It’s pretty rare that a four term incumbent senator gets primaried out of office. Indeed, I think you’d have to go back to Alfonse D’Amato defeating Jacob Javits in 1980 for the last time it happened, back when New York was still capable of electing Republicans statewide. So it’s worth taking a deeper look at why John Cornyn got slaughtered by Ken Paxton in Tuesday’s runoff.
And a slaughter it was. Cornyn lost by 384,000 votes, or 27% of people voting. Nor was it a geographical narrow victory for Paxton. Cornyn lost everywhere:
Cornyn won two counties: Liberal, politics-obsessed Travis County, where Cornyn won by just over 2,000 votes, and (as commenter FM noted) rural coastal Kenedy County, the third least populous county in the state with 350 people, where Cornyn won by all of 6 votes to 2. If there’s ever been such a geographically dominant statewide victory in a runoff, I can’t remember it. (Dan Patrick walloped David Dewhurst by a slightly larger margin in the 2014 Lt. Governor runoff, but Dewhurst still won more counties than Cornyn did.)
Some national media has gotten a key fact about the race wrong. No, it was not a dead heat until President Trump endorsed Paxton; polls throughout the runoff constantly showed Paxton ahead by substantial margins. Indeed, between Paxton, Wesley Hunt, and longshot Sara Canady, fully 58% of Republican primary voters cast their ballots against longtime incumbent Cornyn, which should have been a big warning sign.
And if money was truly the only thing that mattered in politics, Cronyn should have mopped the floor with Paxton. Cornyn’s own campaign and allied Super PACs poured more than $100 million into Cornyn’s campaign to no visible effect.
No, the reason that Cornyn lost was because Texas Republicans were finally well and truly tired of him. Cornyn’s playing footsie with illegal alien amnesty while claiming he was against amnesty was one of the biggest reasons voters rejected him.
There’s being rejected by voters, then there’s being absolutely embarrassed.
That’s what we saw in Texas last night. John Cornyn, who outspent his opponent Texas AG Ken Paxton 10-1, was absolutely wrecked at the polls.
No incumbent senator has done worse than Cornyn in half a century, and no other election in U.S. history has seen two incumbent senators voted out in the same election.
Cornyn’s holdout on the SAVE Act, his pro-amnesty leanings, and his refusal to push Trump’s agenda, along with Ken Paxton’s statewide popularity and effectiveness totally sealed the deal.
Funny, Cornyn is a co-sponsor of the SAVE Act, but didn’t make himself conspicuous by trying to get the senate to actually pass it.
Senate Republicans had two options to save Cornyn:
1) Pass the SAVE Act
2) Blow $100 million on a primary electionWhy they chose door number two is beyond me. As long as I can remember the NRSC has made decisions that are at odds with voters and reality. https://t.co/D3g54xEiBS
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) May 27, 2026
The GOP is WILDLY out of step with its voters, who keep trying to send the establishment a message.
The GOP spent $100 million on John Cornyn just for him to lose to Ken Paxton by 30 pts…
Americans are done with amnesty.
Americans are done with the visa abuse.Realize where we are. pic.twitter.com/GGaDQvH0vc
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) May 27, 2026
Moreover, Paxton did better among Hispanic than white voters.
Paxton did better with Hispanics than whites! https://t.co/hgBqjOhSp3 pic.twitter.com/lEckHENbMc
— @SHEPMJS (@shepmjs) May 27, 2026
The population of Hidalgo County, Texas, is almost 100% Hispanic. Like many other similar counties, it had heavy support for Paxton.
While the number of Hispanics who voted in this primary was only in the tens of thousands, the fact that they supported the pro-deportation candidate even more than white voters is an important data point.
If you spend any time with Hispanic Americans, you will know that they hate people who cheat the system with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. I am told this makes them racist.
John Cornyn has become the poster boy for someone who votes right the overwhelming majority of the time, but still manages to be out of touch with the base on their biggest priorities.
In a not-so different time and age, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) would still be considered one of the good guys: As a pro-life conservative who voted with President Donald Trump 99.2% of the time, just a generation earlier, he would’ve been lauded as one of our most staunchly conservative, reliably Republican senators.
And not just reliably Republican: He’s reliably a winner, too. Sen. Cornyn hadn’t lost an election in 42 years.
Yet last night, this four-term senator with a 42-year winning streak was smooshed like a bug, winning just 36% of the vote in his Republican primary runoff. Nearly two-thirds of his constituents rejected him!
Just like that, his political career is over. No second acts, no chance for redemption.
GOP politicians beware: The rules for Republican Party membership ain’t what they once were. Violate the new rules at your own peril.
But don’t look to the mainstream media to explain the new rules. Reductive, knee-jerk journalists can’t see beyond the Great Orange Monster, interpreting Cornyn’s fate — as well as Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and a slew of Indiana state senators — as the umpteenth sign that Trump is a dictator/fascist/authoritarian.
Examples snipped.
The mainstream media defines “bipartisanship” as Republicans crossing the aisle to help Democrats. But when Democrats cross the aisle to help Republicans, they’re sellouts and traitors.
Case in point: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.). Because he’ll occasionally side with Republicans, he’s a Judas to the Donkeys.
Snip.
Today, we expect a Republican district will send a loyal, dependable Republican representative to Washington. Helping our GOP “team” is considered part of the job. And given how narrow the margins are, we’re unwilling to sacrifice a roster spot for someone who refuses to play ball.
It’s a luxury we can no longer afford.
Congressmen and senators aren’t simply judged by how much pork they can peddle. Not anymore — that’s as out-of-fashion as parachute pants, Wham! records, and the mullet. Instead, they’re judged by how effectively they help their “team” advance the national football.
That’s because the Democratic Party has changed. Until the Obama years, it was a coalition party: liberals, unions, Catholics, environmentalists, blue-collar workers, minorities, and women. Post-Obama, it became a vehicle for left-wing radicalism — and this alone became its North Star.
Not compromise. Not meeting in the middle. Its stated goal was “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
Which made conservative compromise an impossibility.
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party have evolved to address each other’s deficiencies. It was probably inevitable: The political marketplace demanded it, because they’re competing products.
So, when one party changes, so must the other:
As the Democrats have embraced socialism, Wokeism, and trans/LGBTQ policies, Republican voters have recoiled in horror. We want our party to protect us from their madness.
And that’s an all-hands-on-deck challenge.
The Democratic Party nationalized state elections in 2008 with Barack Obama. It ceased to consist of free-wheeling, locally attuned legislators who represented different segments of the Democratic coalition and became a unified, unapologetic, left-wing movement that placed ideology first.
The Democrats’ goal wasn’t compromise. It was victory.
And during the Obama years, the Democrats won a lot.
The MAGA movement responded by nationalizing elections on the Republican side, too. It’s one of Donald Trump’s most significant legacies, because pre-Trump, we were a party of John Fettermans — always ready to swing a deal and compromise — and the best we could hope for was electing the occasional John Cornyn, who’d sway his GOP colleagues a little to the right.
It was an age when the Republican Party AND the Democratic Party were moving to the left. The only difference was, the Republicans moved slightly slower than the Democrats.
The Trump revolution wasn’t just a response to Democratic Party excesses. It was also a stinging rebuke to the GOP establishment — and to Republican politicians who’d cosplay as senior statesmen, earning mainstream media “kudos” for (repeatedly) bending their knee before their Democratic masters.
Snip.
Under the old rules, “conservative” senators like John Cornyn were incentivized to move to the middle, because their Republican seats were safe. Nobody dared primary a sitting GOP senator; therefore, his only real threat was being too “extreme” and angering the left.
As such, many conservative states and conservative districts had wishy-washy RINOs representing them in Congress. (Many were there for decades at a time.)
It was inefficient. We were squandering precious resources.
Not anymore. Now, on a national level, we expect more from conservative states and conservative districts — not less — and we’ll vote you out of office if you don’t deliver.
Like it or not, there are no local federal elections anymore. Everything is national. For better or worse, politics has become the ultimate team sport.
And the team that maximizes its resources is the one that will win.
If you want a bright future in today’s Republican Party, the path is clear: Be an asset to your team. Become indispensable. Listen to your coach, know your role, and do it well.
And let’s score some frickin’ points!
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Finally, it wasn’t all about Cornyn’s manifest deficiencies. Ken Paxton, despite being grossly outspent, was simply the more conservative candidate. Hell, Paxton even tried to unseat Joe Straus for speaker back when he was in the Texas House. He was the most conservative candidate when he first ran for Attorney General. He started fighting the radical dictates of the Obama administration and social justice initiatives here in the state in his first term. As I’ve said many a time before, I say about Paxton what Abraham Lincoln said about Ulysses S. Grant: “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”
For all the money backing him, Cornyn was a weak candidate who’d grown out of touch with the base and state he represented. But Ken Paxton got the nod to be the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator from Texas the old fashioned way: He earned it.
Tags: 2026 Election, 2026 Texas Senate Race, amnesty, Austin, Border Controls, Elections, fundraising, Hispanics, Illegal Aliens, John Cornyn, John Fetterman, Ken Paxton, Kenedy County, PAC, Republicans, runoff, SAVE Act, Super-PAC, Texas, Travis County
“Americans are done with amnesty. Americans are done with the visa abuse. Realize where we are.”
Oh no. More than done. These legions of cretinous low trust gimmegrant leeches aren’t getting mulligan wristslaps over status violations. Ship has sailed. Era is over. How quaint.
No no, now Americans wanted f*cking denaturalization. Repatriation and deportation by the millions paired with eternal blacklisted exile by DNA, surname, and clan affiliation. Furthermore, these backstabbing ingrates should be thankful that this defines a level for what most Americans would now consider a compromise ONLY, one that limits what a not-so-insignificant cohort would gladly take further from complete seizure of everything they own in recompense, sanction of their thunderdome homelands for penalties remaining, imprisonment, all the way up to a rifle bullet to the back of the head on the shores of Lake Superior.
After everything that’s been going on for decades, these miserable scamtastic orcs should kiss our feet, thank their numerous and bizarre gods, and devote their lives in gratitude that the “compromise” is letting almost all of them leave ALIVE.
I think this better encapsulates how “done” most Americans are with this.
I agree that Cornyn’s stance on immigration and particularly amnesty is why he lost. However, I didn’t know he was a co-author of the SAVE act, and yeah, the fact that wasn’t widely touted along with his push to get it passed during his wild. spending campaign says the GOP leadership still doesn’t get it.
U.S. Representative Chip Roy was the original author of the SAVE Act.
“And if money was truly the only thing that mattered in politics, Cronyn [SIC] should have mopped the floor with Paxton. Cornyn’s own campaign and allied Super PACs poured more than $100 million into Cornyn’s campaign to no visible effect.”
I think you may have misspelled…
Wait. Nevermind. That might actually be apropos.
$100 million? Cornyn will leave the senate, but the consultants who collected a huge portion of that money will just go on to the next one. Another way to look at the spending is that it was as much about consultants getting paid. You can go through a page or more of filings (sorted by amount, highest first) at the FEC for Texans for Cornyn before you get to a TX payee. Out of touch?
It wasn’t just amnesty. Cornyn was soft on the 2nd Amendment, something that got him booed at the 2022 Republican State Convention. He was the poster child for the candidate that would sell out the on their deeply held issues in favor of comity in Washington D. C.
I do hope the National Republican Senatorial Committee gets serious about defunding illegal immigrants and passing the SAVE act. Of the two, election integrity matters more but I would applaud deporting several millions of the military-aged men who invited themselves here and are living off the taxpayer’s largess.
Don’t forget Cornyn playing footsie with the Dems on gun control.
Cornyn was reliable for the easy votes, but not the hard ones.
No one looked more like a trustworthy Senator than Cormyn. Handsome, distinguished, white-haired, this phony fooled people for a long time. He was in reality a pillar of the Uniparty.
Similar to what finally did in Javits in 1980. I was visiting Rochester relatives just before the primary and saw one of D’amato’s ads. lots of Little Things did in Javits with enough voters that an obscure town supervisor from suburban Long Island could knock off a US Senator.
46 years ago.
IMO Cornyn also ran an awful campaign, despite all that money. I kept waiting for Cornyn to give me just one good reason why I should vote FOR him instead of just against Paxton. C’mon, John, you’ve been in the Senate for a quarter of a century – surely there’s something good you did that your opponent hasn’t or won’t, right?
Nope – full negative all the way. Hell with him.
Cornyn was 99% for Cornyn and 1 % for the country.
Cornyn was weak on a number of issues, from immigration to gun control. I think he was also unpopular because of his efforts to unseat Ted Cruz. Ted may not be as popular now was he was when first elected, but Cornyn did some underhanded things when Ted was running for reelection. Like Joe Manchin, Cornyn hung out a little far left all term until reelection time, then claimed the mantle of conservative for reelection. Like West Virginia, Texas got tired of the act.
You only need to go back to 2012 for a sitting US Senator to be primaried out of office. Richard Lugar of Indiana lost track of who he was supposed to be working for. Cornyn saw that happen, and suddenly his primary was filled like a clown car. Nobody could get enough traction with the overfilled field, and he skated then. I’ve been looking for a chance to vote Cornyn out of office, and I was happy to get this chance.
Before he sucked on Amnesty stuff, he sucked on 2A stuff. That’s where the first fires of hatred for him came from. It wasn’t enough last time… but it was there, and he should have gotten the hint.
Crushing an opponent in a primary doesn’t indicate how the general election will go until you look at the number of Democrat vs. Republican votes. Crushing a Republican primary in Massachusetts means the Democrat will win. How did the Texas turnout go?
Turnout for the primary was around parity, but turnout for the runoff was 2.5 to 1 in favor of Republicans.
“Wait. Nevermind. That might actually be apropos.”
Witty and well played, sir.
“I’ve been looking for a chance to vote Cornyn out of office, and I was happy to get this chance.”
Thank you for your service to our country.
“[H]e sucked on 2A stuff. That’s where the first fires of hatred for him came from…”
Which thankfully, burned any bridge he had with conservatives. Now he too can burn.
Trump is most definitely not the reason Paxton won by such a large margin. Cornyn turned on Texans when he supported Biden’s gun control legislation in 2022, long before Trump was re-elected. His flirtation with amnesty sealed the deal. Trump’s endorsement may have swayed 4-5% of the vote. But Cornyn lost because of Cornyn.
To put a point on it, when Trump offered to endorse Cornyn if he and other RINO republicans passed the SAVE act, it infuriated me. I would have voted for anyone over Cornyn after his performance the last 6 years. I wanted him out. Trump’s endorsement was trivial and not particularly relevant. Also, Trump’s endorsement was so late in the game that I personally think his people recognized that Cornyn was going to lose, and jumped on the Paxton bandwagon as latecomers.
I don’t necessarily mind that the media is playing this up as Trump’s endorsement mattering so much because maybe it will strike fear into the hearts of the other RINO’s. That would be a good thing. But it just isn’t true. Cornyn finished himself off long before Paxton even declared himself to be a candidate. This was ALL ABOUT CORNYN, and him betraying Texans.
Andy,,agree 100%.Except,,soiling Lake Superior with the splatter.