Paxton: Cornyn has 'had his chance'

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) hasn't launched a formal campaign to challenge Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) next year, but he appeared to inch closer toward a run during a recent interview.

"He’s had his chance. He hasn’t performed well, and the voters know it," Paxton told Punchbowl News on Monday. "You can go a long time without people paying attention. And they’re paying attention now."

Paxton’s remarks echo what he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview last month.

"I don't know if I'm running for sure. I'm looking at it," the far-right firebrand said. "Probably in the next few months I'll be talking to people around the state."

Cornyn, 73, said in February he will seek a fifth term in 2026.

According to Punchbowl, money will be the deciding factor in whether or not Paxton primaries Cornyn, a Republican stalwart who has been in the Senate for nearly two decades and climbed the chamber's GOP ranks. The Texas senator narrowly lost a bid earlier this year to take the reins as majority leader after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stepped down.

Cornyn’s favorability back home sits at about 49 percent among Republican voters, according to polls tracked by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. About 21 percent of survey respondents view him unfavorably, while 30 percent have no opinion about him.

Comparatively, Paxton’s favorability sits at about 62 percent among Republicans in the Lone Star State, with 11 percent of respondents disapproving and 28 percent undecided, the surveys show.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, the chamber's other Republican from Texas, has an 80 percent approval rating among GOP voters in the state, with groups of unfavorable and no opinion split at 10 percent each, per the polls.

“I think I can win if I have $20 million,” Paxton, a diehard Trump supporter, told the outlet. “I’ve run these primaries in Texas before. I honestly don’t see how [Cornyn] overcomes his numbers.”

If they were to come to a head-to-head battle, Paxton acknowledged that Trump could ultimately endorse Cornyn, a staunch ally of the president who helped guide Trump's Supreme Court nominees through confirmation in his first term.

Paxton cited Cornyn's support for U.S. aid to Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia and his role in negotiating successful bipartisan gun legislation after 21 people were killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.

Cornyn's office referred The Hill to his comments about Trump and Ukraine on the Senate floor.

"What President Trump is doing to secure peace in this dangerous world is an act of moral leadership and, I believe, divinely inspired," he said. "Jesus said in the Beatitudes, 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.'… If President Trump is successful in securing a lasting peace, I for one think he will have earned the Nobel Peace Prize."

Paxton, 62, has served as Texas's top prosecutor since 2015. His national political profile, however, has risen as he's led conservative causes in the courts in recent years, including at least 100 lawsuits he filed against the Biden administration.

He also has made headlines using the state's ban on nearly all abortions after the Supreme Court upended Roe v. Wade in 2022 to press charges against providers he says have tried to circumvent the law.

Dogged by his own legal woes for nearly a decade, Paxton reached a pretrial agreement with prosecutors in a federal fraud case last year that required him to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution and take part in community service and ethics training. He was not required to admit wrongdoing in the case, which stemmed from business investor dealings.

The Texas House impeached Paxton in 2023 in a bipartisan vote with support from dozens of Republican members, and he was suspended from office but was later acquitted and restored by the state Senate.

Throughout the ordeal, the attorney general remained politically popular in Texas and was twice reelected while the charges were pending.

"Once seen as a political liability within his own party, Paxton now has the wind at his back," The Texas Tribune reported last year, previewing a potential showdown between the attorney general and Cornyn.

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