Texas attorney general Ken Paxton announced he will challenge Senator John Cornyn in the Republican primary next year, setting the stage for what could be one of the most competitive battles for a Senate seat in the upcoming elections between two factions of the GOP.
Paxton, a firebrand conservative litigant who has sought to strongly align himself with Donald Trump, launched his campaign website on Tuesday by featuring a photo of him posing with the president.
"I'm announcing that I'm running for U.S. Senate against John Cornyn, who apparently is running again for his fifth term, which would put him there three decades," Paxton said in an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "It's definitely time for a change in Texas."
"We have another great U.S. senator, Ted Cruz, and it's time we have another great senator that will actually stand up and fight for Republican values, fight for the values of the people of Texas and also support Trump, Donald Trump, in the areas that he's focused on in a very significant way," Paxton added.
The attorney general also said in a social media post he promised to "fight for President Trump's agenda and take a sledgehammer to the D.C. establishment."
Cornyn, perhaps realizing the looming challenge, announced his campaign last month in a video that heavily featured his own connections to Trump, The New York Times noted. In recent days he rolled out an endorsement from the union for U.S. Border Patrol agents, an important show of support for conservative voters who list border security among their top issues.
Both Paxton and Cornyn have won multiple statewide elections. Paxton was first elected in 2015, while Cornyn— a deputy to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky when he was the Senate Republican leader— has held his seat since 2002.
In response to Paxton's announcement, the Cornyn campaign pointed to the senator's voting record, which it said aligned with President Trump more than nearly every other senator. The campaign referred to Paxton as "a fraud."
"This will be a spirited campaign and we assure Texans they will have a real choice when this race is over," the campaign said in a statement on Tuesday.
Paxton was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023 on corruption charges, but was later acquitted in the state Senate. The next year he reached a deal that included a $300,000 payment in restitution to avoid a securities fraud trial stemming from a 2015 indictment on three felony charges. He had pleaded not guilty, NBC News recalled.
Paxton has been a staunch Trump ally since Trump's first term. After the 2020 election, he played a lead role in supporting Trump's efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Paxton later used his office to wage numerous court battles against the Biden administration on a variety of issues, like immigration.
On the Democratic side, only former Rep. Colin Allred has jumped into the race. Allred, a former NFL player, drew national attention last year when he sought to unseat Cruz, who won by nearly 9 percentage points.
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