Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are headed to a May 26 runoff in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate after neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote.
With about 90% of precincts reporting, Cornyn had 41.9% of the vote compared with 40.9% for Paxton. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston finished third.
Because no candidate crossed the 50% threshold needed to win outright, the race will move to a primary runoff scheduled for May 26 to determine the GOP nominee for November’s general election.
Tuesday’s election results from Dallas, El Paso and Williamson counties were delayed after judges in Dallas and El Paso counties ordered polls to stay open past the usual 7 p.m. closing time.
On the Democratic side, state Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett to win his party’s nomination.
Cornyn is seeking a fifth term representing Texas in the U.S. Senate. If elected to another six-year term, he would become the longest-serving senator in Texas history, breaking the record set by Democrat Morris Sheppard.
“Cornyn’s biggest weakness is his strength, which is his longevity,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “He is a creature of the institution. He comes from central casting for what a senator should look like, but ultimately the party has gone through a number of revisions over the last decade-and-a-half that in some ways make Cornyn’s approach to politics a little bit anachronistic.”
Paxton announced his Senate bid last April during an appearance on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show. While Cornyn held the advantages of incumbency and a sizable campaign war chest, many polls over the past year showed Paxton either leading or statistically tied with him.
Paxton, despite a long history of legal troubles and a very public divorce, has remained a favorite among more conservative Republican primary voters.
Bill Miller, a political consultant who has advised both Republicans and Democrats, said Paxton could enter the runoff with an advantage.
“The runoff will be the hardcore primary voters, and that’s his base,” Miller said. “So he’ll be extraordinarily difficult to defeat in a runoff.”
The Texas Senate primary has become the most expensive Senate primary contest in state history. As of mid-February, the tracking organization AdImpact reported spending in the Republican and Democratic races had reached nearly $99 million — second in U.S. history only to the 2022 Arizona Senate primary. Cornyn’s advertising accounted for nearly $59 million of that total.
Spending has continued to climb, with attack ads from both campaigns and supporting super PACs flooding the airwaves.
A major question heading into the runoff is whether President Donald Trump will endorse one of the candidates. A recent poll from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 55% of likely GOP primary voters said they would be more inclined to support a candidate backed by Trump.
Throughout the primary campaign, Cornyn, Hunt and Paxton each sought to position themselves as the most pro-Trump candidate.
“He’s getting the best of all possible worlds,” Miller said of Trump’s decision not to endorse during the primary. “It might be something he would consider in the runoff, but I think he’ll stay out of the race and just let the chips fall where they may.”