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| Republicans Against TLR emerges with exhibit at Texas Republican Convention in Houston on June 11 |
"There’s never going to be good enough for him, other than 100 percent, you know, slavish adherence to whatever he wants. He’s going to have the most miserable two years of his life in the last two years of his term, I think, because I think November is going to be a disaster." John Cornyn on Donald Trump, New York Times, June 11, 2026
United GOP Could Be Wishful Dreaming
Based on State Convention Opening Day
Capitol Inside
June 11, 2026
HOUSTON - Governor Greg Abbott's push for a united front for the 2026 midterm elecitons sputtered at the starting gates on Thursday as the Texas GOP Convention opened in Houston with a surprisingly caustic leadership race and clashes over Muslims, Sharia law and tort reform.
There was no sign of unity in a state chair's race that could be closer than expected with the Texas GOP's current vice-chair D'rinda Randall surging in a bid to replace the incumbent Abraham George as he seeks a second term in the post. George has the convention's leading star - U.S. Sente nominee Ken Paxton - in his corner along with seven Texas House Republicans and two GOP candidates who are heavily favored to win seats in November. R
andall has a pair of House Republicans and a long list of local party officials on a list of endorsements she's picked up for the state chair race. The GOP's Republican National Committee members from Texas have endorsed Randall's bid for state chair as well.
While Randall and George kept the gloves on during speeches at the convention's opening ceremony today, the contest has been surprinsingly combative behind the scenes. Several other candidates say they're running for party chair or vice-chair or both in some cases.
Randall painted the midterm election in November as a referendum on good and evil - with the Republicans, to no surprise - as the heroes.
"Democrats are determined to turn Texas into something that totally unrecognizeable," Randall contended - citing the chemical mutilation of children that she portrayed as a Democratic priority in the Lone Star State.
George touted President Donald Trump record high Texas share during his first year on the job as the state chair. A former Collin County GOP chair, George said Trump flipped 12 Texas counties that had been blue until that year.
* Muslim Fear. Tempers flared on day one of the state Republican convention after some of the participants pushed to have two delegates booted from the convention amid claims that they had ties to the Muslim civil liberties group CAIR. Abbott has declared CAIR as a terrorist group.
The move to have Amjad Muhtaseb and Samar Halabi disqualified fizzled after a tense exhange in a hallway outside the convention floor with State Rep. Brent Money - a Greenville Republican who founded the Sharia Free Texas Caucus. The lawmaker appeared to be on cordial terms with the two after that. Muslims have accused Abbott and other Texas Republicans of attacking them unfairly with false claims and innuendos.
* Republicans Against TLR. The governor's plan for unity appeared even more far-fetched with the presence of an exhibit that's sponsored by a group called Republicans Against TLR. The exhibit included a list of Democratic lawmakers who'd been contributions at some point from the Texans for Lawsuit Reforn PAC, which has been the largest singular giver to Republican politics in Texas for more than two full decades.
TLR, which has bankrolled Abbott and most of the GOP's statewide officials and lawmakers in Austin, came out playing defense with a full-page ad in the state convention program lunder the question, "what is the cost of building a Texas Republican majority?" TLR had the answer - $138 million - that it said it's given to the ruling party's members since 1994. That's the last year that Democrats in Texas have won statewide.
The TLR advertisement contains a quote from Abbott. "Texas would not be what it is today without tort reform," the governor says.
* John Cornyn Lament. After promising to support the GOP ticket, lameduck Senator John Cornyn poured water on the unity effort when he said he stood by attacks that he fired at Paxton in a primary runoff election that the AG won last month. Cornyn suggested that Trump would regret endorsing Paxton in the Texas Senate race.
Trump described the defeated Texas senator as a good friend in a post with an endorsement for Paxton in a primary runoff election that the attorney general won with 64 percent of the vote. But Trump wasn't as warm in a follow-up Paxton pitch that portrayed Cornyn as a skeptic who'd been insufficiently loyal and slow to get on board with his agenda.
"If that's the way friends treat you, you wonder about his enemies," Cornyn said in an extensive interview with the New York Times that was published on Thursday.
Cornyn couldn't really quarrel with the president's more candid analysis in the second Paxton endorsement Truth Social post than the sugary assessment of the Texas lawmaker who'd had the job for almost 24 years. Faced with certain defeat in the absence of a Trump plug for himself, Cornyn put on a public relations show designed to convince the president that he'd been with him 99 percent of the time. Cornyn effectively admitted in the NYT piece that the 1 percent of the time he broke ranks with Trump had doomed his quest for an endorsement that he desperately needed to win the runoff.
But Abbott's battle cry - Unity Drives Victory - was plastered despite the lack of such on columns, walls and doors up and down the halls that lace the gargantuan convention center where the event is being staged. The governor sponsored a Unity Drives Victory reception on Thursday afternoon for State Republican Executive Committee members and county chairs. Abbott added the hashtag #UnityDrivesVictory to at least three posts on his X page announcing the convention's kicking off.
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