Republicans secretly – and not so secretly – hoped Jasmine Crockett would win the Democrat primary for the US Senate in Texas. Not only would the progressive demagogue have teed up an easy GOP hold in November regardless of their own nominee, the RNC would have turned Crockett and her outrageous rhetoric into this cycle’s poster child for lunatic Leftism in the Democrat Party.
James Talarico presents a tougher challenge, however, and suddenly it matters that Republican incumbent John Cornyn and current Texas AG Ken Paxton will burn through tens of millions of dollars savaging each other. The GOP has better uses of that money in other tough midterm races, and Talarico’s Beto-ism might allow him to steal a march on a bitterly divided GOP.
This afternoon, Donald Trump declared enough is enough even before the runoff battle started. He announed that not only would he endorse one candidate in this race, but he expects the other candidate to pack up and go home immediately:
The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively! Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT! My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
That demand is … interesting, needless to say. Trump clearly wants to use his MAGA leverage in Texas to force an end to this runoff. Which candidate relies on Trump’s base the most, and would be hard pressed therefore to rebel against Trump’s command?
We may not need to guess. The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker believe they have the answer already. And yes, this is all about the money as well as the MAGA:
President Trump’s political advisers expect him to endorse Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s May 26 Republican-primary runoff election following the incumbent’s better-than-expected finish against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the first round of voting yesterday, three people briefed on the deliberations told us.
Trump declined to get involved in the race before the first round of voting, and Republican Senate strategists had been worried that he wouldn’t endorse Cornyn, who has been critical of the president in the past. Strategists have also warned that Paxton, a scandal-scarred favorite of Trump’s MAGA base, would need more money from top GOP donors than Cornyn would require to defeat the Democratic nominee, James Talarico. Estimates of the added cost of Paxton being the nominee in the general election range from about $80 million to more than $200 million, according to several top strategists, given the Democrats’ ability to raise massive sums of money in the state from individual donors if the race is perceived as winnable.
This makes a lot of sense in terms of defending the Texas seat. It’s always easier to run an incumbent than a new challenger in an open-seat situation. Cornyn may have made himself unpopular by shepherding Joe Biden’s gun control bill through the Senate – and may is being exceedingly generous – but he’s a known quantity and quality with a long track record of supporting Trump. Paxton is more aligned with MAGA and has passionate support, but he also has scandals and other baggage that will make him very vulnerable in a general election. For Trump, Paxton has lots of risk with very little gain over Cornyn, who should compete better against Talarico … not to mention preventing Democrats from Akinizing Paxton throughout the midterms.
The GOP has been gaming this out for a while, Scherer and Parker report:
Republicans have been working for months to rebuild the relationship between Cornyn and Trump, culminating in an invitation last week for the senator to ride on Air Force One with the president from Washington to a rally in Texas. The trip happened as Trump gave the green light for the U.S. attack on Iran. “It takes a lot of political courage, because, you know, these things are easier to start than to end,” Cornyn told CBS News Saturday about his conversations with the president about the strikes. “I told him I really respected the fact he would take the chance—the political risk, really—to strike Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.”
It also doesn’t hurt that Cornyn narrowly edged Paxton last night. The conventional wisdom was that Wesley Hunt would play the spoiler and drag Cornyn into second place. Instead, Cornyn went scorched-earth on both Paxton and Hunt and wound up winning the primary, but falling well short of the majority needed to avoid the runoff. Paxton’s vulnerability showed up even among Republican voters under that withering attack, and Democrats will amplify those attacks as soon as the runoff ends if Paxton wins it.
Trump might still surprise everyone by endorsing Paxton. However, Cornyn will definitely not feel compelled to withdraw, since the MAGA base isn’t what got him the plurality last night. Cornyn had to fight through Trump’s non-endorsement already, to some extent. If Trump wants to clear the field with an endorsement, that would work best by asking Paxton to withdraw … and maybe softening the blow by offering him a role in the administration instead.
Would Paxton agree to withdraw? Perhaps not, but he had trouble getting his message out in the final weeks of the campaign, and Cornyn has a yuuuge war chest. If Trump tells Paxton to get out and he refuses, Paxton will have a very tough time raising enough money to compete one-on-one against Cornyn.
Of course, the credibility of The Atlantic might convince some to take this report with a grain of salt. Given the value of incumbency and the massive cost of sticking with Paxton, this Atlantic report appears rational, at least. And Trump has already declared that he will settle this now rather than waste more money and time. As of now, though, the only endorsement that Trump has posted on Truth Social today is for … Delcy Rodriguez.
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