Cornyn Seeks Fourth Term

In case you missed this news Friday, Texas Senator John Cornyn is seeking a fourth term, and fellow Texas Senator Ted Cruz has endorsed him:

Signaling that the 2020 election season has begun, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has endorsed his colleague John Cornyn for re-election.

In a video posted this morning by Cornyn’s campaign, the two men sit together with Cruz asking voters to join him “in supporting John Cornyn’s campaign for re-election to keep Texas strong and prosperous.”

He and Cornyn take turns extolling their achievements, working with President Trump, on behalf of Texas.

“Ted and I fight shoulder to shoulder to make the country look more like Texas,” said Cornyn, who will be seeking a fourth six-year term in 2020.

“John and I have made a very strong team here in Washington, and I hope that we can keep working together so that together we can uphold the principles that have long embodied the Texas can-do spirit,” added Cruz.

Their relationship hasn’t always been so smooth. In 2016, Cornyn famously refused to make a similar early endorsement of Cruz for 2018. Of course, Cruz didn’t endorse Cornyn’s 2014 re-election bid until after that year’s primary.

There was talk that Cornyn, being 66, might retire, but that’s evidently not the case.

In 2014, I thought Cornyn might be vulnerable to a primary challenge from the right (which sort of happened, but Rep. Steve Stockman’s lackluster campaign didn’t even throw a scare into Cornyn). I don’t think that this year, for a variety of reasons, mainly that Donald Trump’s victory ended up largely incorporating the Tea Party back into the folds of the Republican Party proper, Cornyn has hewed more closely to the conservative line in recent years, and this year’s Democratic successes has deadened the Republican appetite for inter-party challenges of popular (and mostly conservative) incumbents.

It’s not that Cornyn is perfect, it’s that his deviations from Republican orthodoxy are few enough that he doesn’t stand out from other Republican senators the way Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski do. (And Cornyn had a significant role in guiding Brett Kavanaugh’s supreme court nomination to a successful conclusion.) Also, don’t forget that Cornyn pulled in more votes than any other statewide candidate in 2014, obliterating his Democratic opponent even worse than Greg Abbott trounced Wendy Davis. If 2020 is anything like 2018, Republicans will want a familiar, popular incumbent on the ticket.

I don’t see Cornyn losing in 2020, even if Democratic Party flavor-of-the-month Beto O’Rourke forgoes an expected Presidential run to challenge him.

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One Response to “Cornyn Seeks Fourth Term”

  1. Advo says:

    I thought Cornyn would be vulnerable also, much like several other RINOs that cycle were. Cornyn must have thought so too, because the Republican field was chock full o’nuts. Stockman didn’t run a lackluster campaign – he ran a deliberate clown show.

    Since he was retiring from a very safe House seat, Stockman didn’t want to be a senator. Instead he pulled all the oxygen from a room full of Cornyn challengers. Add a few random nuts to the party and the serious contenders couldn’t get any traction. Cornyn and the state Republican Party ran a textbook interference pattern to make sure he wasn’t going to be primaried like Lugar was in Indiana.

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