Why Republicans are all of the sudden critically sweating the Texas Senate race

Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about the Texas Senate race as the primary, now less than one month away, could see the ouster of a sitting GOP senator in a move that Democrats are eyeing as an opportunity for a surprise pickup this fall.

A new poll out from the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs on Monday shows state Attorney General Ken Paxton leading Sen. John Cornyn by seven points, with support from 38 percent of likely voters to the senator’s 31 percent. Rep. Wesley Hunt, the third major candidate in the Senate race, was trailing at 17 percent with comparatively lower name recognition, a sign he is struggling to get voters to know him.

Cornyn’s defeat in March would be a blow to the GOP Senate caucus, which views him as much more likely to hold his seat against a Democratic challenger, either Rep. Jasmine Crockett or state Sen. James Talarico, in November. Even with Republicans still favored to keep the seat, the race is shaping up to be an expensive money pit for Republicans, thanks to the competitiveness of the GOP primary.

The survey’s co-author, Mark Jones, told Houston Public Media on Tuesday that Cornyn has been largely unable to blunt his opponent’s momentum.

“[W]hile he’s received [criticism] from Cornyn, it doesn’t seem to have really changed things too much in the sense that his supporters are sticking with him overall,” said Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University.

The issue of endorsements has weighed over the primary. Donald Trump has held out on endorsing Cornyn for re-election, allowing Paxton to openly court the president’s MAGA base and paint the senator as disloyal to the president. He hasn’t endorsed against Cornyn, as was the case in Louisiana against Sen. Bill Cassidy, though there are clearly still reservations on the president’s part — possibly due to Paxton’s polling strength and support from Trump’s MAGA base. The senator said in an article published by the Washington Post on Monday that he’d spoken with the president about the race, and was holding out hope that Trump would grant his seal of approval.

“Every time I talk to him on the phone, he says, ‘How’s the race going?’ and then he cites polls back to me so I know he’s following it closely,” he told the Post.

The president’s MAGA base now appears to be coalescing behind Paxton to a significant degree in the absence of Trump’s support for a candidate. Turning Point USA, the Charlie Kirk-founded conservative youth organization closely aligned with the White House, granted Paxton its endorsement on Tuesday, causing immediate panic among Cornyn’s supporters in Washington.

“Whoever thought that was a good idea really doesn’t understand the headwinds that we’ve got to deal with,” Sen. Thom Tillis told HuffPost’s Igor Bobic of the TPUSA endorsement. Tillis, from North Carolina, is likewise seen as a big reason why his party is in danger of losing the Senate this year, as the retiring senator’s seat is favored to be won by North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper.

Paxton, cheekily, favorited an X post with Tillis’s comments on Tuesday.

The attorney general and his MAGA supporters are adamant that Republicans will have no trouble holding the seat in November if a conservative strongly aligned with the president is the GOP nominee. The UH Hobby School poll published this week affirms that Republicans do have an advantage — though it was within the survey’s margin of error.

Increasingly, Democrats are seeing an opportunity, even if a damaged Cornyn is able to hold on to his seat next month. Time magazine reported last week that while Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been successful so far in keeping Trump from endorsing one of Cornyn’s challengers, Republican strategists are increasingly fearful he will do so before the March 3 primary.

“I think if Republicans nominate the attorney general, I think [Democrats] absolutely do [have a chance to win],” Cornyn told CNN in an interview. “At minimum … we’d have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to salvage that seat that could be used in places like Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire and elsewhere.”

Democrats are emboldened by poll numbers that show both Paxton and the incumbent Cornyn only leading Democratic candidates by the low single digits and recent elections in Texas that saw a Democrat trounce a Republican last week in a state senate district that heavily favored Donald Trump in 2024. The swing and the growing possibility of a “blue wave” year have Democrats feeling more optimistic than ever.

But the Democratic contest between Talarico and Crockett has grown acidic in recent days, with supporters of the two candidates waging war on X and other social media platforms over accusations from an influencer backing Crockett’s campaign about Talarico supposedly insulting Rep. Colin Allred, who stepped out of the race and endorsed Crockett after she decided to run. And polls consistently show that Republicans have the advantage regardless of who wins the primary.

For their opponents, however, the opportunity to win a key Senate seat while at a minimum causing Republicans to panic and spend money is too good to pass up. And with their party now firmly on defense across the country, it could be more pressure than the president’s party can handle.

Trump is now taking a new focus on the midterms, according to reporting. The Post revealed that the White House hosted a midterm strategy meeting that lasted for five hours last Wednesday, and ended with Trump vowing to spend “whatever it takes” to help his party defy expectations and hold both the House and Senate.

His penchant for causing factional rifts within the GOP that often elevate candidates who win primaries and lose general elections could end up making that effort a waste, however, as many in his party are now openly acknowledging strong political dynamics working against the party this year. On Feb. 1, he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago he was giving the Texas Senate primary a “very serious look”.

”You’ll be seeing soon,” said the president. “They say whoever I endorse wins. That’s probably right.”

Source: independent.co.uk