'Audience of one': PAC buys TV ad time for Texas Senate race — in Trump's back yard
Axios reports that a group backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's 2026 primary against longtime Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is targeting an "audience of one." The group Preserving Texas has produced a TV ad for Paxton's campaign, but they’re not airing it in any Texas media markets just yet. Instead, their plugging it directly into in Palm Beach, Florida — the home of President Donald Trump.
Trump said he was not ready to commit to which Texan he wants in the U.S. Senate last week, telling reporters Friday that he likes both incumbent Sen. Cornyn and outgoing Attorney General Paxton.
“In a way, I wish they weren’t running against each other,” Trump said aboard Air Force One, according to The Washington Post. “I’ll make a decision somewhere along the line.”
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Years ago, Trump criticized Cornyn for not publicly buying Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Cornyn strayed from the party line, declaring in 2020 that he had not “seen” any signs of theft or election tampering that “would change the outcome” of the race.
“I have every confidence that come January the 20th, we’re going to inaugurate a new president,” Cornyn told reporters. “And I think it will probably be Joe Biden.”
More recently, however, Cornyn is working to curry Trump’s favor and re-align himself with MAGA, according to Axios, including “posting a picture of himself reading Trump's ‘The Art of the Deal.’"
Winning over Trump likely means an instant fan base, so Paxton’s group is swinging hard for Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach.
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Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and senior research, told Houston Public Media that a Trump endorsement could prove to be a mixed bag in the current economic climate, however.
If Trump retains high support among Republican primary voters and endorses Paxton in the Senate Primary, Cornyn may have a hard time beating him. But if Trump’s popularity continues to tank an endorsement would do nothing for either candidate, he said.
Read the full Axios story here.
