Supporters of John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to Ken Paxton, could play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the November 3 US Senate election in Texas, as some consider backing the Republican nominee, voting for Democrat James Talarico or staying away from the contest.
About 910,000 Texans voted for Cornyn in the March Republican primary, while slightly more than 500,000 supported him in the May runoff, which he lost to Paxton by nearly 28 percentage points.
Although Cornyn’s supporters represent only a small share of the state’s electorate, their votes could prove crucial in a closely fought contest.
“Paxton’s fate is in the hands of those moderate Republicans, who he and many of his colleagues have long vilified – the Cornyn voters, the Bush voters,” Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said.
Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, is relying on President Donald Trump’s endorsement to mobilise Republican voters, while Talarico, a state representative from Austin, is campaigning on unity and affordability to attract voters dissatisfied with the GOP candidate.
However, former Cornyn supporters remain divided over Paxton’s character, their loyalty to the Republican Party and whether they should consider voting for a Democrat.
Adora Gnuschke, a 39-year-old real estate agent in Cedar Park, supported Cornyn in the primary despite concerns about his relationship with Trump. She also questioned his record on illegal immigration and gun rights but valued his experience in the Senate.
Gnuschke had reservations about Paxton’s personal conduct, particularly following his 2023 impeachment proceedings.
“Integrity is important in politics,” she said.
Despite her concerns, she plans to vote for Paxton, arguing that preserving Texas’ Republican identity is “way more important.” She also supports his position on issues such as transgender athletes participating in girls’ sports.
Gnuschke dismissed Talarico as an option because of his previous comments about religion, including describing God as “nonbinary.”
“I’m a believer in Christ, and so whatever Talarico’s version of Christianity is, is not what I know to be true, so that makes him a non-starter,” she said.
For other traditional Republicans, however, Paxton’s emergence as the party’s nominee has prompted a different decision.
Preston Hutcherson, a 34-year-old technology worker in Richardson and former vice president of a Young Republicans group at Southern Methodist University, describes himself as a conservative in the tradition of former President George W. Bush.
After voting Republican for most of his adult life and supporting Cornyn in the primary, Hutcherson said he intended to vote for Talarico in November.
“I trust his judgment and his compassion and his thoughtfulness more than I trust Ken Paxton,” he said.
Dorothy Burton, a former Duncanville City Council member, also backed Cornyn, although she believed he had made policy concessions to Trump to obtain the president’s endorsement.
“That wasn’t the same John Cornyn who was kissing the ring of Trump, and it was very disappointing,” she said.
Burton had previously supported Paxton in his attorney general elections but changed her position after the 2023 impeachment proceedings, which involved allegations including bribery and obstruction of justice. Paxton was acquitted by the state Senate and has denied wrongdoing.
After voting Republican for four decades, Burton is now preparing to support Talarico.
“There’s no way I would ever vote for him for anything,” she said of Paxton.
Others may choose not to vote in the Senate race at all. Former Southlake mayor Huffman, who lost a state Senate contest in Tarrant County last year, said fellow Republicans had branded him a RINO, or “Republican in name only.”
He blamed hardline activists for intensifying divisions within the party, describing them as “an extreme right outrage machine that is very good at winning angry, divisive primaries.”
“That makes unity very difficult to achieve when you emerge from the primary,” he said. “It makes the relationships very tough to repair. That’s what you’ve seen with Cornyn and Paxton.”
Huffman argued that such divisions could alienate moderate Republicans and independent voters. He said he was likely to abstain from voting in the Senate contest.
“We have a terrible nominee at the top of the ticket that can’t bring the Republicans home,” he said. “That’s a huge problem.”
Joshua Gutierrez, a 45-year-old elementary school teacher from Mesquite, remains undecided despite voting for Cornyn in both the primary and runoff.
He said information he had seen on social media had raised concerns about Paxton, whom he viewed as bitter and negative.
“I’m not too much a fan of that, but you know, the platform is the one I’m voting for, ultimately,” he said.
Gutierrez said the Republican Party was more aligned with his Judeo-Christian values, but he was also troubled by Paxton’s controversies and the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies, which he believes conflict with those values.
The importance of the Cornyn voting bloc is underscored by Texas’ history of competitive Senate elections. In 2018, Republican Ted Cruz defeated Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 214,921 votes, or 2.56 percentage points, after more than 8.3 million Texans cast ballots.
The roughly 910,000 people who supported Cornyn in March amount to more than four times that margin, although their eventual turnout remains uncertain.
Cornyn has kept his distance from Paxton since losing the runoff, declining to raise funds for his former rival and instead supporting Republican Senate candidates in other states.
The tension between the two Republicans became public this month after CNN obtained a recording of Paxton telling fundraisers that Cornyn wanted him to lose. Paxton claimed a friend had heard Cornyn make the remark at a Dallas restaurant, but Cornyn’s camp denied the account.
Last week, Cornyn again rejected suggestions that he was working against Paxton, saying his priority was maintaining Republican control of the Senate.
“I’ve said I’d support the ticket and that’s been my position all along,” Cornyn told CNBC.
