“Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken-fried steak,” observed Larry McMurtry, the state’s foremost fabulist in playful mood. That was in 1968. Six decades later, James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the Texas senate seat John Cornyn will soon vacate, will do his damnedest to assure voters of his carnivorous credentials and disprove accusations, led by his Republican rival Ken Paxton, that deep down he’s a vegan at heart.
Tuesday night’s trashing of Cornyn by Paxton in the Republican primary run-off sets the scene for an election campaign that will reflect, in miniature, the national battle between blue and red, left and right, Trump Magaism and old Republicanism and bring to vivid life the hot topics of gender and religion that informed the presidential election.
In April, the US supreme court reinstated a redrawn Texas electoral map that was designed to add more Republicans to the US House, as Trump and the Republicans seek to keep control of Congress in the November elections. The reinstated map could flip as many as five Democratic-held US House seats to Republicans.
The House of Representatives is now favoured to fall into Democratic hands, however, while control of the US Senate – not so long ago seen as a Republican bulwark – is increasingly up for grabs amid Trump’s slumping approval ratings, the war in Iran and increasing fuel prices.
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The president’s late, late endorsement of Paxton, the former Texas attorney general who brushed off a state impeachment trial, fraud charges and rumoured infidelities, only arrived last week. But it was enough to crush Cornyn’s diminishing hopes of extending his 24-year run as a senator. Despite the backing of the GOP national party and a $20 million campaign designed to remind Texans of Paxton’s roguish past, the verdict was brutal: a 63 per cent to 38 per cent vote for Paxton.
Cornyn accepted defeat with dignity. In Washington, his Senate pals had expressed frustration and anger at Trump’s failure to endorse their friend, despite Cornyn’s increasingly desperate efforts to portray himself as a Trump guy. Prominent Trump Texans, including governor Greg Abbott and senator Ted Cruz, were notably muted in their congratulations to the new candidate.
Still, by Wednesday morning, Senate leader John Thune phoned in to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio show host, to quickly turn the page, recognising Cornyn “had been a great partner for us in the Senate” but that the people of Texas had spoken.
“Ken Paxton is our nominee heading into November, and we’ve got to pivot and go all-in to make sure that we keep Texas red, so that he wins, and that we keep a far-left liberal out of the United States Senate. And obviously, that seat is going to be very key to our majority, which will determine the future of this country.”
In the immediate postmortems, opinions conflicted on whether Trump’s endorsement had, in fact, been decisive. David Drucker, a senior writer for The Dispatch, had seen advance numbers ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
“Ken Paxton was going to win that race,” he told MS Now the day after the election.
“The polling I was privy to – private polling, in advance of the race – told me that Ken Paxton was going to win no matter what Donald Trump did – 30 points, that wasn’t all Trump. This wasn’t even-steven and Trump plus 30 all of a sudden, Paxton was going to win and Trump didn’t want to be on the wrong side of that so he went with the winner.”
That much is undoubtedly true but the fact remains that Cornyn’s vote fell by some 45 per cent since the first primary election in March, when he finished marginally ahead of his opponent without either reaching the quota. Trump was unquestionably blase about Paxton’s victory, displaying none of the glee with which he had greeted the primary defeat of Kentucky representative Thomas Massie. If anything, he invested more joy in the demise on Tuesday night of Al Green, the veteran Texas Democratic congressman and a conspicuous heckler of Trump in his two addresses to Congress since returning to office. Green lost his primary election to a younger candidate – the first Democratic incumbent to lose a primary in 2026.
Old-guard Republicans like Thune will continue to privately smart at Trump’s refusal to support Cornyn. But the result means that Trump’s endorsement streak is now 118-0. Sentiment is a pricey commodity in Texas. In a concession speech in which he did not address or congratulate his opponent, Cornyn vowed to support the GOP ticket but stressed that only 8 per cent of registered Republican voters had turned out.
In a state of 32 million, after a high-profile and salacious campaign framed as a battle for Texan Republicanism, it was the Maga warriors who turned out in the greatest numbers for their candidate, reinforcing the sense that in Texas, the Republican Party is a complex church, with a fervent base that has moved further to the right. That drift can be traced back to 2002, when Republicans, riding the crest of president George W Bush’s popularity, broke a 129-year run of Democratic dominance in the Texas state house. Since then, the GOP has consolidated control of both chambers.
It was in that environment that Paxton rose to prominence, serving as a state representative for a decade before moving to the state senate in 2013 and winning election as attorney general in 2015, a role he has successfully defended twice.
Within hours, Paxton had turned his attention to Talarico, previewing his campaign strategy with a series of name-calling epitaphs to see which would stick. Talarico returned fire by positioning Paxton as an empty vessel who has nothing positive to offer Texans in an era of crisis and claiming that private polling reflected public surveys that have him leading.
“Texans are drowning. We can’t afford the basics. We can’t afford groceries or gas or insurance or housing or childcare or prescription drugs. And Ken Paxton clearly has no solutions to offer us. So, while he keeps dividing us with these tired culture war fights I’m going to keep bringing Texans together to take on his corruption and lower costs.”
His pitch coincided with a monthly report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis that April inflation had climbed to 3.8 per cent in April (as opposed to 0.4 per cent in March), and Thursday’s tentative news of a framework for a US-Iranian peace deal and the imminent reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
But while Paxton and Cornyn have spent the last eight weeks blackguarding one another’s reputation, Talarico has been free to campaign across the state, eating chicken fried steak and – literally – beefing up his barbecue credentials. That ends now. The Republican contention is that now that Paxton has been anointed by Trump and overwhelmingly endorsed by the voters, Cornyn Republicans will, as Republican strategist Ross Hunt told the Texas Tribune this week, “hold their nose and vote for Paxton in the general election”.
Meanwhile, the candidates continued with the opening exchanges of what will be a long, bitter brawl, with Paxton declaring Talarico “the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated” and the Democrat returning the compliment by branding his opponent “the most corrupt politician in America”.
The brickbats represent in miniature the national barbs and insults that are habitually traded by party leaders at national level. The mutual loathing and contempt are general – and there are a full six months to go.
