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After weeks of suspense, President Donald Trump announced that he will endorse a longtime ally in the race for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas.
According to a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump announced he will support Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and not the incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn.
“The Highly Respected Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, an America First Patriot, and someone who has always been extremely loyal to me and our AMAZING MAGA MOVEMENT, is running for the United States Senate, to represent a place I love and WON, BIG, three times, with 6.4 Million Votes in 2024 (The Most Votes in the History of the State, BY FAR)!” Trump posted on Tuesday.
Given that Cornyn beat Paxton by a few percentage points in the March primary and has outraised the AG by a significant margin, this presidential stamp of approval could be pivotal. In March, early indications given by Trump suggested he was leaning toward supporting Cornyn, a lawmaker who has not always been as closely aligned with the president as Paxton and many other hardline MAGA Republicans.
Even as those hints surfaced, Paxton said only the safe passage of one of Trump’s top priorities, the SAVE America Act, would possibly lead him to drop out of the race. Many Republican leaders hoped for a Trump endorsement sooner in order to avoid a costly and muddy campaign where the longtime rivals would tear another apart in the media and in ad campaigns. Perhaps sensing urgency to win the president’s endorsement, last week Cornyn introduced federal legislation to have U.S. Highway 287 turned into an interstate freeway that would be renamed for Trump.
Later in his announcement post, Trump wrote that “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate.”
Gromer Jeffers of the Dallas Morning News was on hand at a seemingly small Paxton rally in Allen when the endorsement was announced and reported that the crowd started dancing to “Y.M.C.A.” one of Trump’s signature rally songs.
The winner of the Republican nomination will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November. Early voting for the May 26 runoff election has already begun. In a statement, Talrico responded to Trump’s endorsement.
“As I said on primary night, it doesn’t matter who wins this runoff,” Talarico said on Tuesday. “We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system. For decades, John Cornyn and Ken Paxton have embodied a broken politics that enriches wealthy donors while costs skyrocket for the rest of us.”
