talked about race in Texas and high on the political radar on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

It's a clash of some of the Texas GOP's biggest titans, and SMU Political Science Professor Matthew Wilson frames it as a fight for the party's future. 

"It is a battle for the soul of the Texas Republican Party," said Wilson. "In a sense, it is a conflict between more traditional expressions of Texas conservative Republicanism versus a very combative insurgent approach to conservative politics." 

Only one of them will move on to run against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in the general election in November.  

The political brawl for Cornyn's Senate seat began April 8, 2025, when Paxton entered the race. The two have been at each other's throats since then. The end of this nasty battle is near. 

Early voting begins Monday, May 18, and continues through Friday only. Election Day is Tuesday, May 26th, one day after Memorial Day. 

Cornyn and Paxton were out campaigning on Friday. 

Paxton spoke before the grassroots conservative group Restore the Republic in Little Elm. He criticized Cornyn for pursuing a fifth term in office and questioned what the state's senior senator has accomplished. Paxton said, "I've accomplished more in any two-week period than Cornyn accomplished in his 42 years in public service." 

Cornyn has been in public office since 1984, when he was elected as state district judge in Bexar County. He went on to serve statewide as a Texas Supreme Court justice, then as Texas attorney general, before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002. 

Cornyn and Paxton by the numbers

On Friday, Cornyn campaigned in Waco, where he again blasted Paxton's lack of ethics at the attorney general's office. "He frankly has disqualified himself by his bad judgment and bad choices and basically lying to Texas taxpayers and to his own staff and turning him into the FBI for interfering with a federal criminal investigation of one of his campaign donors and then was sued by his senior team as whistleblowers when he fined them." 

After an investigation into Paxton during the Biden administration, he was not charged. 

Cornyn and Paxton are crossing the state this week with campaign appearances in multiple cities.

Cornyn pulled off a surprise on March 3, defying the polls that gave Paxton the edge and coming out ahead of him by nearly 1.5 percentage points. Heading into the runoff, an average of the independent polls listed by Real Clear Politics between March 17 and May 1 shows Paxton in the lead by more than three percentage points, 45.5% to 42.25% for Cornyn. 

"I think that gives Cornyn some hope that he may be slightly underpolling and could repeat what happened in March," said Wilson. "I think the difficulty is that Paxton's supporters are more likely to be the ideological diehards and the party activists, and those people are the ones who are most likely to turn out in the primary runoff. So, the real challenge for Cornyn is going to be mobilizing more moderate, traditional Republicans to actually show up on May 26 and get him over the top."

Paxton's campaign released an internal poll, giving him an 11-percentage point advantage. Cornyn's campaign released information from Deep Root Analytics saying if Paxton is the Republican nominee, "he generates a five to eight point drag on Republican net margins across the state"—potentially hurting others in the GOP down ballot in November. 

When it comes to campaign ad spending during the runoff, Ad Impact Politics says of the $20 million total spent by the Republicans, more than $16 million has been spent by or for Cornyn, while nearly $4 million has been spent by or for Paxton.

Negative politics sells

Both Cornyn and Paxton have continued attacking each other in the ad wars. Wilson said, "We know negative politics sells. People say they don't like it. But the reality is that study after study shows that attacking your opponent bears more political dividends than talking up your own campaign."

President Trump has repeatedly said he would make an endorsement in this race. But while returning from China aboard Air Force One on Friday, the President backed away from that, while also criticizing Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, without mentioning the State Representative by name. "I don't want to say that I'm looking at it very strongly. I like them both. I'll tell you what I do think. I think the Democrats have a weird, a weird candidate, six genders, a real hit on Jesus." 

Will Democrat James Talarico win in November?

While there are still more than five months until the November election, some recent statewide polls show Talarico ahead of both Cornyn and Paxton in the general election this November. The UT/Texas Politics Project poll showed Talarico leading Cornyn by seven percentage points and Paxton by eight percentage points. 

During a recent interview with CBS News Texas, Senator Ted Cruz, who beat Democrat Beto O'Rourke by just two-point-six percentage points back in 2018, acknowledged the big fight facing Republicans in November. 

"I'm concerned about the midterms, and I'm concerned about Texas," said Cruz. "I don't believe, at the end of the day, Democrats are going to win statewide in Texas in 2026. But it's a real fight, because I think the values of Texans are fundamentally conservative. I think the policies that we're following in Texas are working. Low taxes, low regulations, securing the borders. I think James Talarico, his policy positions are really extreme. They're out of step with common-sense Texans."

Last week, Talarico and the Democratic nominee for governor, State Representative Gina Hinojosa of Austin, hosted former President Barack Obama at a campaign stop at an Austin restaurant. The former president didn't make a speech but did go from table to table to speak with diners. On his way out, he told supporters to go vote, which sparked cheers from the crowd. He later recorded a campaign message for Talarico urging supporters to volunteer for his campaign. Talarico said he volunteered for Obama's presidential campaign.

Other primary runoffs we're watching

Here are the other big races we are following in the primary runoffs:

In the Republican race for Texas Attorney General, State Senator Mayes Middleton of Galveston, who came in first on March 3, faces Central Texas Congressman Chip Roy. Both portray themselves as the true conservative fighters in the race. 

In the Democratic primary runoff for attorney general, former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski faces State Senator Nathan Johnson of Dallas, who nearly won outright in March. Democratic State Representative Vikki Goodwin of Austin, who also came close to winning on March 3, faces union leader Marcos Velez in the primary runoff for lieutenant governor. 

Another hotly contested race is the Democratic primary runoff for the 33rd Congressional District in Dallas County between Congresswoman Julie Johnson and former Congressman Colin Allred. They've sharply criticized each other's records. 

Johnson succeeded Allred in office when he ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate against Cruz in 2024. Allred ran for the U.S. Senate last year before moving to challenge Johnson for this newly drawn congressional district in Dallas County. He did so after Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Dallas made it clear she would run for U.S. Senate and challenge Talarico in the primary.

We're also watching another statewide race—the Republican runoff for Railroad Commissioner between former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French, who's challenging incumbent Jim Wright.