Texas Republicans battle over the party’s soul. Democrats just want to win.

HOUSTON, TX — Sen. John Cornyn’s race for re-election shouldn’t be this competitive.

The longtime Republican senator has won his previous four terms by double digits in the reliably red state. He’s been a judge, state attorney general, and in 2020 earned more votes in Texas than Donald Trump. 

But now, facing intraparty challengers and grappling with a Republican Party fundamentally changed by Trump and the MAGA movement, he’s in the fight of his political life — and Democrats smell blood in the water.

The primaries Tuesday will answer very different questions for each party. For Republicans, it’s about which faction controls the GOP’s soul — institutionalists who have a record of accomplishment in Washington, or MAGA warriors who energize the base? For Democrats, it’s more existential: What kind of candidate can actually crack Texas after 30 years of trying?

The Republican reckoning

The Democratic optimism is due, in part, to the internal party battles before Cornyn, who’s facing challenges from his right in controversial Texas AG Ken Paxton and two-term Rep. Wesley Hunt.

On the stump here, Cornyn touted both his record of voting with President Trump — “99.3% of the time,” he reminded the small crowd — and ability to work across the aisle to get legislation done. 

“It is the workhorses who do the job to represent our great state and to try to solve the hard problems that we have at the national level,” Cornyn told supporters in Houston last Friday.

But that kind of politicking is rarer by the day now in Washington. And it’s unclear if it’s what Republican voters want.

Asked by MS NOW if a primary so full of red-meat and mudslinging rewards that kind of quiet, bipartisan work, Cornyn was steadfast. “Ronald Reagan liked to say, if you agree with me eight times out of 10, you’re a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor,” he said. “I think we drifted a little bit from that.”

The very thing Cornyn is campaigning on is what Paxton says disqualifies him.

“I have never been thanked by Joe Biden,” Paxton told supporters at a campaign event last Saturday in Magnolia, half an hour outside downtown Houston, referencing a moment when then-President Biden praised Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., for leading negotiations on a bipartisan gun safety bill.

After that bill passed, Cornyn was greeted with boos at a Texas Republican convention. 

Paxton, meanwhile, has governed and campaigned in Trumpian style — from embracing election denialism, to doubling down in the face of personal and political controversy. 

Last summer, Paxton’s wife filed for divorce on what she called “biblical grounds.” Two years prior, he avoided expulsion from his post on abuse of office charges, even after Texas House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to impeach him. 

Asked about those things now, Paxton likened himself to the president. “Trump went through the very same thing, and look where he’s at. It’s going to be the same way for me.”

But Cornyn says it’s those very controversies that make Paxton the “kiss of death” for Republicans in the general election.

“The Attorney General has such a notorious reputation when it comes to his personal and professional behavior, I believe he could well lead our party, the Republican Party, into an electoral massacre come November of 2026,” he said.

Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt are locked in a three-way race, with Paxton polling ahead, but still below the fifty-percent threshold needed to win outright and avoid a two-man May runoff. Cornyn and Paxton both are spending tens of millions to disband with Hunt and make it a head to head race, even as Paxton maintained he thinks he’ll win outright on Tuesday.

All of them are vying for the Trump crown — but the president has yet to give it to anyone. 

At a rally in Corpus Christi Friday night, all three men appeared with him but he didn’t dole out any specific endorsement, to the relief of Senate GOP leadership who are working to keep Cornyn in place.

The Democratic dilemma

Democrats, for their part, seem keen to capitalize on the GOP battle, as well as national issues, like immigration enforcement and affordability, that polls show are swinging in their favor.

A female voter in Houston, who declined to give her name but described herself as a “lifetime Republican,” told MS NOW she “voted Democrat all the way.” Asked why, she cited the way “the immigration issue is being conducted,” adding, “I don’t want to live like that.”

That’s just one of the issues shaping the race, as Democrats seek to exploit changing dynamics and demographics in Texas. 

But the biggest question Democratic voters are asking about the candidates before them — Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico — is a familiar one: who can win?

It’s a question that’s as much about political coalitions and polling as it is about intangibles, like race and gender, that the party has grappled with on the national stage before. 

At a “get out the vote” event with mostly Black voters in Fort Bend a week before the election, Crockett tackled the “electability” issue head on.

“I am not afraid to deal with electability, because I know my credentials,” she told MS NOW.

“There’s only one person that has federal experience when it comes down to it,” she said, jabbing her opponent without saying his name. “If you’re just now learning his name because he’s running for office, then my question is, what fights was he engaging in?”

Talarico, for his part, maintains “I don’t think we need more folks in Washington with DC experience. I think we need people who have experience fighting for working people.”

And as far as the tone and tenor of this primary in its closing weeks, Talarico called Crockett “a friend of mine,” in an interview with MS NOW. “We’re going to put forward our different visions for how we win and our electoral track records, our legislative track records, but at the end of the day, we’re on the same team trying to end 30 years of one-party rule in this state, and so that’s what we have to keep our eyes on in this contest,” he said. “We are on the same team, committed to the same goal.”

Crockett’s feisty tone and willingness to spar with Talarico is not the only difference between the two in the race’s closing weeks: their theories of the case are different. 

Hers centers on turning out Black and brown voters, the lifeblood of the Democratic base in the state and a key part of the shifting dynamics that make Democrats want to invest here in the first place. She continues to dominate in polls with the voting bloc.

“Every single poll, even in this primary, you know who it is that my biggest supporters are? Even in the primary, Black women, number one, Black men, number two, Latinas, number three,” Crockett said. “That is the coalition. That is who we are going to have to make sure that we can motivate.”

Talarico, for his part, rejected the premise when asked about an either-or approach.

“The answer is both,” he told MS NOW outside his campaign bus before an event in the conservative area of Lubbock, Texas. “You have to both increase black and brown turnout. You’ve got to increase youth turnout, which is what our campaign is doing in this primary, and you’ve got to peel off independents and some Republicans. We’re not in a position as Texas Democrats to be closing off lanes to victory, we have to pursue all those lanes simultaneously.”

But the Talarico political model of “an open hand, not a closed fist” is appealing to some, including Ed Verona who said he asked for a Democratic ballot for the first time this year.

“If Ken Paxton or Wesley Hunt are the nominees of the Republican Party, I’ll be voting for [James] Talarico. I’ll give some thought to Cornyn,” he allowed, “but he hasn’t impressed me” and feels he’s thrown in too much with whatever Trump says.

“If someone like me is now asking for the Democratic ballot,” Verona said, “It’s just a small sign, but it should be a wake up call to the Republican Party, which I no longer recognize as the Republican Party.”

Perhaps the same is true for Cornyn who, when asked what was different in this race versus races past, said “what’s different about this race is we have a deeply flawed candidate.”

Asked if he’d be running again if Paxton wasn’t in the race, Cornyn paused. “Well, that’s a good question,” he said. “That’s a hypothetical that I don’t guess I have to answer because he is running. But we need good people. We don’t need crooks and people with corrupt records of corruption trying to represent the state. We deserve better than that.”

— Lillie Boudreaux contributed to this article