Texas Sen. John Cornyn could draw more challengers ahead of his Senate primary next year. Even those ready to see him go aren’t happy about it.
National Republicans are already bracing for a brutal primary in which they plan to defend Cornyn from the state’s controversial attorney general, Ken Paxton, in a costly election that could change the competitiveness of the seat. But if Rep. Wesley Hunt, a MAGA loyalist and would-be underdog in the race, jumps in, he could further bruise both his opponents, drive up the cost of the election and cause a primary runoff.
“If Paxton were not in the race, I think Hunt would be the obvious conservative challenger to Cornyn,” said Rolando Garcia, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee representing part of the Houston area. “But Paxton is in the race.”
Garcia was one of several members of the active rightward flank of the state party who said they like Hunt, just not more than they like Paxton.
“I’ve just been really impressed with him, and I would like to see him run for higher office at some point,” Garcia continued. “But, you know, this ain’t it.”
A lot of Hunt’s allies seem to want him to stay out — and some are warning running could hurt his political future.
“John Cornyn has a gigantic war chest, and that will be hard to overcome. I’m really concerned about having two Republicans running against Cornyn, because I think we might lose,” said Beth Kasper, who runs a Republican women’s group in the Houston area. Kasper has supported Hunt and wants Cornyn out, but she wasn’t sure if she would back Hunt or Paxton in a hypothetical matchup. She said she’s worried about losing Hunt in Congress.
“[Hunt] hasn’t been in Congress long, and personally, my feeling is he’s got to get some more experience in Congress before he goes looking for another post,” she said. “We need him, we need to not lose his seat.”
Hunt’s political team did not respond to a request for comment. But Hunt is showing all the signs of someone feeling out a bid. He reportedly met with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and political director James Blair to discuss his potential Senate candidacy, and an outside group spent seven figures deploying ads about the congressman across the state.
“I started getting Facebook ads 300 miles away from his district,” said Matt Rinaldi, former chair of the state Republican Party.
Cornyn, seen as the establishment figure in the race, is being challenged because of his perceived weakness with the right flank of the party. He’s made comments expressing skepticism about Trump, and was booed at the state party convention in 2022 for supporting bipartisan gun legislation following the Uvalde school shooting. In early polls, he’s trailing Paxton by significant margins.
There are already signs that the Senate GOP, which has so far stood behind Cornyn, is trying to prevent candidates like Hunt from joining the fray. The National Republican Senatorial Committee reportedly asked big donors to refrain from donating to House challengers going against incumbent Republican senators, which had clear implications for Hunt.
“John Cornyn is a proven leader in delivering President Trump’s agenda in the U.S. Senate, and is fighting tirelessly to ensure the Big, Beautiful Tax Cuts are passed,” Nick Puglia, NRSC regional press secretary, said in a statement. “Wesley Hunt already has a role to play advancing the President’s agenda and helping protect his Majority in the House.”
Meanwhile, the state party has steadily become more and more dominated by MAGA conservatives, and both Paxton and Cornyn are trying to hype up their connections to Trump. If Hunt decides to join the race, he’ll be yet another contender trying to sway the MAGA-loyal, who will make up an outsized portion of primary voters in an off year — the same faction that has supported the attorney general for years.
That’s a risk that Rinaldi, who was instrumental in pushing the party rightward, said Hunt would be taking if he runs too close to Paxton. But he also warned against running too closely to Cornyn, because he’d come to be seen as a moderate in a state that often punishes those candidates.
“He’s in that spot where he’s well liked by everybody, but doesn’t have a set of passionate followers, because he hasn’t stepped on any toes yet,” Rinaldi said of Hunt. “He can choose to define himself by running against Ken Paxton in this race, or he can choose to define himself with the office he has now. I think probably the latter is the smarter road.”
It’s unclear if Hunt would be able to sway those voters away from the attorney general. In one recent poll from the Senate Leadership Fund, which is backing Cornyn, Hunt was projected to get about 19% of the vote in a three-way race.
The most rightward, most engaged portions of the party are often working with organizations funded by or supported to some degree by Tim Dunn, a billionaire donor who has pushed the party rightward over the last several years. The state’s Republican Party itself is largely funded by Dunn, a key Paxton ally.
“Regardless of how well Hunt is doing in Congress, he doesn’t have nearly the track record as Paxton. In the political world, the more time we have to watch you, the better,” said Julie McCarty, CEO of the True Texas Project, an influential activist organization affiliated with Dunn, in an email. “Hunt has barely gotten started. It’s too soon in my opinion.”
McCarty said, “It’s hard to imagine a better candidate than Paxton,” and that “Hunt won’t likely win, and he will give up the House seat to try.”
Others, including some in Paxton’s camp, were eager to see Hunt jump in the race out of certainty that it would hurt Cornyn more in the primary. One strategist close to Paxton said, “It’d be great that Wesley Hunt jumped in.”
“John Cornyn will spend all of his money attacking Wesley to determine who finishes second,” the strategist said.
Others were eager to see a fresh candidate.
“Somebody is going to step in that’s fresh, that’s different and that’s unique, and it isn’t just two 65-year-old-plus dudes swinging at each other,” said one Texas strategist.
They said people criticizing Hunt for being too green were sticking to the “old way” of politics, which is obsolete.
“One can’t win the primary, and the other one puts us at great jeopardy of losing the seat in 2026, and neither of those are good outcomes for the party, not just in Texas, but from a national perspective,” the Texas strategist said of Cornyn and Paxton. “He’s going against two pretty dated, somewhat stale candidates.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.