With the risk of losing the House for his final two years as president, Donald Trump wanted Texas Republicans last year to redraw the state’s congressional map and help get his party more seats.
They did.
Months later, he asked for something else: that primary voters deny a fifth term to Sen. John Cornyn and pick Ken Paxton, the state’s impeached and acquitted attorney general, as the Republican standard bearer instead.
They did that, too.
Now, with less than eight weeks until Election Day, Republicans are facing the consequences of those choices as they gather in Dallas for their midterm convention: signs of strain to hold onto Cornyn’s seat against state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, and chasing five redrawn House seats that may not all fall their way. It amounts to a Texas-sized question mark hanging over the fight for Congress — one fully on display this week as Trump and the party he leads gather in Dallas for a midterm convention.
“The race is much closer than it should be,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters on Capitol Hill last week about the Senate race, after describing Talarico as “out of step with every voter that I know.”
No Democrat has won a Senate race in Texas since 1988, but this fall’s contest is now absorbing money and attention that could otherwise go elsewhere: The pro-Trump MAGA Inc. political group recently disclosed putting $10 million toward the race in what is expected to be an incredibly expensive contest in the final weeks. Texas is among the conservative states Democrats would need to flip in their difficult map to taking control of the Senate.
“If you’re looking to flip Alaska or Ohio or North Carolina, thank a Texas Democrat,” said Rep. Greg Casar, the Texas Democrat who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Because they’re having to put all their chips in to hold Texas.”
Midterms tend to become a rebuke of the party in power. With the economy, immigration and an overseas war all shaping voters’ decisions, Trump’s move to make himself the face of the Republican strategy carries as much political risk as reward. Republicans see Trump as helping with turnout on their side. But he also energizes Democrats as well.
Candidates aligned with Trump’s image and approach have struggled repeatedly in competitive races over the past decade, and Paxton may be the strongest test of that dynamic to date. Trump has managed to overcome scandals that would have collapsed other political careers several times over. His allies struggle to inherit the same willingness from voters to look the other way.
Yet Paxton is by no means an easy opponent. He won his first term as attorney general in 2014, was re-elected in a close 2018 contest in a rough political environment and in 2022 brushed aside a primary field that included an heir to the Bush political dynasty. Even after an overwhelming vote in the Republican-controlled Texas House to impeach him — in part over allegations that he “abused the judicial process to thwart justice” — Paxton was acquitted by the state Senate. He followed that by overcoming a steep cash and political infrastructure disadvantage to defeat Cornyn in a primary runoff this spring.
Republicans are betting the state’s fundamentals will hold regardless of what the polling says now.
“Texas is still blood red, and I think that’ll show up on election night,” said Rep. Jake Ellzey, R-Texas.
The coming weeks will test whether Paxton can turn out skeptical Republicans while also appealing to more of the middle. How much Trump does to help will be a factor, but even that may only go so far: After more than a decade as a statewide elected official, and the controversies he’s brought, Paxton has an established record. Early voting begins Oct. 19, leaving both campaigns less than six weeks to change minds.
In Paxton, Trump has a major ally. The Texas attorney general was behind a long-shot legal challenge after the 2020 election that asked the Supreme Court to throw out the losses voters handed Trump in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
At a White House event recently, Trump said about Paxton that “you might not like the way he looks. You might not love his look. You might not love his television interviews, but he was the best attorney general in the country, perhaps, he was one of the best in the entire country.”
“And that speaks a lot louder than the suit he’s wearing that doesn’t look so great,” Trump said.
The Senate race is getting most of the attention paid to Texas. But trouble at the top of the Republican ticket could spread to downballot races as well — including some of the seats the GOP-led Legislature redrew. Texas Republicans already hold 25 of the state’s 38 House seats, and the GOP’s changes in last year’s redraw aimed to take as many as five more from Democrats.
Winning all five now appears to be a challenge. Two well-established Democrats, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez are standing for re-election despite the changes, and there are warning signs in the state’s 15th Congressional District, where GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz is being challenged by Bobby Pulido, a well-known Tejano musician. The district took on new areas to help the GOP’s attempt at more power. Republicans appear to be relying on the president’s sway with Latino voters in 2024, a bet that will be tested across the ballot this fall.
Casar, the progressive Texas congressman whose own seat was shifted to help a Republican win instead and led him to run in a different numbered district this fall, is confident the GOP won’t end up getting what it wanted from the state through the redistricting gambit.
“No way in hell Republicans will pick up the five seats that they thought they were going to get out of gerrymandering,” he said.
Paxton, for his part, has not been talking like a candidate in a safe state.
“If we lose Texas, we’ve lost the country,” Paxton said at a rally earlier this month. “And if we lose Texas, we’re going to lose the U.S. Senate. But that’s almost minor compared to losing Texas.”
Lillie Boudreaux contributed reporting to this article.
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