Races to watch in Texas’s primary runoffs: Cornyn-Paxton, Chip Roy's attorney general bid, House contests |
Races to watch in Texas’s primary runoffs: Cornyn-Paxton, Chip Roy’s attorney general bid, House contests
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) will be in the fight of his political life Tuesday, as he looks to defy the odds and defeat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who clinched an endorsement from President Trump, in the Senate GOP runoff.
The last-minute support tees up another test of Trump’s influence in a Republican primary. The president has already successfully picked off several detractors, including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
While the Senate race is the Lone Star State’s marquee runoff, other widely watched races have come down to a final pair of candidates who did not win half of the vote outright in March. One of those is the heated Democratic primary between Reps. Al Green and Christian Menefee for a Houston-area House seat that’s turned into a proxy battle over generational change.
Meanwhile, former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) is challenging his successor, Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), for a Dallas-based House seat.
Here are the races to watch in Texas’s primary runoffs:
Senate Republican primary
Voters must decide whether to rally behind the Trump-backed Paxton for Cornyn’s Senate seat in the Lone Star State or buck the president and put the senior senator one step closer to a fifth term.
Cornyn, who’s sought to align himself with Trump while overcoming pushback for his past criticism of the president, placed first in the initial March 3 GOP primary for his seat at 42 percent support.
Paxton, who’s argued he’s the more authentic Trump-aligned candidate and has questioned Cornyn’s conservative bona fides, placed at a close second at nearly 41 percent support. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) served as a spoiler candidate, forcing Cornyn and Paxton into the Tuesday runoff.
After months of teasing a potential endorsement, Trump on Tuesday made a last-minute endorsement for the embattled state attorney general, causing a seismic shift in the primary.
The senior senator is pushing forward, as he and his allies argue that Paxton’s controversies, including a Texas House impeachment trial on corruption charges that he was later acquitted of in the state Senate, have made some Republicans concerned he could be a liability in the general election against Democratic candidate James Talarico.
But Cornyn’s reelection bid appears uncertain. In recent weeks alone, Trump has been able to oust several Republicans who have........