Paxton Announces Bid For Cornyn’s Senate Seat

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday evening announced that he will seek to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the 2026 Republican primary, all but guaranteeing a huge and expensive intraparty showdown next year.

Paxton, who is entering his tenth year as the state’s attorney general, declared his candidacy during a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, emphasizing his allegiance to President Donald Trump.

His website positions himself as a “conservative outsider — just like President Trump,” and states that he “has always been a loyal supporter of President Trump and a staunch supporter of the America First movement.”

Before his turn as attorney general, Paxton served in the Texas House from 2003 to 2013, and served two years in the Texas Senate.

In the past two years, Paxton has endured numerous political and legal controversies. In 2023, the Texas House voted to impeach him on corruption allegations that several aides reported to the FBI. The Texas Senate voted 16-15 to acquit him of the impeachment.

And last year, prosecutors dropped a nine-year felony securities fraud case against Paxton that cast a pall over much of his tenure as attorney general.

Paxton in 2020 filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, and was a speaker at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally that preceded the violent and deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol over the certification of the election results.

That suit became the basis of an investigation and later lawsuit against Paxton brought by the State Bar of Texas that threatened to sanction him with potential disbarment. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed that case in January.

Cornyn has been Texas’s senior U.S. senator for more than two decades. He won election to the Senate in the 2002 election while serving the last of four years as the state attorney general. Before that, he was an associate justice on the Texas Supreme Court for eight years.

During President Donald Trump’s first term in office, Cornyn nearly always voted for Trump’s priorities and backed all of his cabinet nominations, support that he demonstrated again this year with a far more controversial slate of appointees, the Texas Tribune reported.

And Cornyn hasn’t shied away from associating with Trump in his second term. In a video last month announcing his candidacy, the incumbent touted his role as GOP whip in delivering wins for Trump’s policy agenda.