Ken Paxton was a better Trump suck-up, and that ends Texas Senate runoff | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- President Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate runoff.
- Runoffs favor core base voters already; the endorsement probably clinches it for Paxton.
- Paxton’s Trump ties and base support overshadow concerns about his corruption.
Now what do we do with ourselves for the next week?
President Donald Trump effectively ended one of the hottest Texas political showdowns in years Tuesday when he endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate runoff.
There are still a few days of early voting (through Friday) and Election Day on May 26. But history will record this moment, teased for so long that most thought it wouldn’t come, as the end of Cornyn’s career as a titan in Texas Republican politics.
Trump declared his choice on his TruthSocial platform, with his typical mix of bravado, self-centeredness and ask-your-grandson-about-caps-lock typing skills. He called Paxton “someone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT.”
There’s plenty more; read it for yourself if you hate well-crafted sentences. But this is the crux of it: Paxton, who is incapable of shame, political or otherwise, attached himself to Trump in every way possible. Cornyn occasionally maintained an independent thought, and we just can’t have that in the Republican Party these days.
A runoff has always favored Paxton, even though Cornyn narrowly edged him, 41% to 40%, in the first round of voting in March. (A third candidate, U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, took the rest, and it takes an outright majority to win the nomination). Incumbents struggle in runoffs — after all, nearly six in 10 primary voters wanted someone other than the four-term senator.
The bigger factor, however, is that the core voters in a party’s base, the true believers who eat, breathe and sleep politics, are much more likely to turn out again for a Round 2. For most people, voting in November is enough. Another slice who casually follow party politics will participate in primaries.
Turnout dips in a runoff, often by a lot, leaving the field to people with the strongest attachment to candidates and causes. It’s how Paxton has won again and again despite a thoroughly mediocre record and obvious corruption.
It’s not that Trump’s endorsement adds a ton of votes for Paxton. It’ll be enough, though, to put him out of Cornyn’s reach. Republicans at almost all levels are fiercely loyal to Trump, so his word might tip the few left on the fence.
Worse for Cornyn, it could cast his campaign as hopeless and give many of his voters reason to find something else to do this week or the sleepy Tuesday after a federal holiday.
Trump seemed poised to endorse John Cornyn. What happened?
After Cornyn’s good showing in March, which few people anticipated, Trump seemed ready to back him. Paxton played it well, offering (in theory) to sacrifice his candidacy if the Senate would pass voter-security legislation that Trump and the GOP base crave. Trump hesitated, to the point that few expected he would ultimately risk his political capital and jump into a close race. Better not to endorse than to attach yourself to a loser, right?
The president loves to jump on board a winning train at the last minute and then declare himself the conductor, engineer, CEO of the railroad, layer of the perfect, beautiful track … you get the idea. That’s not to diminish his overwhelming clout in Republican politics. His win-loss record is generously padded with plenty of candidates who would have prevailed without him, though.
This one is clearly about loyalty, too. Trump didn’t hit Cornyn nearly as hard as he often does when he picks sides, complaining merely that the senator “was not supportive of me when times were tough.” That’s probably a reference to Cornyn’s caution about Trump returning to the scene after his temper tantrums over the 2020 elections and the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021.
At the time, Cornyn was far from alone in thinking the Republican Party was better off without Trump. The once and future president, to his political credit, changed the equation. Cornyn got on board, but in hindsight, it was probably already too late.
Even with Iran war, inflation, Trump has iron grip on GOP
Trump is losing ground politically, thanks to concerns about the Iran war and inflation, but his grip on the GOP isn’t slipping. Republican legislators in Indiana who defied the call to draw new political maps to favor the party were ousted. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted for Trump’s removal from office after Jan. 6, just finished third in his primary.
The message is clear: You can have a future in Republican politics or you can cross Trump. You cannot do both.
There’s a slim chance that Cornyn has the machinery and campaign money to pull out a shocker. The problem for him now is: What does he say? Sucking up to Trump didn’t work. He can’t criticize the president, even after Trump’s Paxton pick.
All that’s left is to remind voters that Paxton has a long history of corruption, self-dealing and cheating those most loyal to him.
Republican voters clearly don’t care about those flaws when it comes to Donald Trump. Why on earth would they hold Ken Paxton to a higher standard?
