Did Republicans Put a Senate Seat in Play in TX?
Ed Morrissey 4:00 PM | May 27, 2026
Spoiler alert: Naaah. But it's certainly fun to fantasize.
Yes, John Cornyn may have been a slightly safer bet than Ken Paxton in a general election. Given the relative difference between how the two would have voted over the next six years, the gain from nominating Paxton probably doesn't justify the assumed risk of dethroning the incumbent Cornyn. It might take more money to fight for the seat in the general election, but that assumes that Democrats would have left Texas alone had Cornyn eked out a win over Paxton.
In the end, though, Texas is Texas, and a primary runoff doesn't change the nature of the Republican or Democrat parties in the Lone Star State.
First off, does anyone know how long it has been since Democrats won a statewide election in Texas? That last happened in Bill Clinton's first term, in the 1994 midterms. Texas Democrats have not won a statewide election in 32 years, a longer skunk streak than Republicans have in Minnesota (2006). Beginning in Clinton's term, Texas Democrats took a turn to the Left, and began their long retreat into Academia. About the closest they came was in 2018, when Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke came within four points of Ted Cruz. That was in a Blue Wave election cycle where Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, and national media tried to turn O'Rourke into the second coming of JFK, too.
It's not for nothing that Texas Democrats have the longest current streak of statewide-election futility in the nation.
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