It took about an hour for the lights to go out across Texas signalling the sudden end of the four-decade political career of ‘Big Bad’ John Cornyn, the long serving senator and one of the last holdouts of Bush-era Republicanism. As president Donald Trump had decreed with an 11th-hour endorsement of Cornyn’s party opponent, former state attorney general and Maga loyalist Ken Paxton, Texan Republicans moved in droves in the primary election run-off on Tuesday night. What had been an impossibly close race turned into a rout.
Privately, Cornyn may have guessed at this outcome since Trump eventually gave his blessing to Paxton, predicting that he would win the primary “very substantially” before going on to defeat James Talarico, the charismatic gospel-quoting Democrat who the president described as “a very defective candidate”.
“I think of what a wonderful experience I have had,” Cornyn had said early on Tuesday.
“I can’t in good conscience turn this Red Senate seat over to someone who could likely to let it slip through their fingers to the detriment of Republicans in Texas, the Republican Party nationally and to the detriment of president Trump’s agenda. I feel a responsibility as a result of my long service.”
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None of that mattered once the poll booths closed after seven o’clock. Within an hour, it was obvious the wind was blowing in one direction. Cornyn just about kept his nose in front in the urban counties which house Dallas and Fort Worth while previously loyal counties across the state, most conspicuously in the Texas Panhandle, all voted according to president Trump’s endorsement.
Paxton was, the president told them, a fighter and a bruiser. Most importantly, he had remained a vocal Trump loyalist even in the winter of 2021, when Trump was back in Mar-a-Lago, his first presidency done and ostracised by the Republican grandees who believed the Trump experiment over. Paxton plagued the Biden administration by filing more than 100 lawsuits in his capacity as attorney general and made a trip to Manhattan to support Trump during the ‘hush-money’ trial in the spring of 2024.
He proved his colours and in the end, Trump opted for that extrovert loyalty over Cornyn, beloved among Republican colleagues in the Senate and with an unblemished record.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump wrote, a tribute that served as both a cold, past-tense valedictory and a warning to other Republican politicians that enough is never enough. Paxton was able to brush away the stains of his 2023 Texas impeachment trial when he was charged with more than a dozen misuses of office, separate fraud charges that followed him for a decade and a publicised infidelity and divorce that Cornyn mercilessly highlighted as part of a $19 million advertisement campaign in which he offered Texans a stark choice on the ballot: ‘The wife-cheater and fraud? Or the Texas Workhorse.’
Nothing mattered. With almost 50 per cent of the vote in, the Texas Workhorse led in just six of the 254 counties across the Lone Star State. He gave his concession speech early.
“Tonight I’m reminded of something Teddy Roosevelt said in 1910. He said: it’s not the critic that counts. Not the man who points out where the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”
Famous words. But as far as Trump is concerned, the warrior image best fits the man he anointed. In his short address, Cornyn noted that just about 8 per cent of the registered voters among the 32 million people who live in Texas showed out to vote on Tuesday evening.
Just over six in every ten said they “were ready for a different direction”, he acknowledged. “Another reminder that those who show up decide for those who do not.”
The observation was perhaps an unintentional acknowledgment of Trump’s capacity to command the active loyalty of his Maga base, whose faith has remained unwavering through the tariff turmoil, the inflation crisis that has carried through from the Biden administration and the deeply unpopular and expensive war with Iran.
Even as Trump’s national approving rating reaches a historic low, his magnetism has not diminished among core supporters. It meant that Paxton was able to greet supporters before 10pm local time, looking slightly dazed at the ease of his victory. Trump’s one-minute endorsement caused Paxton’s vote-trajectory to go supernova in the space of a week.
“I feel speechless in a way,” he began, carrying echoes of the very phrase several of Cornyn’s friends in the Senate used when they heard that Trump had failed to endorse him. And then he gathered himself to offer indirect thanks to the most famous channel-surfer on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas he didn’t listen,” he said of Trump. “Instead, he gave his complete and total endorsement. President Trump is the leader of our party and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics. Tonight we just sent a Texas-size message to Washington. Tonight change was on the ballot and change won.”
Paxton’s margin of victory was so handsome that he was able to pay brief tribute to “John” before quickly turning his attention to what will be one of the most gripping – and expensive – Senate races of the autumn, when he squares off against Talarico.
“My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated. He is even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is. He goes by a few names that some people may have heard of. Some people call him Tofu Talarico. Some people call him Six Gender Jimmy. I’ve even heard some people call him James Tala-freako. And others refer to him simply as Low T Talarico,” Paxton said in his peculiarly lazy, hesitant speaking style.
Of Paxton, Talarico vowed he would lead a campaign that will defeat “the most corrupt politician in America and the broken political system that he represents”.
The odd choice faced by Texans will make for a vivid contrast: Talarico is a once-in-a-generation communicator who seems to generate a kind of beatific light where and whenever he speaks. But he is tough as nails and will need to be. The campaign will be gruelling and nasty. Paxton’s victory will encourage Democratic optimists to once again believe that the 30-year drought in Texas is coming to an end.
But Tuesday evening was about shifting allegiances and hardline attitudes within the Texan Republican movement. Talarico nimbly paid tribute to John Cornyn on social media, noting that “we don’t agree on everything but we both still believe in public service.” And he told disenchanted Cornyn voters: “You have a place in our campaign.”
Cornyn carried himself well in the manner of his exit but at 74, it was a desperately cruel goodbye from his home state. He vowed to support the Republican ticket but he will serve out the last seven months of his Senate life unburdened by any feeling of having to pacify or please his president. He belongs to the growing group of Republican politicians cut adrift by their president.
Something about his exit resurrected the piercing phrase of Tom Landry, the revered Texan football man who wore a fedora on the sidelines as he coached the Cowboys through 29 years of his existence. Admitting he was sad on the February day in 1989 when he was brusquely fired, Landry was clear eyed in the relentless, restless nature of his tough and dramatic native state.
“People will forget me pretty quick,” he said.
