Judgment Night Is upon Us in Texas

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

 

It’s Tuesday, it’s primary season, and Memorial Day was only yesterday. So you know what that means: It’s time to haul another incumbent Republican up onto the grill and get to barbecuing a once-safe Senate seat until it’s properly mesquite-smoked and shredded, Texas-style. At this point, I should hardly need to recap the situation in the Texas Republican Senate primary, but I’m going to anyway: Disaffected primary voters denied veteran Senator John Cornyn renomination in late March, keeping him well under the 50 percent required to proceed to the general election without a runoff. Cornyn finished ahead of expectations, however, edging out state Attorney General Ken Paxton 42 to 40 percent.

 

Donald Trump promised an endorsement mere days later and was widely expected to endorse Cornyn in light of his strong showing, history of legislative loyalty, and popularity amongst his colleagues. Then Paxton played (cynically but brilliantly) to Trump’s vanity and myopic obsessions by publicly volunteering to leave the race . . . but only if the narrow Senate Republican majority eliminated the filibuster and passed the SAVE Act, Trump’s pet “federalize the elections” bill. Paxton well understood that the Senate could not and would not do this — especially at a moment when Republicans seem more likely than ever to be heading into a minority — so it was a cost-free play.

 

And apparently it worked on Trump, who endorsed Paxton on May 19, a week before the election. I discussed then Trump’s reasoning for stabbing a loyal senator in the back — the president could have stayed out of the race altogether, and I had come to expect he would — but ultimately it boils down to Trump’s need to be able to claim responsibility for a victory. He craves loyal yes-men, but he needs winners. Trump is more desperate than ever to pick winners and losers as he flails globally, a reminder of his strength with the base. So he picked the way an off-track bettor reasons through a sports gamble and chose Paxton because Paxton has always looked more likely to consolidate the remaining anti-Cornyn vote that had gone to third-place finisher Wesley Hunt. Trump doesn’t give his loyalty to losers, he gives his blessing to winners, and the odds favor Paxton.

 

All of this is happening, of course, despite the fact that Paxton is uniquely vulnerable for a Texas Republican running in 2026 — in a way that would put Ted Cruz’s 2018 reelection travails to shame — because of his spectacularly ghastly corruption and decrepit personal life. To name but one example: Paxton fired multiple whistleblowers in the Texas attorney general’s office for revealing that they had been forced to employ one of his mistresses, and then he was forced by a district court to pay out $6.6 million in damages to them, all with taxpayer dollars. (What if I told you that barely begins to scratch the surface with Paxton?)

 

So I say to you once again, as I have been for the past several months: If you live in Texas and you haven’t voted in the Republican primary yet, vote for John Cornyn.

 

Most election analysts I know will tell you that even if Paxton wins tonight, the Texas seat is still defendable — the uncharismatic James Talarico is going to be an extremely hard sale statewide for Democrats. But at what cost? Recall the unexpected money pit that opened up in the 2018 Texas race, when the scandal-free Cruz nearly blew a seat to Beto O’Rourke. You can tell me that Texas is redder now than it was then, and I would not disagree with you; I can tell you that Texas is much more expensive to campaign and advertise in now than it was then, and you cannot disagree with me.

 

It will cost a disgusting amount of money to defend this seat with someone as polarizing and (justly) attacked as Paxton. I already railed about the absurdity of Thomas Massie’s House primary becoming the single most expensive primary of all time, but know this right now: If Paxton is the GOP’s avatar in November, the Texas Senate race will become a sinkhole legendary among Senate races, with Republicans and their allies pouring in tens of millions of dollars they will intensely regret not spending in states such as Ohio, Iowa, and Georgia.

 

Either way, we’ll know by tonight.