n March 4, the day after the Texas Senate Republican primary, President Donald Trump was resolute — he would be endorsing "soon" in the runoff between Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, and he wanted the contest to end quickly.
More than a month later, the president has been noncommittal about the runoff. He has stayed on the sidelines well past the deadline for candidates to drop off the May ballot and downplayed the threat of Democratic nominee James Talarico.
"I believe that any human being running against him, sick, incompetent, close to death or even a child, would win," Trump wrote on Truth Social on March 22. "He may be the Worst candidate I have ever seen."
That missive was a notable shift from Trump's message the day after the primary, when he said he'd expect the candidate he did not endorse to drop out for "the good of the Party," adding, "We must win in November!!!" The president's posture at the time appeared to bode well for Cornyn, whose allies have tried to convince Trump that Paxton would be a weaker candidate in the general election.
But since then, Paxton supporters and activists in the MAGA movement have loudly campaigned against a Cornyn endorsement, and the attorney general was seen discussing the runoff with Trump himself at a GOP fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, Politico reported.
The notoriously unpredictable president could still weigh in over the next seven weeks. But his inaction before last month's dropout deadline has only hardened the rivalry.
"Trump not endorsing at this point has had an impact," said John Wittman, an unaffiliated Republican consultant and former adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott. "And so the reality is that this is still a very close race. Paxton is probably the favorite right now, but this is absolutely a winnable race for John Cornyn."
The president's decision to stay out of the runoff, thus far, has coincided with a relatively quiet post-primary period, as the campaigns and their outside supporters reload. But as the May 26 election creeps closer, the race is expected to heat up once more.
The main pro-Cornyn super PAC, Texans for a Conservative Majority, has begun its runoff push, with new AI-forward ads attacking Paxton for various ethical liabilities, including his alleged extramarital affairs. And the Cornyn camp says there's more coming.
Aaron Whitehead, the executive director of Texans for a Conservative Majority, said after $100 million in spending in the primary, voters need a break from the inundation of ads. But, he assured, they will "see a lot more spending" in the near future.
Texans for a Conservative Majority has been airing an ad depicting an AI-generated Paxton swiping on a dating app and giving money to liberal characters. Whitehead said the attorney general, dogged by allegations of infidelity and ethical impropriety, can expect more negative ads now that it's a two-man race.
"The problem is, for Paxton, now that it's mano a mano, we get to focus on him," Whitehead said. "Only $13 million was spent on him in the primary, just because it was whack-a-mole. We had to do positive [ads], we had to hit [eventual third-place finisher] Wesley Hunt. … Paxton already underperformed."
Paxton's position, meanwhile, is bolstered by the conventional wisdom about runoffs, which typically feature a smaller electorate where hardline conservatives make up a larger share of the vote. Speaking to the crowd at CPAC in Grapevine last week, Paxton said he was "optimistic" about the runoff.
"We had six other people in the race — they took 18%," Paxton said. "That 18%, we've done the analytics, more of them go to me than they do to John Cornyn. And finally, we're gonna raise more money this time. He's not going to outspend me 20 to 1."
Early polling of the runoff has shown Paxton leading by a single-digit margin in most surveys, though much of the polls released have been conducted by Democratic groups.
Texans for a Conservative Majority, the pro-Cornyn super PAC, found the runoff started with the two candidates deadlocked at 45%. A runoff poll conducted in late March by right-leaning Quantus Insights found Paxton with an 8-point lead.
Some polling has found that a Trump endorsement for Cornyn would have limited impact on moving the electorate. And Paxton has said he's committed to staying in the race no matter what Trump does.
Pro-Cornyn machine starts to mobilize
After his initial endorsement pledge, Trump has instead focused on flaws he sees in Talarico.
The president suggested the Austin lawmaker was a weaker candidate than his Democratic primary opponent, Dallas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and that Republicans "allowed" him to win the race before "releasing the avalanche of information we had on him."
Since Talarico's primary win, Republicans in Texas and Washington have dug up and promoted numerous clips of Talarico talking about race, gender and sexuality.
Trump's apparent belief that Talarico is easily beatable, regardless of who Republicans nominate, undermines the Cornyn camp's chief argument for the endorsement — that Paxton would endanger the seat, and draw precious resources away from other Senate races, in the general election.
The Cornyn campaign, on the other hand, sees Talarico's candidacy as a threat that their guy is best suited to take on.
"Democrats nominated their strongest candidate for U.S. Senate," Cornyn senior adviser Matt Mackowiak said. "Texas Republicans must nominate John Cornyn, who is our strongest nominee by far to gain five new congressional seats and advance Trump's legislative agenda in the final two years of his second term. We have a plan to win the runoff and we are executing it."
Washington has been relatively quiet since the start of the runoff, but Cornyn's allies in Senate GOP leadership say their position remains unchanged.
"We've been very clear that the fight to protect President Trump's Senate Majority should not be fought in Texas, and John Cornyn is the only candidate who ensures that does not happen," Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement.
A joint fundraising committee between Cornyn's campaign and other groups, including the NRSC, has already made runoff ad buys.
The president's prioritization of the Save America Act, a bill that would impose new federal restrictions on voter registration, has also shaken up the race. When Paxton offered to consider dropping out if the Senate passed the bill — which does not have the support of enough senators to meet the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster — he thrust the issue, already a favorite of Trump's, into the spotlight in the Senate runoff.
Will the spending onslaught continue?
As long as Trump stays out, the May 26 runoff will instead be shaped solely by the opinions of the runoff electorate, and the money both sides deploy to shape it.
Cornyn received 41.9% of the vote in the primary to Paxton's 40.7%, outperforming the attorney general in the state's big urban counties while Paxton received the edge in rural areas. The two were nearly tied in suburban counties.
Cornyn's surprise first-place finish in the primary was helped by a larger-than-normal midterm primary electorate, spurred into action by a heated campaign season that ended as the most expensive Senate primary for one state, when including both parties, in U.S. history.
After a furious flurry of ads leading up to the primary — primarily by Cornyn and allied PACs, who dropped over $70 million — the first five weeks of the overtime period have been quieter. Cornyn allies have spent over $2.2 million since March 3, including new ads directly attacking Paxton, while the Paxton camp has spent under $30,000, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.
Ads from the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC have been largely targeted at one specific non-Texas voter. About half of the Paxton camp's spend has been in the West Palm Beach market, where Trump typically spends his weekends.
The Paxton campaign believes it will be better resourced in the runoff. Immediately after the primary, Paxton registered a new leadership PAC and a joint fundraising committee with both Lone Star Liberty PAC and the leadership PAC, creating a larger constellation of organizations from which to spend.
Cornyn saw relatively little incoming compared to Paxton and certainly Hunt in the primary — much of the late spending, from organizations in both camps, was against Hunt, helping to collapse his support. The Paxton camp plans to change that trend in the runoff and begin attacking Cornyn on the airwaves, according to a campaign adviser.
Both campaigns have also rolled out new endorsements since the primary. Among federal legislators, Reps. Nathaniel Moran, R-Tyler, Randy Weber, R-Galveston, and Roger Williams, R-Willow Park, announced support for Cornyn. Paxton got the backing of Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Flower Mound.
With the campaign expected to heat up this month, both candidates will need to appeal to the 13.5% of Republicans who cast a ballot for Hunt. The Houston Republican praised Paxton's Save Act gambit but has not endorsed between his two former opponents. His supporters, who have leaned toward Paxton in some initial runoff polls, could help decide the overtime winner.
Paxton's narrow second-place finish came after he significantly lagged Cornyn's political network in fundraising. The two sides will have to disclose their latest fundraising and spending activity by April 15, providing insight into how much money each candidate has raised since the primary — and how much support Cornyn can expect from the constellation of groups in both Washington and Texas that deployed tens of millions on his behalf in round one.
Trump's lack of endorsement means donors in his orbit lack a clear signal about who to back, keeping fundraising ability at the forefront of the race.
Waiting on the other side is Talarico, who has proven a prolific fundraiser himself. Though Republicans have spent the early runoff period dumping on the Democratic nominee, some have cautioned that they still expect a difficult race this fall, raising the stakes of the runoff. Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, recently said Democrats are "going to show up in huge numbers, which means we need to take the general very, very seriously."
"I have concerns about the general election," Cruz, who has stayed out of the Republican contest, told the Washington Examiner at CPAC. "Regardless of who wins the nomination, the two candidates have attacked each other relentlessly, and the hard left is really energized."
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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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