By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
When Donald Trump dropped his shock endorsement of controversial Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against four-term Republican senator John Cornyn a week before the Texas Republican primary runoff, a Paxton win became very likely. What no one expected was an absolute butt-kicking. The incumbent not only had universal name ID and a 99 percent pro-Trump voting record, but one of the largest financial advantages anyone has ever had in a competitive statewide-election contest. The challenger had a long record of personal and professional misconduct allegations to overcome. Yet Paxton trounced Cornyn (who narrowly led in the first primary round in March) by nearly a two-to-one margin, winning all but a scattered handful of counties.
It was that kind of night among Lone Star Republicans, though, and perhaps it was not just about Trump. Paxton has been in the vanguard of a hard-right trend in his party that is evident up and down the ballot and in state as well as federal races. And it probably won’t stop until Democrats — who haven’t won statewide in Texas since 1994 — produce a breakthrough that gives Republicans some reason to fear there’s a prudent limit to their ideological radicalism.
