Outcome of GOP Senate Runoff Won't Matter
if Vote is Referendum on Trump as Expected
Capitol Inside
April 13, 2026
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick tried to light a fire under an increasingly-listless MAGA base last week when he argued that Democrats could win a Texas House majority if GOP voters fail to unite in full force behind the party's nominee in a fight with James Talarico for a U.S. Senate seat.
Patrick didn't try to influence the GOP Senate runoff by endorsing one of the GOP's candidates in the race. He declared instead that the loser of a bare-knuckled brawl between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton must endorse the overtime winner immediately because America's future is riding on it.
"This is real," Patrick said at the annual TPPF conference on April 8 in Austin. “America can’t exist without Texas being red.”
But powerful Texas Senate president overlooked the only real reason why Republican control in the Lone Star State could be in serious jeopardy. The general election in 2026 appears destined to be a referendum on President Donald Trump - and that's why Texas could go blue in November - regardless of whether Cornyn and Paxton and all their supporters are passing the peace pipe this fall.
A united front for the GOP in Texas may be difficult to envision - with the prospects for a blue wave appearing to be higher than ever and rising rapidly in the wake of a weekend that was about as bad as it could possibly get for Republicans across the U.S. Here's a sample ...
* Attacking the Pope & Playing Jesus. The American president picked a fight that would be impossible to win when he unleashed an insulting attack on on Pope Leo XIV on Sunday in response to criticism from the pontiff over Trump's war in Iran. After Pope Leo said God doesn't listen to prayers from people who wage wars, Trump branded the religious leader as excessively liberal and weak on crime. Pope Leo countered on Monday when he told the world that he's not afraid of Trump or his administration.
But Trump had Republicans cringing even more on Sunday night when he post an image on his Truth Social page that portrays him as a savior with healing powers and admirers who pray to him. The president's support among Hispanics and independents had been plunging before he lashed out in a Truth Social tweet at the first American to ever serve as the Catholic Church's supreme leader. Trump deleted the AI-generated picture that shows him a light like Jesus Christ. Trump later said that he'd thought the image showed him as a doctor for the Red Cross.
* Gasoline prices. The president told Americans during the weekend that the record prices at the pump that the warring in Iran are driving may not be going down before the midterm election in the fall after all. With the price of mid-level unleaded nearing the $5 mark in major Texas cities like Austin, consumers can expect to pay even more with the collapse of talks on a ceasefire collapsing in a development that prompted another Trump blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and sent oil prices soaring over $100 again after a brief respite with a tentative truce. Trump was attending a UFC fight in Miami when the negotiations unraveled after he sent Vice-President JD Vance to participate in them in his place.
* Hungary. Democrats across the USA cheered on Sunday when the far-right took another kick to the gut when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán got the boot from voters in a re-election that had Trump and Vladimir Putin on board as his most prominent supporters. Polls on the race in Hungary showed Orbán's support falling after he'd received an endorsement from the U.S. president.
* Name Game. The president announced on Fox News on Sunday that he considered renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Trump before deciding that it would not work. Trump already changed the name of the marginal sea betwen the Atlantic Ocean and the coasts of Texas and Mexico to the Gulf of America at the outset of his second term. He's pushed to have vintage American institutions like the Kennedy Center named in his honor - and he prodded state lawmakers in Florida into changing the airport in Palm Beach to Donald J. Trump International in a bill that Governor Ron DeSantis signed last month.
* Historically Unpopular. Trump's approval ratings continued to crater on Sunday with a new CBS poll that showed at 39 percent. Trump's ranks last among the 14 most recent U.S. presidents in net popularity - the difference between his highest and lowest approval marks. Trump has the lowest high approval mark for a president since the advent of polling during Franklin D. Roosevelt's run as the nation's top leader. Trump ranks last in average approval rate among the 14 presidents beginning with FDR. Trump could be on the verge of watching his approval marks drop below 30 percent in the aftermath of the weekend.
* Helpless in Austin. The Texas lieutenant governor, who's been Trump's state campaign chairman since his first bid for the White House 10 years ago, pointed to the Senate District 9 race that Democrat Taylor Rehmet won in a runoff in January as a warning sign on the wages of apathy and complacency among base voters. Patrick said the GOP's Leigh Wambsganss ran a good race that was well-funded and still lost in overtime by 14,000 votes after 74,000 Republicans failed to turn out for the special election in Tarrant County. Patrick couldn't pronounce the new Democratic senator's last name at the TPPF event - depicting Rehmet as a "33 year old single guy nobody ever heard of." Patrick claimed Rehmet "just slapped his name on the ballot for the hell of it" - as though he had no clue he could possibly win. Wambsganss had endorsements from Trump, Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott - the lieutenant governor pointed out, and she still lost by 14 points in OT in SD 9. While Patrick promised that Wambsganss would beat Rehmet in a rematch this fall, she probably could expect to lose by a larger margin if the lieutenant governor's fears on the Texas House are justified.
There's really nothing Patrick can do, however, to protect the Republicans here from a president who's shown no interest in changing course for the sake of propping up the GOP. Some on both sides of the aisle are speculating that Trump has either crossed the line into mental incompetence with the Jesus fantasies, attacks on the pope, the floundering of negotiations on a tentative peace in Iran and his gushing over the good looks of a UFC fighter that the president said should be a model.
Patrick is a recurring guest speaker at the Houston megachurch Second Baptist. But he had not come to Pope Leo's defense by the lunch hour on Monday.
If Patrick is on the mark about Democrats seizing control of the House on a map that the Republicans gerrymandered to prevent such an event, he may have no chance to survive himself in a re-election fight with one of the two Democrats in a spring runoff for lieutenant governor - Vikki Goodwin and Marcos Velez. The entire GOP statewide slate will be in peril if the Texas House flips in the fall.
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