PLANO, Texas — Despite extensive efforts to demonstrate allegiance, it ultimately proved insufficient.
For more than a year, U.S. Senator John Cornyn attempted to demonstrate to Donald Trump and Texas Republicans that he stood firmly with the president.
Cornyn shared an image of himself reading Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” He introduced legislation to designate a portion of interstate highway in Trump’s honor. Most notably, the Senate institutionalist who had long defended the filibuster changed his stance in an unsuccessful attempt to push forward voting restrictions that represent a key priority for the president.
The strategy failed. Tuesday saw Cornyn join a growing list of Republicans who suffered primary defeats after losing favor with a president who shows little patience for disagreement and appears to have an endless desire for payback. The senator serving his fourth term was defeated by substantial margins by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump backed last week, calling him “a true MAGA Warrior.”
Regarding Cornyn, Trump declared he “was VERY disloyal to me,” according to his social media post.
Trump’s involvement in the Texas runoff followed weeks of successfully supporting primary opponents in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky as payback against sitting officials who opposed his agenda.
Cornyn’s efforts to escape a similar outcome caused discomfort even among his allies.
“You look at the positions he took to please the president and the groveling and whatever,” said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican and Trump critic who didn’t seek reelection during the president’s first midterm in 2018. “It was rather painful to watch.”
Cornyn’s defeat occurred despite significant political maneuvering and enormous campaign expenditures.
His campaign launched a commercial last summer — part of a remarkable nearly-$100-million advertising campaign by the senator and supporting organizations — featuring Cornyn addressing the camera directly and declaring, “I voted with President Trump 99% of the time.”
Cornyn’s campaign website prominently displays an image of Trump and Cornyn standing together with upward-pointing thumbs, designed to demonstrate unity. Further into the site, a section labeled “The Trump-Cornyn Record” highlights the senator’s efforts in securing support for Trump’s landmark 2017 tax reduction legislation.
Cornyn has also been promoting elements in Trump’s major tax-and-spending bill that fund construction along the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The senator had criticized the project as “naive” during Trump’s 2016 campaign. However, in January, he appeared alongside a completed wall section in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, praising the measure’s $11 billion allocation for Texas contractors’ work “at the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”
While Cornyn’s support for his party’s leader and president was typical, it contrasted sharply with comments Cornyn made in May 2023, as Trump was launching his presidential comeback effort.
“Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told reporters. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”
Trump subsequently secured the nomination easily and won every competitive state in the general election.
Cornyn maintained close alignment with the president throughout the first 16 months of his second term, hoping for either his endorsement or his neutrality.
However, Trump remembered previous criticisms.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” he wrote on social media while endorsing Paxton.
Cornyn had lightheartedly attempted to demonstrate Trump support, posting a social media image last year showing himself carefully reading Trump’s 1987 memoir and business guide, “The Art of the Deal.”
In a more direct approach, he proposed naming a section of U.S. highway extending from the Texas Gulf Coast to Montana as “Interstate 47,” honoring a 47th president known for his fondness for having things named after himself. In a news release about the proposal, issued just over two weeks before Tuesday’s runoff, Cornyn stated it would be called the “Trump Interstate.”
The most significant change occurred in March, after Trump had suggested he might endorse either Cornyn or Paxton in the runoff.
Paxton quickly announced he would consider withdrawing from the race if the Republican-controlled Senate eliminated the filibuster and approved the SAVE America Act, a package of voting restrictions that Trump has called a crucial component of his agenda.
The next week, Cornyn published an opinion piece in the New York Post — Trump’s preferred local newspaper — abandoning his previous filibuster support. He promised to “support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary” to move the bill “through the Senate and on the president’s desk for his signature.”
Flake observed with concern.
“I know John and his long-held positions on the filibuster and the Senate’s institutions,” he said. “No office is worth that.”
