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Standing in the shadow of the U.S.-Mexico border wall during a campaign event in Texas, Sen. John Cornyn avoided the kind of immigration diatribe that has energized much of his party’s base since Donald Trump’s rise. Instead, Cornyn used the setting to emphasize what he called federal support for Texas work on the wall, thanking Trump “for billions in federal dollars to reimburse Texans for work on the wall” and praising “the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful,” according to the Associated Press.
That approach reflects the political challenge Cornyn faces in his Republican fight for renomination. At 73 and in his fourth four-year term in the Senate, he is being tested by two fellow Republicans in a primary that, AP reports, may indicate what GOP voters are looking for and what it takes to survive in Trump’s version of the party.
The March 3 contest is shaping up as a three-way race that could lead to a runoff. Paxton entered the race in April after a series of legal and political setbacks, including surviving a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges and reaching a deal to end a long-running securities fraud case. Hunt, who has been campaigning to raise his profile, has tied his pitch to early endorsement of Trump’s 2024 comeback bid, AP reports, and has suggested that Cornyn’s time is over, saying, “His moment has passed.”
The primary’s dynamics also include the possibility that no candidate wins at least 50% of the vote, sending the top two finishers into a May runoff. The eventual nominee would then face the winner of the Democratic primary between Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico, AP reports.
Cornyn’s supporters and Senate Republican leadership are working to preserve his place, while also spending heavily. The AP report says Cornyn and aligned super PACs have invested more than $30 million since last summer on television advertising, much of it aimed at criticizing Paxton and Hunt, citing the ad-tracking service AdImpact. Senate Republican leaders have also been weighing the risk that a Paxton nomination could prove expensive to defend in the general election, according to the report.
Cornyn’s campaign messages are centered on a contrast between the statesman-style profile he projects and the more confrontational style associated with Trump-aligned challengers. Wayne Hamilton, a former executive director of the Texas Republican Party, said Cornyn plays “the part of the distinguished statesman” but that in contemporary GOP politics, “you have to be very loud about the opposition. And that’s just not him,” the AP report said. Some voters also question Cornyn’s conservatism, with Robyn Richardson, 50, telling AP that he “hasn’t been consistent in his conservative representation in his voting.”
The report also points to specific episodes where some Texas conservatives have reacted negatively to Cornyn. AP says some remain angry about his role as the GOP’s negotiator on gun restrictions in a 2022 law passed in the weeks after the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed. AP reports that after Democrats narrowly controlled Congress and hoped for broader changes under President Joe Biden, the bipartisan gun measure still became the widest-ranging gun bill passed by Congress in decades—yet some Republicans wanted any bill blocked, and some GOP activists booed Cornyn at a state convention before the measure’s passage.
More recent criticism, AP reports, has included accounts that Cornyn was dismissive of Trump during Trump’s 2016 campaign and before his 2024 campaign, as well as Cornyn’s skepticism toward Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud after Trump lost to Biden in 2020. AP also says Cornyn had previously called Trump “naive” for proposing a border wall before he won the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, while Paxton has used that history to portray Cornyn as opposing the wall.
Cornyn has attempted to respond to such accusations by stressing areas of agreement and highlighting endorsements and funding connected to the wall and Trump’s agenda. AP reports that Cornyn aired ads featuring him with Border Patrol agents along the wall and promoted his support for securing $11 billion for Texans’ work on it, and also promoted his support for Trump’s agenda, including his three U.S. Supreme Court nominees.
The contest also reflects a broader “shift” in what some GOP voters reward, the AP report says, and it has included the question of whether Trump will directly intervene. AP reports that as of last week Trump had endorsed dozens of Texas Republican lawmakers but was not expected to endorse ahead of the Senate primary, according to people familiar with the White House’s thinking who were not authorized to speak publicly. That would leave Cornyn among only three incumbent Republican senators seeking reelection who have not received Trump’s public backing, along with Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, AP reports.
In his pitch to Republican voters in the final weeks of the campaign, Cornyn told AP that he does not “cr[y] out for attention” and argued that voters should choose which candidate would be most effective at getting things done. Cornyn said, “Sometimes people make the distinction between a workhorse and a show horse,” and added, “And I’m happy to be a workhorse.” AP also quotes him criticizing what he called “performance artists” in Washington, saying, “We’ve got enough performance artists here in Washington,” with people who think their qualifications come from being loud and active on social media and getting attention.
As the primary battle concentrates on who can claim credibility with Trump’s base, the AP report frames Cornyn’s renomination fight as a referendum on whether a veteran senator can adapt to a party that demands a different style of political persuasion—and if he cannot, he could become the first Republican Texas senator to lose renomination.