Democrats’ Hopes of Retaking the Senate Could Get a Major Boost This Week |
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Primary season for the 2026 midterms kicks off Tuesday with all eyes on Texas.
Much of the coverage of Texas has followed the Senate Democratic primary between state legislator James Talarico, the latest Texas Democrat to win the hearts and minds of glossy magazine editors in New York, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the partisan warrior familiar to regular viewers of liberal cable news. It’s news on its own terms for Democrats to have a high-profile, close, and frequently ugly statewide primary in Texas. But the primary earned even more national attention last week amid a dust-up between late-night host Stephen Colbert and CBS lawyers over the airing of a Talarico interview. It’s a far cry from the typical Texas Democratic primary, as, usually, someone just volunteers to lose to Republicans in November.
This year could be different, however, because of what’s going on in the Senate Republican primary. On that side of the aisle, the race has been ugly and expensive—and the GOP appears ready to make a move that would give the Democrats a real chance at a competitive general election. And Tuesday’s voting is just the first round of it, for Republicans, before an expected runoff.
Which Republicans are running? Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s held the seat since 2002, who had served as Mitch McConnell’s deputy for a number of years, and who only narrowly lost a race to Sen. John Thune to replace McConnell as Senate Republican leader after the 2024 election. The incumbent has a pair of primary challengers: Ken Paxton, who’s served as Texas’ attorney general for 11 exciting years, and sophomore Rep. Wesley Hunt from Houston.
Why is Cornyn in jeopardy? Cornyn has never smelled right to MAGA. He’s a governing, establishment conservative who came up in George W. Bush’s Republican Party. Like many Republicans of his era and mannerism, he expressed initial skepticism of Trump in 2016 and rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, although he has hardly ever voted against the president’s agenda. He is also, in his words, “guilty of actually talking to a Democrat from time to time—and even worse, working with Democrats when it’s in the best interests of our state and my constituents.” Most notably, he was a lead GOP negotiator on a 2022 gun safety bill signed into law by President Joe Biden. This earned him boos at a state party convention and a censure from the Collin County GOP.
What’s the deal with these two........