Cornyn’s Campaign Twist: Attack Paxton’s Charges, Ignore Trump’s Convictions

It’s hard to miss commercials promoting Sen. John Cornyn if you watch football on weekends. But still, you might have to rewind and watch the clip a couple of times to realize that they are, in fact, Cornyn ads, since President Donald Trump is often the undisputed star of them. The versions we’ve seen in recent months take the same line. Each breathlessly touts how Cornyn has voted with Trump time and time again, especially as it pertains to border security, before ending with some sort of energetic plea to help continue pushing “the Trump agenda.”

It’s not surprising that Cornyn and the PACs supporting him are squeezing as close to the president as they can. Since Trump’s convincing 2024 election, he’s been on a winning streak that has seen him take on all comers and come out victorious in small, almost silly ways, such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, to substantial, meaningful ways, such as the Texas congressional redistricting to favor the GOP and his increased emphasis on mass deportations. 

With that said, however, recent weeks have perhaps shown at least small cracks in Trump’s armor. Democrats made waves during the Nov. 4 elections with high-profile wins in the races for New York City nayor, governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the successful Prop 50 in California, which could serve as a Democratic counter to Texas’ congressional redistricting. 

The long government shutdown hasn’t helped Trump’s approval ratings, although thanks to a handful of Democrats jumping the aisle to work with the GOP to end the shutdown, it won’t be hard for Trump to claim that as a win as well. And here in Texas, there’s no sign of Trump’s popularity losing steam, at least among Republican. Judging by the way Cornyn, a lawmaker who has never been particularly noted as a Trump fave, is so blatantly courting the Trump stamp of approval, it’s safe to argue that such an endorsement in 2025 is far more valuable than it was during Trump’s first term. 

“Attention and fealty to Trump is the number one feature of this primary,” says University of Houston political science Professor Brandon Rottinghaus. “We’ll likely see Trump in ads for everyone, regardless of who he endorses.”

For those who may be unaware, there’s a significant reason why, even as an incumbent Republican in a GOP stronghold, Cornyn is still uncertain about whether he has Trump’s endorsement. The man he’s battling with for the nod is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguably one of Trump’s loudest, most aggressive, elected supporters. 

Cornyn and his camp have gone on the offensive since Paxton announced his Senate run in April. The senior senator from Houston has long had fun with Paxton’s history of legal trouble, and although Paxton’s court appearances have more or less come to a stop, that hasn’t stopped Cornyn from going all in on Paxton’s past now more than ever. 

Although Cornyn has been taking admittedly humorous shots at Paxton on X for over a year, those efforts intensified in July, following the viral moment when a married CEO and HR director were caught cuddling at a Coldplay concert with each other, not their spouses. In a post on X in which Cornyn alluded to Paxton’s marital infidelity, the senator included a link to WhoIsDaveP.com, a website lampooning Paxton’s many legal troubles, specifically the bribery and abuse of power allegations that fueled the Texas House’s failed bid to remove him from office in 2023. 

The irony, if it really is that, is that while Paxton has indeed been indicted and even impeached, he has never been convicted, unlike a certain other Republican powerbroker whom Cornyn can’t stop linking himself to. In a twisted sort of way, it’s almost admirable to think of how many punishments Paxton has somehow dodged over the years (we did say almost). For as often and as long as the state’s top legal official has been in various forms of trouble, a conviction has never found its way to him. It would really help Cornyn’s case against Paxton if that had been the case at least once, but alas, the AG’s ledger is clear in the conviction column. 

But guess who can’t say that much? The president, the man Cornyn is pinning his entire hopes of re-election upon. The incumbent has spent a considerable amount of time dragging Paxton’s character through the mud, and we’re not here to disagree with the spirit of the strategy. However, coming from Cornyn, such an angle is tone-deaf, given his recently intensified Trump lovefest approach. But there’s a simple reason why Cornyn gives Paxton’s misdeeds the eye while ignoring Trump’s troubles completely. 

“The best Cornyn can hope for is to bring down Paxton’s numbers,” Rottinghaus says. “He’s already done that with an onslaught of negative campaigning, and Republican primary audiences are already aware of and forgiving of Donald Trump‘s legal problems.”

Yet the list of Trump’s legal troubles in just the past few years has long since outgrown the one Paxton has been nurturing for a decade. And unlike Paxton’s rap sheet, Trump’s includes 34 criminal convictions, not to mention a civil ruling that found him responsible for sexual abuse. And to be clear, Cornyn wasn’t quiet about Trump’s May 2024 criminal convictions for falsifying business records to influence the 2016 presidential election, but as you might’ve guessed, he didn’t take the jokey sorts of shots he’s been taking at Paxton. 

“This verdict is a disgrace, and this trial should have never happened,” Cornyn said in a statement at the time. “Now more than ever, we need to rally around President Trump, take back the White House and Senate, and get this country back on track. The real verdict will be Election Day.”

A call to “rally around” a felon found liable for sexual abuse is quite the stance to take for a politician whose main chance to beat Paxton, whom he is relatively even with in the most recent polling, is to make voters focus on the sitting AG’s spotty character. Making Cornyn’s strategy even more curious is that GOP voters in Texas have long since overwhelmingly shown that a bucketload of indictments, mistresses and murky allegations are not anything to get all that worked up about. 

Paxton has enjoyed a trio of massive victories in the AG races he’s entered since 2014. It was only a few months after being sworn in for the first time that he was indicted on securities fraud charges. So that’s two landslide wins since being indicted for those keeping score at home. And for his part, Trump overwhelmingly carried Texas in November, even after years of near-daily headlines involving his various indictments, trials and tribulations. 

Need any further proof that many Texans are more than fine with looking the other way when it comes to the voting booth? Uvalde County, where 19 students and two teachers were massacred in 2022 at Robb Elementary School by an 18-year-old with a legally purchased assault weapon, voted overwhelmingly for Gov. Greg Abbott in the 2023 gubernatorial election. Abbott is a longtime gun rights advocate and opposes raising the legal age in Texas to buy an assault weapon. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz easily won re-election in November against Democrat challenger Colin Allred, who made sure to remind everyone ad nauseam that Cruz infamously left the country during the deadly, historically disastrous 2021 winter storm. 

Not enough people cared about any of that to change their votes.

Even if Cornyn’s impressive fundraising totals and Trump-heavy strategy help win him the president’s endorsement, Rottinghaus guesses that might not be the haul the senator hopes it will be in the end. There’s a chance that his game of selective morality may not pay off in the end. 

“John Cornyn’s clearest path to victory in the Republican primary is through Donald Trump. If he gets a Trump endorsement, he’ll have an easier time convincing Republicans that he’s ride-or-die MAGA,” he says. “But even if he gets the Trump nomination, it’s still going to be contested by both Ken Paxton and Wesley Hunt. They objectively have as close ties to Trump as Cornyn, so the endorsement will be headline-grabbing but may not matter on the ground.”