President Donald Trump has said he one of the candidates in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas, but Tuesday was the last chance for either to withdraw from the ballot and fulfill the party’s hope of avoiding more than two months of bitter and costly campaigning.
Neither incumbent Sen. John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton bowed out by the evening deadline, and instead recently launched new advertisements criticizing each other.
Trump told on Saturday that he thinks he鈥檒l bestow an endorsement this week. But it’s already been two weeks since he originally 鈥渟oon” and urge the one without his support to drop out of the race 鈥渇or the good of the Party.”
Cornyn finished ahead of Paxton in the , although he didn’t secure the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
Asked about the chance of Cornyn dropping out, campaign spokesman Matt Mackowiak said 鈥渙f course not鈥� and “we鈥檝e already started our campaign.鈥�
An ad released Tuesday by Cornyn’s campaign highlighted and his impeachment by Texas’ Republican-controlled House. Paxton was later acquitted and denied corruption accusations. Another ad framed some of the same accusations as Paxton violating the Ten Commandments.
As to whether Paxton plans to step down, campaign spokesman Nick Maddux declined to comment. But the candidate introduced a new attack ad against Cornyn on Friday and is scheduled to speak this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee鈥檚 annual convention, hardly the signs of a candidate eyeing the exit.
The ad is a series of news clips highlighting Cornyn’s past critiques of Trump, including over the president’s false statements that the 2020 election was stolen, and frames Paxton as the MAGA-aligned candidate.
A pro-Paxton super PAC has also sought to catch Trump鈥檚 attention by airing an ad with the same messaging in the West Palm Beach, Florida, market, which includes Trump鈥檚 resort home, Mar-a-Lago.
But Cornyn, a more traditional Republican, isn’t retreating from the fight over who’s the better MAGA adherent: the first sentence on his website is 鈥淐ornyn votes with President Trump 99% of the time.”
Trump told NBC News he likes 鈥渂oth candidates very much” and believes that either could beat the Democratic nominee, state , in the general election.
While Cornyn came out slightly ahead of Paxton in the primary, the second round of voting could favor the attorney general since runoffs typically draw a more conservative, activist corner of the Republican Party.
“Cornyn has always had a weakness with the most conservative voters in the electorate,” said Joshua Blank, director of research for the Texas Political Project at the University of Texas, Austin, which conducts statewide polls.
Still, he added, Cornyn’s primary campaign appeared to offset at least part of that disadvantage and 鈥渋llustrate for the Republican primary electorate what kinds of vulnerabilities that Ken Paxton has.鈥�
The ads, however, matter less in a runoff contest, said veteran Texas Republican strategist Dave Carney. The smaller, more concentrated electorate puts an emphasis on identifying individual voters, contacting them directly through digital advertising and texts, he said.
鈥淲hoever has good data and knows who their supporters are and turns them out will win,鈥� he said.
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