The Republican primary has been one of the most expensive in recent history, with both sides spending freely on attack ads. (“Ken Paxton has the ethics of a strip club owner”; “John Cornyn wants to take our guns.”) The runoff has prolonged the conflict, with one pundit calling it a “bloodbath” and a “civil war.” Meanwhile, the Democrats have settled on an appealing candidate, the fresh-faced state legislator and seminary student James Talarico. All of this made the Golden Girls nervous. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I am terrified of James Talarico,” Mona said.
Onstage, a man introduced Herrera, calling him Mr. YouTuber—he gained fame as a firearms influencer before turning to politics—and Herrera, in turn, introduced Paxton. “It’s a little embarrassing when we have some of the least conservative so-called conservatives in the entire country,” Herrera said. “It is my pleasure here to present the man who is going to finish this RINO-hunting venture, and get John Cornyn out of the Senate, and actually represent Texas the way it deserves.”
The Republican race has played out as a face-off between the power structures of conservative Texas politics. “Paxton has his ear to the ground with the activist base. He’s more in tune and connected with the right-wing-podcast influencer types,” Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican political consultant based in Austin and Washington, D.C., said. “Cornyn is much more comfortable with, and supported by, the donor class, the Republican women’s groups. Those are his people.” (Steinhauser ran Cornyn’s 2014 campaign, and has also worked for Angela Paxton.)
Cornyn is tall, long-faced, and dignified, with the mien of an aging cowboy. (He is seventy-four.) He has characterized the race in ethical terms. “Mr. Paxton has a checkered background. He is a con man and a fraud, and I think the people of Texas know that,” he has said. “I am not going to turn over the Senate seat that was once held by Sam Houston to someone like him.” He has referred to Paxton’s campaign as “a con man’s vanity project.”
The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a nonpartisan research group, has consistently rated Cornyn as among the Senate’s “most effective” members: his bills often address high-impact issues, and they become law at a notably higher rate than many of his colleagues’. But Cornyn’s willingness to work with Democrats to get legislation passed is increasingly seen as a liability within his party. It didn’t help that, in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Cornyn signalled openness to a mild form of gun control, or that he didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election. “Cornyn’s supporters among the professional political class have had a hard time really taking to heart that, whatever they might think about it, Paxton resonates more with the Republican base right now,” James Henson, the director of the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project, at the University of Texas at Austin, said.
Paxton’s declaration of war against a capable, if not beloved, senator might have felt like a canny move in the first months of 2025, when Trump’s election seemed to portend a sustained MAGA moment. But now that support for the President is flagging, even in Texas, it’s looking more like Paxton has pushed a sure Republican win into uncertain territory. A few months after he announced his candidacy, the Cook Political Report moved the Senate race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.” If Paxton wins the nomination, Cook noted, that designation will shift again, to “Lean Republican.”
Paxton’s disruption of the established order, in a state where things had been working out quite well for Republicans, reportedly angered some of his long-term backers, including the West Texas oil tycoon Tim Dunn. Dunn, a longtime Paxton donor who has been credited with helping to shape (and fund) the state’s hard-right turn, has apparently been sitting this race out, according to Texas Monthly. Cornyn has raised much more money than Paxton, and has racked up many more prominent endorsements, including from the former governor Rick Perry. (The state’s current leading Republicans, including Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, have not endorsed either man.) Paxton has attempted to frame the financial disparity as evidence of his grassroots bona fides. “He spent a hundred million dollars, and I spent five-point-eight,” he claimed, after the primary. (In the first quarter of 2026, Talarico significantly out-raised both Cornyn and Paxton.)
