Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton built a big early lead and beat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff for the U.S. Senate, according to a race call Tuesday night by the Associated Press.
With 185 of the state’s 254 counties reporting results as of 8 p.m. Tuesday — an hour after polls closed — Paxton had received 63.2% of more than 653,000 votes.
Paxton, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump a week before Election Day, is the first primary challenger to defeat an incumbent U.S. senator from Texas since Lloyd Bentsen beat Ralph Yarborough in 1970.
The primary runoff win by Paxton caps an insurgent candidacy that began in April 2025, when he launched his bid to unseat Cornyn onFox Newshost Laura Ingraham’s show. While Cornyn held the advantages of both incumbency and a sizable campaign war chest, most polls over the past 13 months have shown Paxton either leading Cornyn or statistically tied with him.
"Paxton has spent his entire political career assiduously courting the base voters in the Republican Party," said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "And it’s many of these hardcore Republicans who have been the most skeptical of John Cornyn."
Trumpendorsed Paxtonlast Tuesday, when early voting was already underway. An April poll released by Texas Public Opinion Research suggested such an endorsement by Trump would likely catapult Paxton into an insurmountable lead.
Cornyn edged out Paxton in thefirst round of primary votingin March, but he failed to garner more than 50% of the vote, the threshold needed to avoid a runoff. That was in part due to a spoiler campaign by Houston-area U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Hunt endorsed Paxton last Tuesday, shortly after Trump weighed in.
Paxton countered attacks by Cornyn by hitting Cornyn for his willingness to work with Democrats over his long career, as well as charging him with failing to support Trump at key moments.
Paxton will face the challenge of building a coalition to beat theDemocratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, in November's general election. That will need to include GOP voters who previously supported Cornyn, conservatives who sat out the Republican Senate primary and independents.
Most polls looking ahead to the general election have shown Talarico performing slightly better against Paxton than against Cornyn.
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