Democratic representative James Talarico and state Republican attorney general Ken Paxton emerged victorious from their contentious primaries and are facing off in Texas’s most-contested Senate race since at least 2018. But don’t expect to see their primary opponents lining up to support them.

In new remarks this week, Republican senator John Cornyn and Democratic representative Jasmine Crockett both indicated that they plan to direct their electoral efforts toward their parties’ other races — and didn’t exactly hide the tension between them and the candidates who bested them a few months ago.

In an interview with the Texas Tribune, Cornyn gave some of his most expansive postprimary comments yet, revealing his plans to help the party fundraise in states like New Hampshire, Michigan, and Alaska and “some of these other states where I think we’ve got close races.”

Cornyn also didn’t hold back about his frustration with Paxton, the scandal-laden Republican nominee who ended Cornyn’s reelection bid, boosted heavily by a late-in-the-game endorsement from President Trump.

“Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election. He’s making this harder than it needs to be. But so be it — we are where we are.”

On the Democratic side, Crockett recently appeared on CNN, where she warned that Democrats shouldn’t get too “comfortable” with polling leads, pointing to the much narrower margin that occurred in Michigan’s primary, where public-health official Abdul El-Sayed just eked out a win over Representative Haley Stevens.........

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