Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are headed to a runoff in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
With all of Texas’ counties and 96% of statewide polling locations reporting Wednesday morning, the incumbent Cornyn had received41.7% of the vote compared to 41% for the challenger Paxton. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston was a distant third at 13.4%.
Neither Cornyn nor Paxton could claim an outright victory on Election Night, which requires receiving more than 50% of the votes cast. Aprimary election runoffwill be held Tuesday, May 26, to determine the GOP nominee for November's general election.
In the Democratic primary for Senate, state Rep. James Talaricobeat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Tuesday’s election results from Dallas, El Paso and Williamson counties were expected to be delayed. Judges in Dallas and El Paso counties ordered polls to stay open past the usual 7 p.m. cutoff time.
Cornyn has been running for a fifth term representing Texas in the U.S. Senate. Serving out another six-year term would make him the longest-serving senator in the state's history, breaking the record set by Democrat Morris Sheppard.
"Cornyn's biggest weakness is his strength, which is his longevity," said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project of the University of Texas at Austin. "He is a creature of the institution. He comes from central casting for what a senator should look like, but ultimately, the party has gone through a number of revisions over the last at least decade-and-a-half that in some ways make Cornyn's approach to politics a little bit anachronistic."
Paxtonentered the Senate primarylast April, publicly announcing his bid to unseat Cornyn on Fox News host Laura Ingraham's show. While Cornyn has held the advantages of both incumbency and a sizable campaign war chest, most polls over the past 11 months have shown Paxton either leading Cornyn or statistically tied with him.
Paxton, who despite having a long history of legal troubles and the fact that he’s going through a very public, messy divorce, has long been a favorite of the state’s more conservative Republican voters.
Bill Miller, a political consultant who has advised both Republicans and Democrats, said Paxton is the best positioned to win a second-round contest.
"The runoff will be the hardcore primary voters, and that’s his base," Miller said, "so he’ll be extraordinarily difficult to defeat in a runoff."
The Texas primary for the U.S. Senate has become the most expensive Senate primary contest in state history. As of mid-February, the tracking organization AdImpact Politics reported that spending in the Republican and Democratic races combined had reached close to $99 million, second in U.S. history only to the 2022 Arizona Senate primary. Cornyn ads alone accounted for nearly $59 million of that total.
Spending has only increased since then, with attack ads by both the candidates and super PACs supporting them proliferating.
Hanging over the primary runoff is the question of whether President Donald Trump will weigh in to endorse one of the remaining candidates. A recent poll by the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 55% of likely GOP primary voters would be more inclined to vote for a candidate who had Trump's endorsement.
Much of the primary has seen Cornyn, Hunt and Paxton each presenting themselves to voters as the most pro-Trump candidate. Miller said that may explain why Trump hasn't yet weighed in.
"He’s getting the best of all possible worlds," Miller said. "It might be something he would consider in the runoff, but I think he’ll stay out of the race and just let the chips fall where they may."
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