News: Senate Republicans are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars over the next few months to rescue Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, hoping to reintroduce him to Lone Star State conservatives and save his flagging primary prospects.
The Senate Leadership Fund, the top GOP super PAC focused on Senate races, urged donors last week to open their wallets to help Cornyn beat back a challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, arguing the race could become a costly disaster without immediate intervention.
Their message, as laid out in an SLF slideshow obtained by Punchbowl News, is stark — invest in Cornyn now or go broke trying to elect Paxton next fall.
SLF projected it would cost between $25 million to $70 million to help Cornyn win the GOP nomination — or require $200 million to $250 million to save Paxton in the general election.
We got our hands on a portion of SLF’s Texas presentation and reviewed the rest.
The SLF presentation shows that Cornyn trails Paxton by 17 points in an average of 13 public and private polls taken during the first six months of 2025.
More surprisingly, according to the SLF presentation, 58% of Republican primary voters don’t believe Cornyn is conservative. That leaves Cornyn in a tough position to win a primary against the fire breathing — and scandal-ridden — Paxton.
Here’s what stood out to us.
The stakes. This race has become an ordeal for Republicans. Senate GOP leaders firmly believe that Paxton will put the seat at risk if he’s the Republican nominee in a general election. See Paxton’s recent high-profile divorce as evidence of some of his electoral baggage.
One of the slides hammers that point home. It shows Cornyn beating a possible Democratic nominee, former Rep. Colin Allred, by six points. Meanwhile, Paxton is losing by one point.
But, as we’ve written repeatedly, no polling has shown that Cornyn can beat Paxton in a primary — or is even competitive against him.
Republicans believe they can change that by throwing money at the problem, and they’ve already begun.
Ideology. SLF described the fact that “primary voters don’t view Cornyn as conservative” as the “[m]ost pressing problem.”
Nearly 40% of primary voters view Cornyn as “moderate” while another 19% view him as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.” Only 12% view him as “very conservative.” Meanwhile, 47% of primary voters viewed Paxton as “very conservative.”
Cornyn’s allies are eager to change these numbers. But the longtime GOP incumbent has fallen out of favor with conservatives in recent years.
Cornyn, who’s been in the Senate since 2002, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and helped deliver many of President Donald Trump’s biggest accomplishments. Cornyn was the Senate GOP whip during the initial two years of Trump’s first term.
But Cornyn has since drawn the ire of Texas conservatives, especially after partnering with Democrats on a bipartisan gun safety law in 2022 as a response to the murder of 19 children and two teachers in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
As the 2024 election drew nearer, Cornyn was among a handful of Republican senators who stated publicly that the GOP should move on from Trump, arguing he couldn’t defeat then-President Joe Biden in a general election.
Timing. It’s worth noting that all of the polls mentioned in the presentation are from January to June 2025.
July was a big month for this race. Paxton’s wife announced she was filing for divorce “on biblical grounds” and One Nation, a nonprofit aligned with SLF, and Cornyn’s super PAC began spending big on ads, casting Cornyn as a pro-Trump conservative. Since mid-July they have collectively spent more than $7 million.
One SLF slide shows the many media markets in Texas and stresses the scope and cost of their effort. The state’s filing deadline is in December and the primary in March.
“The not great news: this is an expensive state with an early timeline. Resources will need to be committed starting this August.”
The responses. Chris Gustafson, SLF’s spokesperson, said the group strongly supports Cornyn and “will continue to educate voters on his conservative record,” while noting that “Ken Paxton’s toxic record only takes resources away from growing the Senate majority.”
Cornyn’s senior adviser Matt Mackowiak sent us this statement:
“John Cornyn hasn’t been on the ballot in five years. Educating voters about his actual record is job #1. And his 99.2% record voting with Trump while President. All public polling shows his image with Republican voters is solid and it will continue to grow as voters learn about his actual record.”
