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In more than two decades as a US Senator from Texas, John Cornyn has never faced a serious electoral threat. This year, he's struggling to make it past the Republican primary.
As early voting begins Tuesday, most polls show Cornyn in a tight race with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a conservative firebrand whose personal life has been closely followed by the state's media outlets since he survived an impeachment trial in 2023. Another Republican, US Representative Wesley Hunt, is running third in the March 3 primary with significant support.
"It is going to be a really bloody, expensive battle to decide who the nominee is, and that's never good for a party's nominee," said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "This is the biggest fight of Cornyn's political life."
The battle is forcing Republicans into a pricey battle over a seat they've safely held for years, just as Democrats are seeking to make inroads in the GOP's majority in the Senate. The increasingly bitter Republican showdown is potentially heading for a two-man runoff in May that would further drain the party's coffers and subject the candidates to more intra-party flak.
The turmoil has the state's long-suffering Democrats sensing opportunity amid a tight primary of their own between two rising stars: US Representative Jasmine Crockett and state Representative James Talarico.
A poll this month by the University of Houston showed Crockett with an eight-point lead. But an Emerson College survey in January gave Talarico a comparable advantage, and he has outpaced Crockett in fundraising.
Talarico got a publicity boost this week after late-night host Stephen Colbert said his interview with the candidate was blocked by CBS lawyers over worries it would violate the Federal Communications Commission's equal time rule. Talarico posted a clip of the interview on social media, saying President Donald Trump is "worried we're about to flip Texas."
The Republican race also has a measure of uncertainty in the polls. The Houston survey showed Paxton with 38% support followed by Cornyn at 31% and Hunt at 17%. But other polls including the Emerson report showed Paxton and Cornyn neck and neck.
If no candidate wins a majority, the top two vote getters go to a runoff. The GOP hopefuls are angling for a coveted endorsement from Trump, who has yet to choose a favorite. On Monday, he said he likes all three candidates.
Cornyn, a 74-year-old Republican luminary in the Senate who almost became the chamber's majority leader in 2024, is winning the financial race. Supporters include the powerful National Republican Senatorial Committee, which called Cornyn the only Republican in the field "who reliably wins a general election matchup."
"Any other outcome makes holding the Senate majority more expensive," the NRSC said in a memo.
Cornyn also has a lopsided advantage in spending by political action committees, a key concern in a state with several big media markets. Some of the state's wealthiest political donors, including billionaire energy executive Kelcy Warren and real estate magnate Harlan Crow, are backing a pro-Cornyn PAC.
"The Paxton campaign has not been very successful at all in raising money," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
But Paxton, 63, running in his first race with national implications, is holding his own in polls. Vowing to "take a sledgehammer to the D.C. establishment," he has accused Cornyn of being insufficiently conservative.
Case in point: Paxton has gone after Cornyn for his work on the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, gun safety legislation passed in the wake of the 2022 shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead. The bill strengthened background checks for some gun buyers and expanded funding for mental health services.
Cornyn has fired back with broadsides on Paxton's history of controversy.
Paxton was impeached by the Republican-dominated Texas House of Representatives in 2023, accused of using his office to benefit a real estate developer and political donor. The developer allegedly helped Paxton conceal an extramarital affair and funded renovations to his home. Paxton was acquitted by the state Senate.
His personal life again generated headlines last year when his wife, Angela, filed for divorce. In a post on X, she said she had pursued reconciliation but decided to end the marriage "on biblical grounds" after "recent discoveries."
Cornyn pounced on that months later, accusing Paxton of cheating on his wife and saying, "Ken, when this [is] over, you will have nothing." That outburst came in reply to a Paxton post on X in which he said, "Cornyn's career is done and everyone knows it."
The focus on Paxton's personal baggage has Republicans gauging his chances in November. Democrats are aiming to recreate the excitement of the state's 2018 Senate election, when former US Representative Beto O'Rourke came within three points of unseating Senator Ted Cruz.
This year, with Trump's approval rating falling, signs of Republican weakness have emerged. On Jan. 31, a Texas Democrat handily beat a Republican in a state Senate district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024.
But the Democrats haven't won statewide office in Texas for more than three decades and have never come within nine points of beating Cornyn. The party's Senate candidates in the primary, Crockett and Talarico, have sharply divergent views about how to end the futility.
Talarico, a 36-year-old Presbyterian minister-in-training and former schoolteacher, has touted his ability to appeal to independents and even disaffected Republicans. Crockett, 44, argues that Democrats should focus less on pulling voters from across the aisle and more on driving up enthusiasm in their base and energizing voters who would normally stay home.
For either one of them, defeating Cornyn would be a long shot, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Against Paxton, though, "Talarico could squeak it out," he said.
A Crockett-Paxton matchup would spark fireworks by pitting two of the state's most outspoken politicians against each other. "You could sell tickets to it," Jillson said.
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