Ken Paxton Most Valuable Player in Runoff
Thanks to President and Vote to Impeach
Primary Runoff Best Upset
Capitol Inside
May 28, 2026
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Ken Paxton
Runoff MVP |
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Ken Paxton owes a massive debt of gratitude to President Donald Trump and the MAGA faithful for a historic primary runoff win in a U.S. Senate race in Texas where incumbent John Cornyn had every possible advantage at the outset. The president endorsed Paxton a week before the overtime vote when his lead in the polling has climbed into double digits.
But Trump waited until he felt confident that Paxton was on track for victory in round two before annointing the Texas attorney general as his choice for the Senate seat. Paxton beat Cornyn by almost 28 points with close to 64 percent of the runoff vote. The race clearly would have been closer if Trump had remained on the sidelines like he'd done from the start of the most important U.S. Senate battle in America this fall by virtue of the game-changing impact it could have on the fight for the majority in 2027.
Paxton is the only finalist in the competition for most valuable player on the Capitol Inside all-star team for the Texas primary runoff in 2026. But the Republicans' new Senate nominee is not the MVP for the Best of the Texas Primary Election honors for the runoff because he knocked off the most powerful Texan in Washington D.C. in a blowout.
Paxton didn't deliver the best performance in the runoff because he was a superior candidate by any means. Cornyn was better in just about every respect - from the fundraising arena to the campaign trail where he outworked the challenger who beat him to the unwavering support he earned from fellow U.S. Senate leaders who warned repeatedly that Democrat James Talarico would be the favorite in November if the incumbent failed to survive round two. Cornyn's camp - from the National Republican Senatorial Committee on down - did a masterful job of painting a portrait of Paxton as disaster in the making for the party in November. Talarico and the Democrats will be pouring gillions into ads that feature testimonials from Republicans based on their own words about Paxton before he seized the nomination with a bang at the polls this week.
But Paxton from the vantage here won the runoff way back in March when he pulled off a stunt that no other Republican in the Lone Star State would ever dare to try. He stood up to Trump. When Trump had given Cornyn reason to think he'd be getting the endorsement right after the initial election, Paxton refused to cave to the president's demand that the loser in the competition for his blessing quit the race the moment he endorsed their rival. Paxton vowed to stay in the ring regardless of who Trump endorsed - and after warning the AG on the price of defiance in his GOP - the president backed down - staying out of the race for three months in a passive move that kept Cornyn's hopes alive for nothing.
While Cornyn put on a public relations show in a quest for a Trump endorsement that he knew he couldn't win without, Paxton was always going to have the president in his camp at some points before the OT vote in the opinion here. Paxton had earned Trump's support the hard way - beginning with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election on his behalf in the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump held off as long as he did in the Senate runoff because he loved to see Cornyn pander and grovel. But Paxton had locked the endorsement down when he said he wouldn't surrender back when Trump was pretending to like Cornyn more. By the time Trump finally intervened in the Texas race, he didn't care whether Cornyn soldiered on or not because there were no doubts at that point who would win.
Trump's impact on the primary was undeniably giant. But Paxton owes an even bigger debt of gratitude to 60 Republicans in the Texas House for impeaching him back in 2023 in a move that made him a rock star with the conservative MAGA base. Paxton's predictable acquittal in the Texas Senate set the stage for the promotion bid this year.
The impeachment has given Democrats ammunition that's priceless when those five dozen Republican state representatives accused him of multiple corruption counts in connection with a donor and mistress. Patrick deserves some of the credit for Paxton's meteoric rise as the judge during the impeachment trial. Patrick's rulings cleared the path for Paxton to walk and get his job back. But there would have been no impeachment without the House Republicans. Paxton would be the nominee for AG again this year if not for them.
Cornyn's team portrayed Paxton as a politician who's crooked, criminal and downright amoral with a penchant for attempting to enrich himself from public services while he ran around on a now-estranged wife, who in the tiny world of Texas politics, happens to be a member of the state Senate as well.
The Republican primary in the U.S. Senate here had a record price tag that topped $130 million by the time the runoff votes were cast. Now the Republicans at the national level are afraid that the Texas Senate race will cost the party $150 million or more that it had planned to spend on the obvious battleground states. James Talarico is the strongest Democrat to run statewide in Texas in three decades of GOP rule - having raise a record $27 million in the first three months of 2026 before adding an astonishing $3 millon to his war chest in a 24-hour span after Paxton won the nomination for the GOP.
Paxton is the most flawed nominee the GOP has served up at the statewide level ever here in terms of vulnerability and baggage. Paxton gave the impression that he'd be desperate for material to use against Talarico when he opened up the fall fight on Thursday with a false characterization of the Democrat of being vegan. Even if that had been true, it would raise the specter that the GOP must not have much to go on if they feel the need to make stuff up.
But Paxton is a survivor until proven otherwise. And he's never lost a political race in a long career that began with stints in the Texas House and Senate before his initial election statewide in 2014.
The Capitol Inside Best of the Texas Primary Election runoff will be posted in installments over the course of the next few days.
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