GOP rift grows over Cornyn’s Senate seat as Trump pressured to take sides

By Manu Raju and Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — Republicans are growing anxious about an emerging Texas primary engulfing one of their longest-serving senators, fearful that a hugely expensive intraparty feud will have major ramifications across the map in next year’s midterms.

And they want President Donald Trump to stop it.

Behind the scenes, Senate GOP leaders have personally asked Trump to back Sen. John Cornyn, who has occupied his seat for more than two decades and narrowly lost his bid to become Senate majority leader last fall.

But the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, is sending loud signals that he plans to enter the race, endearing himself to MAGA loyalists who want Trump to back the controversial firebrand.

Adding to Cornyn’s challenges: Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt is now also making moves to enter the GOP primary and has privately contended to White House political advisers that he’s the only one who can win both a primary and a general election, according to a person involved in the discussion.

All that has added up to one overriding fear: that a Texas Senate GOP primary could end up costing their party at least $100 million, siphoning money from other critical battlegrounds, according to several Senate GOP sources. Plus, they worry that a wounded GOP nominee could end up giving Democrats a chance in what would otherwise be a long-shot pickup opportunity as former Rep. Colin Allred weighs another Senate run.

Top Hill Republicans hope Trump can help clear the field with a Cornyn endorsement. Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed to CNN that he’s spoken to Trump about it in recent weeks.

“I’m hoping that in the end, he can,” Thune said when asked about Trump supporting Cornyn. “Obviously we’re supporting Sen. Cornyn. He’s done a great job for Texas and for the country. And we need him back.”

Exposing a GOP divide

The battle puts Trump at the center of the simmering feud between the party’s insurgent and establishment wings that has dominated GOP primary politics since the 2010 midterms, forcing him to pick sides and risk angering some of his most loyal supporters.

Cornyn, 73, a longtime fixture in Texas politics with deep ties to the business and donor community, has taken steps to try to align himself closely with the president, including a launch video featuring footage of Trump praising him from 2019 and even posting a photo on X of him reading “The Art of the Deal.”

In an interview last week, the Texas senator told CNN he is “prepared” for a primary fight, but he would not comment on Paxton or Hunt until they formally enter the race. (He said he would speak “endlessly” about Paxton if he jumps into the race.)

Asked about Trump, Cornyn said he speaks to the president regularly and believes he will “make an endorsement when he’s ready.”

“I have a very good relationship; look forward to supporting him and his agenda as I always have,” Cornyn said of Trump. Asked whether the president’s backing could make a difference in the race, Cornyn said: “I think his endorsement would be important, yeah.”

But both Paxton and Hunt have tried to show daylight between Cornyn and Trump.

In perhaps the clearest sign of his intentions to run against Cornyn, Hunt argued the senior senator was ready to “move on” from Trump after the 2020 elections.

“Now, he’s scrambling to rewrite history — hoping voters will forget he ever turned his back on the very movement that built our momentum and delivered the majority for Republicans, specifically the Senate,” Hunt, a hard-right Republican and combat veteran, told CNN.

“The United States Senate is not a retirement community. It’s a battleground for the soul of this nation,” said Hunt, 43, who won his Houston-area House seat in 2022. “And in times like these, President Trump doesn’t need fence sitters — he needs warriors.”

And Hunt is now benefiting from a seven-figure ad buy from an outside group looking to bolster his name ID across the state, something that will be critical given how infrequently House candidates win statewide in Texas.

Behind the scenes, multiple conservatives are making the case to Trump’s political team to ditch the long-serving senator — some equipped with private polling showing Cornyn losing in a primary, according to three people familiar with the outreach. They argue Cornyn has lost the GOP base in recent years, after voting with most Republicans and all Democrats to certify Joe Biden’s election win and partnering with Democrats to pass a major gun safety bill, a move that came in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre in 2022.

“There are high-level people who are behind Paxton in a way they’re generally not in primary challenges,” said one Senate GOP operative.

But this person also outlined a scenario that is worrying national leaders, describing Paxton as a “very rough general election candidate in what looks like could be a bad cycle.”

After previously criticizing Trump over the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Cornyn worked through the last election cycle to rebuild his ties with the president, appearing with him at a campaign event in Nevada — and waiting on the tarmac last October when the president arrived in Austin for a podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Cornyn often points to his work as the Republican whip during Trump’s first term to help usher through the 2017 tax law and many of his nominees, including to the Supreme Court, and boasts of voting with Trump more than 90% of the time in his first term.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and his team have made this case to White House officials, according to a person familiar with the discussion. And Scott has made clear to Hunt that they are fully behind Cornyn as their nominee when the pair met in recent weeks, according to two people briefed on that meeting.

The goal: curtail GOP primaries and focus the party’s limited resources on critical pickup opportunities such as Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire — while defending Republican seats in places like Maine and North Carolina.

“We worked hard to try to clear primaries to try to minimize the amount of money spent in Republican primaries, and that strategy proved effective and allowed us to pick up the United States Senate in the last cycle,” Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who led the NRSC in the 2024 cycle, told CNN last week. “So any time we can try to minimize the impact of a primary like in Texas, that’s going to help us win the general election.”

Cornyn, for his part, recently told CNN he can defeat any possible challengers: “There’s a reason why I’ve won 19 contested elections: Always be prepared.”

Allred prepares for a run as hardliners woo Paxton

Democrats, meanwhile, are salivating at the idea of running against Paxton, who is a lightning-rod figure in Texas. Paxton, 62, was nearly removed from office by fellow Texas Republicans less than a year ago amid a long-running federal corruption probe. (Those charges were dropped by the Biden administration in its final weeks in office, and Paxton has denied wrongdoing.)

But the cloud of allegations will undoubtedly give Paxton’s opponents ample fodder in a Senate campaign, according to GOP and Democratic operatives.

Allred, a former congressman who lost by 8 points to GOP Sen. Ted Cruz last year, is “seriously considering” another run and will make a decision this summer, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

In a recent memo obtained by CNN, the Texas Democratic Party praised Allred’s race against Cruz, in which Allred overperformed the 2024 presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, in “nearly every county, demographic and metric” and did “particularly well” in the competitive turf along the Texas border that would be critical to a 2026 race.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who leads the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, said her party is building a “blue wave” because of “anger” toward Trump.

“A large blue wave can affect any state,” she told CNN when asked last week about her party’s chances to pick up the Texas seat.

But many conservatives discount talk that Allred could win in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. And given that, they argue Texas should elect an unyielding conservative firebrand — like Paxton, dismissing his political baggage.

Indeed, as conservatives flocked to Washington in February for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a small band of MAGA supporters arrived early to hear Trump’s longtime political ally Caroline Wren talk about the right’s potential 2026 primary targets.

In her view, moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins wasn’t a worthy target because of Maine’s blue tilt: “Let’s just leave her alone. Don’t waste your time.”

Then she turned to Texas. “But how about John Cornyn in Texas? He’s up. Who would like to see a Sen. Ken Paxton?” she said as the crowd cheered.

Texas GOP, Cruz silent on Cornyn

It’s that burst of right-wing enthusiasm that has put Republicans on Capitol Hill in an awkward spot when asked about Cornyn’s reelection bid.

A number of Republicans in the delegation refuse to say whether they will back Cornyn, with some clearly waiting for Trump to tip his hand and others unsure how the primary fight will shape up.

“I’m gonna stay out of that minefield,” Rep. Keith Self, a Texas GOP member of the House Freedom Caucus, told CNN.

Cruz has been noticeably silent — even though Cornyn raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Cruz’s reelection bid last year. Cruz’s initial silence is reminiscent of Cornyn’s 2014 reelection, when the senior senator faced a tea party-inspired challenger whom he vanquished in the primary. Cruz stayed neutral in the primary before backing Cornyn in the 2014 general election.

Twice in recent weeks, Cruz refused to respond when asked whether he’d back Cornyn. Asked by CNN last week whether he would endorse Cornyn, Cruz said: “Call the press office.” And then he let the elevator doors close when asked whether he had spoken to Paxton or Hunt about their potential bids.

But a Cruz spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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