After enduring this year’s brutal primary season, Texas Republicans are bracing for another bruising primary pitting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in 2026.
The two politicians, titans in Texas Republican politics, have been circling each other for more than a year, setting up a potential clash that would test the power of Paxton’s appeal to hard-right conservatives and Cornyn’s strength as a well-funded incumbent and prolific vote-getter.
John Cornyn has represented Texas in the U.S. Senate since 2002 and plans to seek another six-year term in 2026. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has discussed challenging Cornyn in the GOP primary. The matchup would be a clash between two sides of a divided state Republican Party.
A Paxton-Cornyn showdown would be the next step in a continuing power struggle within the GOP.
“If Paxton gets in, expect another real donnybrook in the primary,” said Republican political consultant Vinny Minchillo, who worked on the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
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