AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has officially announced his 2026 re-election campaign – and another prominent Texas leader is taking issue with the promises he’s making.
After initially confirming the senator would seek re-election back in February, Cornyn’s campaign team posted a video on social media Wednesday morning, officially announcing the campaign and saying Cornyn will be a “battled-tested partner” to President Donald Trump.
“In President Trump’s first term, I was Republican Whip, delivering the votes for his biggest wins,” Cornyn says in the video. “Now I’m running for reelection and asking for your support, so President Trump and I can pick up where we left off.”
Cornyn goes on to say that the Biden administration “let millions of illegal immigrants break into” Texas and “weakened the armed forces, attacked oil and gas and weaponized the Justice Department.”
“The radical left thinks they can flip Texas blue, stop President Trump and reverse the ‘America first’ agenda,” Cornyn says. “But Texans have a message for them: come and take it.”
But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican, disagrees with the way Cornyn is presenting himself.
“Are you delusional?” the AG wrote on social media. “You’ve constantly turned your back on Texans and President Trump, including trying to stop his campaign in 2024 and saying his ‘time has passed him by.”
In January 2024, Cornyn endorsed President Trump’s campaign.
Paxton went on to say, “Texans won’t believe your lies or forget how you’ve consistently worked to undermine the President.”
A Cornyn vs. Paxton primary?
Paxton has repeatedly hinted that he is interested in challenging Cornyn in the Republican primary. He recently told Fox News that he could be making moves soon.
“As far as my plans, right now, I don’t know. I’m just going to serve as attorney general,” Paxton said. “I’m looking potentially at the U.S. Senate. We’ll look at that over the next couple of months.”
Cornyn is a four-term senator who had never lost an election in his life until a failed bid for party leader last year. He has served in the Senate since 2002 and previously served as a Texas Supreme Court justice and as attorney general himself.
Paxton has served as the state’s AG since 2015 after more than a decade serving in the Texas Legislature, as both a state senator and a state representative.
According to a report from The Texas Tribune published in February, polling suggested that if Cornyn and Paxton were to have a primary today, Paxton would win.
“Among Republican-identifying voters, Cornyn has an approval rating of 48% – one of the lowest of state-wide office holders, according to a polling aggregate by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin,” the report stated. “Paxton, meanwhile, has an approval rating of 60% among Republican-identifying voters. Texas’ other senator, Ted Cruz, has an approval rating of 78% among Republicans.”