Trump looms large in Texas as GOP gears up for Senate primary

President Trump is looming large over Texas as the Lone Star State’s GOP gears up for competitive primaries next week. 

The president is set to stop in Corpus Christi on Friday, just days after his State of the Union address and as Texas voters cast their ballots in a high-stakes, three-way Republican primary race for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) seat in the Senate.  

While Trump is visiting the state in an official capacity, observers are eager to see if the president has anything to say about the closely watched primary, with Texas Democrats feeling increasingly optimistic about their chances in November.  

Trump told reporters earlier this month that he was taking a “serious look” at endorsing in the Texas Senate race. Two weeks later, he said he was still undecided, even as he issued support for several other candidates in the state. 

“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good,” Trump said on Feb. 17. “You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” the president said of the primary’s leading candidates. 

Cornyn, seeking a fifth term in the Senate, is locked in a competitive race with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) — all three of whom have flexed their conservative bona fides and underscored their alignment with the president.  

“When you have a 24-year incumbent U.S. senator and you don’t endorse him, that’s a pretty big tell to the electorate, especially a Texas ruby red primary electorate, one Republican strategist, referring to Cornyn, told The Hill.

“It’s not an endorsement against Cornyn,” the strategist added. “But when you have the president and your fellow junior senator [Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)] not willing to endorse you in the primary, people get that and primary voters get that.”  

All three contenders are slated to attend Trump’s Friday remarks in Corpus Christi, with Paxton’s campaign reportedly rescheduling a planned event so the Texas’ attorney general can see the president ahead of the March 3 contest.

Paxton boasts a 1-point lead over Cornyn — with 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively —according to Decision Desk HQ’s polling aggregate. But neither appears poised to secure the support they need to win the primary outright. Hunt, whose bid has been seen as a longshot, is pulling in roughly 20 percent support.  

If no candidate wins over 50 percent of the vote on Tuesday, the race will head to a May 26 runoff between the top two vote-getters.  

“Around the primary, the number one issue appears to be: who can differentiate themselves as the closest to the president?” Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Hill last week. 

“If they have an endorsement, that’s the best-case scenario,” he continued. “But outside of that, you’re seeing a lot of advertisements that show, in one way or another, that candidate’s closeness to the president, or even just the president’s orbit.”  

A Trump endorsement could be a game-changer in the close race, though experts say that the possibility of one coming before the primary is increasingly unlikely as Tuesday nears.  

Texans have already started to vote, and an endorsement may be more likely after the primary, especially if it tips into the expected runoff.

While Democrats are outpacing Republicans in early vote turnout, GOP turnout is higher than past years.  

According to CNN, early turnout on the GOP side is 15 percent higher than it was at this point in 2022.  

“These are pretty high number for Republicans too, which conceivably could help Cornyn, but when you get to a runoff in Texas, it’s a much more constricted, more redder, much more conservative voting bloc,” the GOP strategist said.  

If Trump weighed in, “it absolutely would affect Republican primary voters’ choices,” James Dickey, a former Texas GOP chair, said.

Blank, though, suggested that Trump’s backing may not hold as much weight in the Senate race as in other Texas contests, since GOP voters are largely engaged in the race and both leading candidates, whom have won statewide elections, have their own faithful bases.

And, although Trump has long been a kingmaker in Republican primaries, he had a notable slipup in the state earlier this month. The president endorsed the Republican candidate in a special election runoff for Texas’s ninth state Senate district — but the Democrat contender overperformed, winning the seat by roughly 14 points.  

Cornyn, who told NBC News that he spoke to Trump about a possible endorsement last month, has warned of a “massacre” for the GOP in Texas if Paxton gets the nod, pointing to controversy around the state attorney general. Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 on corruption charges, then later acquitted by the state Senate. 

Republicans’ national Senate campaign arm has made a similar case. In a February memo, argued that Cornyn is “the only Republican candidate who reliably wins a general election matchup.” 

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) also told Semafor earlier this month that he’s cautioned Trump “many times” on consequences for the party if Cornyn isn’t the Texas Senate GOP nominee. 

The warnings come as Republicans have raised concerns over their support among Hispanic voters, including in Texas. According to VoteHub data cited in the Texas Tribune earlier this month, 79 percent of Hispanic voters backed the Democrat in the state Senate District 9 special election this month.  

Paxton’s team, however, has emphasized his double-digit wins in past elections, as well as his lead over Cornyn in the polls.  

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Hunt’s team last week blasted national Republicans’ “misguided investment in a 24-year incumbent.”  

Friday’s trip is Trump’s first public event since delivering his State of the Union address on Tuesday, where he acknowledged the devastating flooding that tore through the state last year as part of a wide-ranging speech on his administration’s accomplishments.  

“President Trump looks forward to returning to the great State of Texas this week to discuss the economy and tout his ‘Drill Baby Drill’ agenda,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to The Hill.  

Even if an endorsement in the Senate race doesn’t come before Tuesday’s primary, Trump’s presence will be closely watched as Texas kick’s off the midterm cycle with primaries up and down the ballot.  

“I’m never one to try to [predict] what the President will or will not do, but…he will be in Corpus Christi [Friday],” Texas Republican Vinny Minchillo consultant told The Hill via email.  “Does he endorse? And who? If it’s Cornyn I don’t believe it will be enough to help him avoid a runoff.”  

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