MAGA triumph: Trump ally Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn in bitter Texas GOP primary war

PLANO, TX – President Donald Trump and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are the winners in the Lone Star State’s bitter Republican Senate primary battle, which has spanned for more than a year and became the most expensive Senate primary in history.

Paxton, who was endorsed by Trump just one week ago, defeated longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday’s runoff election for the Republican nomination, the Associated Press reports.

Paxton now faces off against state Rep. James Talarico — a rising star in the Democratic Party — in the general election in a race that is among a handful that may decide if the Republicans hold their slim 53-47 majority in the Senate. Talarico, who topped progressive star Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal Trump critic, in the March primary is trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in Texas.

Trump targeted Cornyn as “VERY disloyal” as he backed Paxton, a major Trump ally and MAGA firebrand, in the final days of the runoff campaign. The ballot-box showdown in right-leaning Texas served as the latest test of Trump’s immense grip over the Republican Party and the strength of his endorsements in GOP nomination races.

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The runoff election was held three weeks after Trump’s purging of five state senators in Indiana’s primary who had opposed his push for congressional redistricting, a week and a half after the president helped to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — who, five and a half years ago, voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — and one week after Trump was instrumental in sending vocal GOP critic Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky down to defeat in his re-election bid.

After sitting on the sidelines for months, Trump last Tuesday backed Paxton.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote in a social media post last Tuesday.

The two heated rivals topped a crowded field of contenders in the early March primary, with Cornyn edging Paxton. But since neither cleared the 50% threshold, the nomination race headed into overtime.

Trump, in backing Paxton, said that “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

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Pointing to the senator’s past criticism of him, Trump added, “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination, and then, the Presidency.”

Cornyn, in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the runoff, emphasized his support for the president and his agenda.

“President Trump has called me a friend and a good man, and we’ve worked with him closely for both terms of office,” the senator said.

Paxton, who grabbed significant national attention the past dozen years by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, disagreed.

“John Cornyn fought Trump on the border. And you can go back over about a decade and see that he was not for the border wall,” Paxton charged in an interview on Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show.”

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton landed President Donald Trump’s endorsement one week ahead of his runoff election against Republican Sen. John Cornyn for the GOP Senate nomination. (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)

Paxton also argued that the senator “fought the president’s re-election. He fought him in 2024, said his time had passed, and he fought him in 2016. So this is not a pro-Trump guy. I don’t know if we could be more different on the Republican issues than John Cornyn and me. So there is a vast difference between the two of us.”

Cornyn pushed back.

“I don’t know how much more with him I could be than 99.3% of the time,” the senator told Fox News Digital.

“I want him to be successful. I want America to be successful, and I want Republicans to be successful. But you know, in the end, as I said, Texans are the only ones going to be able to make a choice, and I think Texans can be pretty independent,” Cornyn added.

Paxton has faced a slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered him over the past decade. In 2023, the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton, but he was eventually acquitted of all charges by the state Senate.

And Paxton is dealing with a very messy divorce, with his wife citing “biblical grounds” based on “recent discoveries” in filing last year to end their marriage.

Cornyn, who was supported by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, repeatedly argued that if Paxton was the GOP’s nominee, the party will be forced to spend millions of dollars to keep the seat from flipping and that Republicans down-ballot will suffer.

“He’s gotten more and more emboldened as he’s gotten away with all the scandal and mischief that now is very well known, but were he to be the nominee and be exposed to general election voters, especially independents, I think it’s going to be a very rocky time,” the senator predicted.

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Democratic Senate candidate Rep. James Talarico speaks to supporters on primary night in Austin, Texas, on March 3, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

And pointing to Talarico, who hauled in an eye-popping $27 million in fundraising during the first three months of this year, Cornyn said, “There will be an incredible tsunami of Democratic funds coming in against Paxton, were he the nominee. Conversely… if I am the nominee… we’ll be able to shoulder the burden pretty much on our own. I won my last general election by 10 points. I think I can do similarly against somebody who’s as far left and radical as James Talarico.”

While Paxton shifted his ads to target Talarico in the wake of the Trump endorsement, Cornyn and allied groups continued to blast Paxton.

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“I don’t think anybody could honestly argue that we haven’t fought hard to make the case here,” Cornyn said of his campaign.

And he emphatically said he had “worked too long and too hard to help build the Republican Party in Texas, and in the United States Senate, and to keep Texas the envy of the nation when it comes to opportunities and pursuing the American dream, to let that go, to squander it, and let it go without a fight.”

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