Cornyn’s defeat fuels tensions with Trump in Senate GOP
WASHINGTON — US Senator John Cornyn’s resounding primary defeat in Texas on Tuesday has sharpened tensions between President Trump and Senate Republicans, and threatens to imperil the president’s agenda as allies who have stayed in lock step with him see his actions increasingly diverging from their interests.
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Cornyn, who less than two years ago came within a handful of votes of becoming the Republican leader, was a popular and respected senator as well as a prolific fund-raiser, a dependable conservative vote and an able floor debater. His colleagues saw the president’s last-minute endorsement of his scandal-mired opponent as a move to punish a senator whom Trump deemed insufficiently loyal, an insult to the institution and a self-serving political mistake that put his party’s hold on the Senate at risk.
“It is very sad and unsettling, and not good for the Senate,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who is facing her own difficult reelection race and who worked closely with Cornyn when he was the No. 2 Republican for six years ending in 2019.
Republicans found Trump’s decision to back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Cornyn especially perplexing given that Cornyn was far from a never-Trump rebel.
He did not vote to convict Trump on impeachment charges, as did Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, who lost his primary earlier this month after being attacked regularly by the president. Nor had he broken from the party on select issues, as has Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolinian who decided not to seek reelection after coming under fire from Trump.
In 2023, Cornyn did question Trump’s electability after the ignominious end to the president’s first term, but after Trump’s primary win in New Hampshire in January 2024, Cornyn quickly endorsed him.
Despite Cornyn’s defeat, Senate Republican leaders do not expect him to suddenly diverge much from the party line as Cassidy did immediately after his loss by joining with Democrats in challenging the president’s authority to wage war with Iran. Given Cornyn’s record and leadership tenure, a sudden turn to the left wouldn’t seem to be in the cards, despite any resentment toward the president he may feel.
But his situation adds to the ranks of GOP incumbents done in by their own president with little remaining incentive to give him the benefit of the doubt. And it could influence how other Senate Republicans operate in the critical coming months before the midterm elections. Already, it has become clear that they are questioning why they should bend constantly to Trump on issues on which they might think differently given the political choices he has made.
Even before Cornyn’s loss, the anger at the president had been reflected in Senate Republicans’ opposition to money for his ballroom project and resistance to a fund for those who the president believes were victims of overzealous federal prosecutors — both White House priorities that senators see as putting them in political jeopardy. Resolving those differences could now be further complicated by the defeat in Texas.
In his concession speech, Cornyn noted that he still had time left in the Senate.
“Over the next seven months of my service in the United States Senate, I intend to continue my work to help make this nation a better place for all Texans and all Americans,” he said.
From a policy perspective, his differences with the president were mainly a difference of style over substance. The more diplomatic Cornyn never engaged much in the MAGA bombast that Trump often rewards. He was instead a steady conservative institutionalist, one who sided with Trump on big issues like tough border enforcement in his home state.
He was also instrumental on the Judiciary Committee in helping to deliver the president’s judicial picks and sided with the White House on most policy questions. He was an architect of a criminal justice overhaul endorsed by conservatives and cited by the president as a chief accomplishment in his first term.
Yet Trump apparently could never forgive Cornyn’s 2023 electoral analysis that “President Trump’s time has passed him by.” He set out to unseat an incumbent of his own party despite the real risk of losing the seat in November with Paxton as the candidate given multiple investigations into his conduct and public accusations of marital infidelity. The president’s strong declaration of support appeared to play a significant role in Cornyn’s overwhelming defeat after he managed to defy expectations and place first in the initial voting, prompting Tuesday’s runoff.
On Wednesday, Trump tried to strike a conciliatory tone in a social media post, congratulating Paxton on his “tremendous win” while praising Cornyn “for having run a strong and powerful race but, more importantly, having had a truly great career.”
“John will remain my friend for a long time to come, as we both watch Ken become a fantastic, common sense Senator, one who is respected by all,” Trump wrote.
Defeating incumbent senators in party primaries is difficult, and losses are relatively rare. The combination of Cornyn’s and Cassidy’s defeats represents the most primary losses by Senate incumbents since 2010. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938 has a president sought so aggressively to topple members of his own party he saw as insufficiently loyal.
Most Republican senators issued no immediate reaction to the outcome, staying silent while a statement from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which did not name Cornyn or Paxton, ridiculed the idea of Democrats winning the state. But fearing a credible Democratic challenge, some Senate Republicans quickly endorsed Paxton on Tuesday night as the only alternative to Democrat James Talarico, who won his party’s nomination outright in the initial primary.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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