Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is preparing to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, according to a story published Wednesday by The New York Times.
While not officially declaring himself a candidate, Paxton told the Times in an interview that Cornyn has lost touch with voters. Paxton also said he has already been talking with people close to President Donald Trump about a potential run.
New York Times reporter J. David Goodman joined the Standard with more on what he said “could be the nastiest and most expensive Republican Party showdown of the 2026 election.”
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Paxton’s for real – he’s going to challenge Senator Cornyn next year?
J. David Goodman: Well, Paxton has been a little coy about formally announcing this, but I sat down with him in Dallas this week and, you know, he was really all but announcing a run. You know, He’s been thinking about it, considering it, looking at the angles, raising money.
And he spoke like a candidate when he talked to me. So I don’t think there’s much doubt in his mind that this is something he wants to do.
He said he’s not pulling the trigger officially until he has raised enough money or has enough promises of commitments to pay for the campaign, but it looks like that may happen. And he’s definitely, you know, preparing the ground here.
Did you get a sense of how long Paxton’s been plotting this out?
It’s a little unclear. What he told me is that something clicked for him when he saw Senator Cornyn get booed back in 2022, when Cornyn was really the lead Republican in the Senate on this bipartisan gun safety measure that had been proposed and eventually passed and signed by Joe Biden.
That actually did not endear him to the conservative base in Texas. And he was roundly booed at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Houston that year. And Paxton said he was watching that happen from the convention, he was speaking soon after, and that it really clicked for him that this senator had really lost a big part of the base of the party in Texas.
Now, when he actually decided to go forward with it, I’m not sure, but it seems like something he’s been thinking about for a while.
There seems to have been something of an uncivil war among Texas Republicans with some of them actually trying to impeach Paxton in the previous legislative session. But you know, Cornyn has held this U.S. Senate seat since 2002. Should Cornyn be seriously worried about a challenge from Paxton?
I do think he should be worried. I think that for most of this civil war, Cornyn’s kind of been outside. He’s not really taken part much in it. He has been this presence that really most Texas Republicans like. They don’t think about him that much. He’s enjoyed an approval rating pretty consistently in the positive area for really his whole time in office.
But the party has changed a lot in the last few years, and Ken Paxton has really ascended, despite every effort by certain parts of the party, including sort of the old guard, Rick Perry and others, who really didn’t like the kind of politics that he was bringing to Austin. He survived a criminal indictment; he survived the impeachment.
And now he’s here sort of aligned many ways with President Trump and his wing of the party. And Cornyn is sort of really one of the last major figures in the party in Texas who’s still around and could face a serious challenge by someone like this.
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Pull back for just a moment. I can imagine you calling your editors in New York and saying, hey, listen, there could be a blockbuster race happening here. What is really at stake in a larger sense, do you think? I mean, could this be the sort of primary fight the whole nation might be watching?
I certainly think so. I mean, if you think about the way that John Cornyn was a figure that could be looked to as a bipartisan leader in the Senate, as someone who might cross the aisle occasionally, who was willing to say things critical of his own party, that kind of ethic and ethos in Washington hasn’t really been seen much lately. And if he’s lost, we’ve lost another voice like that in Washington.
On the flip side, Ken Paxton is a real loyalist of President Trump. As we know, he challenged some of the election results; he sued to try and challenge them in four swing states in 2020. And when I talked to him this week and asked him about President Trump’s musings that he might stay on for a third term, Paxton said he thought a president only gets two terms, but he really didn’t know.
And so he kind of waffled a little bit on that question. And if he’s in the Senate, when this question could come up in the next few years, that may inform or change a dynamic there. So I do think it’s important beyond just Texas, and I do think it’s something that people are going to be watching across the country in 2026.
I have to ask, since you’re a keen political observer of what’s happening in Texas politics, do you think Paxton has a serious shot here?
It seems like it. If you look at the polling – both internal polling that’s been done and external polling on this race – he really does seem to have the base of the party mostly locked up, those conservative Republican voters that turn out in primaries. And that’s really the vote that’s going to matter here.
So I think Cornyn should be quite worried if Paxton does what he seems to be planning to do and jumps into this race.
