Texas AG Ken Paxton officially joins U.S. Senate race challenging John Cornyn

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he will challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections, setting up a barnburner clash of two Republican titans that is poised to reverberate across state and national politics.

The contest, teased by Paxton for months, promises to be among the most heated and expensive Republican primaries in the country and in recent Texas history. It also marks the latest flashpoint in a power struggle between the Texas GOP’s hardline, socially conservative wing — which views Paxton as a standard-bearer — and the Cornyn-aligned, business-minded Republican old guard.

Appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show, Paxton said it was “time for a change in Texas” as he announced his Senate bid and blasted Cornyn’s “lack of production” over his 22 years in the upper chamber.

“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 Donald Trump in the areas that he's focused on in a very significant way,” Paxton said. “And that's what I plan on doing.”

Paxton’s candidacy poses the most serious threat to Cornyn’s political career in decades. It would mark a watershed moment in the Texas GOP’s factional struggle if Paxton — not long removed from an array of career-threatening legal battles and impeachment by his own party — managed to topple Cornyn, a mainstay of Texas politics who had an early hand in the state’s Republican takeover and reached the upper rungs of Senate GOP leadership.

Wasting no time framing himself as the outsider in the race, Paxton wrote on social media he was running to “take a sledgehammer to the D.C. establishment,” while calling for voters to “send John Cornyn packing.”

Cornyn has easily fended off competition from the right even as his party has taken a sharp turn in that direction. But now, the four-term senator is facing more serious heat over his support for military aid to Ukraine, his public skepticism about Trump’s electability ahead of the 2024 election, and his role leading Senate negotiations on a bill restricting firearm access after the 2022 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School.

Still, Cornyn has remained defiant in the face of Paxton’s long-expected challenge and after losing his bid to become the next Senate majority leader — the first defeat of his political career.

During Trump’s first term, Cornyn voted more than 92% of the time with the president’s agenda and voted for every one of Trump’s executive and judicial appointees. He has followed a similar pattern since Trump won back the White House, again backing all the president’s nominees, including controversial picks who attracted skepticism from GOP lawmakers.

A spokesperson for Cornyn’s campaign responded to Paxton’s announcement by labeling him a “fraud.”

“This will be a spirited campaign and we assure Texans they will have a real choice when this race is over,” the spokesperson said, adding that Texas needs “a battle-tested conservative” who “won’t be outsmarted by Chuck Schumer,” the Democratic minority leader.

As the Cornyn-Paxton clash gets underway, perhaps the biggest looming question is whether Trump will throw his support — and considerable clout in primaries — behind either candidate. The president’s endorsement has helped boost numerous GOP candidates in crowded Texas primaries since he became entrenched as the party’s most popular figure nearly a decade ago.