Could John Cornyn lose Senate challenge to Ken Paxton? Not if he does this all year | Opinion

With Texas solidified as an even deeper red state after the 2024 elections, political attention turns to next year and the contests that await, none bigger than U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s quest for a fifth six-year term. As is the case with many offices in Texas, the Republican primary will determine the eventual winner. With narrow prospects for a successful Democratic challenger in November, we will know Cornyn’s fate by next spring.

It may be the first competitive primary Cornyn has ever faced, should Attorney General Ken Paxton announce a challenge.

Paxton is the natural preference for a large percentage of the Texas voting wave that awarded Donald Trump a 14-point margin over Kamala Harris in November, while ushering a burst of fresh conservative blood to the Legislature. Many Texas House victories were direct rebukes of incumbents who had joined the disastrous 2023 effort to impeach and remove Paxton. If the attorney general were to seek-re-election next year, he would easily dispatch any Democrat.

But does that add up to sufficient clout to unseat Cornyn? That path leads through my unshakable rule of primaries: Incumbents cannot be beaten unless there is a broad desire to fire them.

There is no doubting Paxton’s rock-star status among the state’s appreciable slices of grassroots, Trump-loving Republicans. But next year’s primary will not be a measure of Paxton’s popularity; it will be a referendum on Cornyn.

The best example of my rule was in 2010, when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison challenged Gov. Rick Perry. As measured by the sheer number of votes received in a political career, Hutchison was the most popular politician in Texas history. When I observed immediately (and correctly) that Perry would beat her resoundingly in the primary, it was not a negative assessment of her years of honorable service. It was a recognition that Perry was a popular governor whom voters were unlikely to send packing.

In the current moment, staunch conservatives oozing confidence that Paxton’s stardom spells an upset of Cornyn would do well to remember just four years ago, when my rule again applied.

The Greg Abbott of 2022 was not the governor of today, who displays Paxton-level dedication to Trump. There was sufficient room to Abbott’s right to draw opposition from two heralded conservative heroes: former state Sen. Don Huffines and retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, who rose rapidly to state GOP chairman. They pummeled Abbott on issues from COVID lockdowns to border security to property tax reform.

Close acquaintances in the bolder ranks of Texas conservatism guaranteed me that Abbott was going down. I told them and similarly inclined talk-show callers that there was no chance. Again, not because Huffines and West were not fitting subjects of conservative praise but because there simply was not a broad desire to oust Abbott, who garnered 66% of the primary vote while those rivals drew 12 apiece.

So, we arrive at the question for next year: Will voters examine the 20-plus years of the Cornyn record and say that’s enough?

In every re-election bid, Cornyn has heard criticism that he is too moderate, too establishment-friendly, too willing to work with Democrats, and not conservative enough on borders and the Second Amendment. And the primary challengers who have arisen to make those claims have been summarily steamrolled — the closest margin was 40 points in 2014.

But those lesser-known and underfunded opponents did not bring the star power and campaign war chests of Ken Paxton. As he weighs a decision that surely must come soon, he has lobbed criticism in Cornyn’s direction, framing him as the kind of dinosaur Republican being led to extinction in the Trump era.

During a recent on-air visit, I asked Cornyn about the bloody primary that may lie ahead. “I wonder what purpose that would have,” he told me. “I have no doubt what the outcome of that fight would be, but it would be expensive, and I think it would be unfortunately a pretty pitched battle. Why would you trade somebody routinely rated as one of the most effective members in the United States Senate, who has delivered for several years for the state of Texas, for a rookie who’s going to spend the first year trying to find his way to the next restroom in the Capitol building?”

The experience card is not as reliable in this era of new faces occasionally dispatching entrenched elected fixtures. I suggested that Cornyn would be measured more by his level of harmony in this Trump term. He took me back to Trump’s first term, touting a Senate voting record that aligned with Trump 92% of the time. I then suggested Paxton might offer support roughly 8 percentage points higher.

Cornyn telegraphed his possible reply during a primary campaign: “I view my job now, as a member of the majority in the Senate with a president of the same party — our job is to support our president and his policies. That’s what I intend to do.”

If Paxton runs, he will remind voters of moments where Cornyn’s rhetoric and votes were not so Trump-friendly, as when he accused the president of “reckless and incendiary speech” surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, or when he said Trump “let his guard down” by minimizing the threat of COVID in the fall of 2020.

Cornyn will refer voters to more recent developments, including adjustments on issues that might have been an avenue for Paxton to draw a contrast, such as Ukraine. Recalling his comment that support for Ukraine was “a moral duty” as a $13 billion aid package passed in May 2022, I asked his opinion of the defining Oval Office throwdown Feb. 28, where Trump made clear to Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the money hose was shutting down. Cornyn’s answer reflected a lesson he may carry into his re-election bid: “I believe in dealing with President Trump … if you get into a public disagreement with him, it does not end well.”

If that signals that Cornyn may underplay or even shelve any daylight between his views and Trump’s, such restraint may be only part of his tone for the next year. He may be found in moments of praise for Trump that could rival Paxton’s, whose bond with Trump spans a decade. On the Senate floor, days after the Oval Office scene derided as a disaster by Trump critics, Cornyn made clear he will not be found among them: “It is time for the War in Ukraine to end,” he said. “What President Trump is doing to secure peace in this dangerous world is an act of moral leadership, and I believe, divinely inspired.”

He wasn’t done. “If President Trump is successful in securing a lasting peace, I for one think he will have earned the Nobel Peace Prize.”

If Cornyn maintains that level of alignment with Trump for the next year, he will be difficult, maybe even impossible to dislodge — even for the deservedly revered Ken Paxton.