WASHINGTON — When Texas Republicans choose their Senate nominee this spring, they won’t just be picking their preferred next senator — they’ll be the name to lead a ticket that includes GOP candidates up and down the ballot.
Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt’s position atop the ballot will shape who turns out in November, with significant implications for Texas Republicans running for federal, state and local offices. Those candidates will be confronting a fired-up Democratic electorate that helped power the party’s shocking and decisive victory in last month’s state Senate special election in bellwether Tarrant County, along with the challenge of drawing voters to the polls without President Donald Trump’s name on the ballot.
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In the wake of the Democratic upset in North Texas, the question of down-ballot success has been top of mind for Republican political operatives. The Cornyn and Paxton camps have each seized on the result to make their opposing pitches for why they would be best equipped to stave off a similar outcome nine months from now, refocusing the Senate primary on the question of electability in the final weeks.
Cornyn, who historically has been one of best statewide performers in Texas, believes he will keep moderate and swing voters in the GOP tent who would otherwise be turned off by Paxton’s ethical baggage. Paxton, meanwhile, argues he is better positioned to excite the Republican base, while contending that Cornyn’s electability argument has been undercut by a recent poll showing the two faring similarly in a general election.
Fresh on GOP minds is the 2018 election — the last midterm with Trump in office — when Democrat Beto O’Rourke fell 2.6 percentage points short against Sen. Ted Cruz. The former El Paso congressman’s legacy lives on via his coattails that helped Democrats flip numerous down-ballot seats that year, including two congressional districts, two seats in the Texas Senate, 12 in the state House and every countywide office in Harris County.
Democrats hope the right combination of top-of-the-ticket candidates, in both parties, can produce a similar, if not more powerful, effect in 2026. Republicans, more clear-eyed than they were at the beginning of 2018, want to pick a standard-bearer who will avoid that same fate.
There are fewer competitive seats for the U.S. House and the Legislature than there were in 2018. This time, Republicans, looking to defy midterm trends when the president’s party typically loses seats, redrew the congressional map in Texas to their advantage. Five Democratic-held seats were made more GOP-friendly without significantly endangering existing incumbents. But whether Republicans can take all five will depend, to some degree, on who is carrying the torch for the GOP.
“If the top-of-the-ticket candidates turn out more voters for their party, it creates more potential voters for down-ballot candidates to also pick up,” said Josh Blank, the research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
Blank said the task for candidates is twofold: turn out base voters and get voters less committed to the GOP to pull the lever for Republicans, from the top of the ticket down.
In the Tarrant County upset, GOP strategists have noted that Democrat Taylor Rehmet won not because more Democrats turned out than Republicans, but because Rehmet won over independents and some moderate Republican voters. Cornyn’s allies and supporters say he holds stronger appeal to those voters and would thus be a better bet than Paxton for November.
Texas’ senior senator has long been one of Republicans’ best performers in general elections. In 2014, when both Cornyn and Paxton were on the ballot, Cornyn won by 27 percentage points — the highest margin of any statewide Republican. Paxton, in his first statewide race, won that year by 21 points.
Four years later, Paxton was reelected by 3.6 percentage points — that year’s narrowest race outside of the Cruz-O’Rourke Senate contest. In 2020, Cornyn won by 9.6 points, outperforming Trump’s 5.6-point margin.
Cornyn said he’s making that down-ballot electability case — and knows the president cares about winning House seats in Texas. All three Senate GOP candidates have sought Trump’s endorsement, which he has teased could be coming in the homestretch of the campaign.
“I’ll win,” Cornyn said. “Paxton probably will lose and drag the rest of the ticket down with him. I think people understand that. Obviously, it’s important to the president to win the new congressional seats, which are right below me on the ballot. And so I think that’s a pretty compelling case for why I should be the nominee.”
The Paxton campaign, by contrast, has also argued that the Tarrant County state Senate race was a warning sign — for Cornyn.
“We must be laser-focused on turning out low-propensity, Trump-supporting America First voters,” Nick Maddux, a Paxton adviser, said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. “John Cornyn is the worst possible choice on that front.”
A recent public poll also cast doubt on the notion that Paxton is weaker in a general election than Cornyn. The University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found that the race is a statistical tossup no matter who the nominees are.
Down-ballot drag?
Paul Simpson, who was Harris County Republican Party chair from 2014 to 2020, knows what a hyped-up Democratic electorate can mean for local races, having witnessed it in 2018. While midterm elections in Texas used to just be about motivating the Republican base, he said, as Democrats have grown their ranks and proven willing to turn out when Trump is in office, Republican candidates now need to convince undecided and moderate voters.
In 2018, Simpson said, Republicans were hurt by both the success of O’Rourke’s campaign and weaker performers including Paxton, particularly because the state still had straight-ticket voting in that cycle. But voters still tend to vote straight ticket regardless, he said, and down-ballot candidates can’t afford someone who would turn off moderates.
“So if you’ve turned out a moderate Democrat or even just an undecided type voter who’s kind of sour on the top of the Republican ticket, just logically, they’ll tend to go down the ballot and vote in that party,” Simpson said.
Cornyn, he argued, has a proven record of winning by wide margins in November, while Paxton can be viewed as an “anchor dragging down the rest of the ticket.”
A memo put out by Deep Root Analytics on behalf of a pro-Cornyn super PAC makes that case explicitly. Having modeled various scenarios and tested them against one another, the group concluded that Paxton as the nominee could create a drag of 4 to 7 points on a generic Republican congressional candidate.
The group’s analysis found that such a drag would imperil the party’s ability to win seven congressional seats. Those include three of the redrawn districts — the 9th District in Houston and the 28th and 34th Districts in South Texas — in addition to four seats already controlled by Republicans: those held by Reps. Pat Fallon, R-Sherman, Brandon Gill, R-Flower Mound, Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, and retiring Richmond Republican Troy Nehls.
Most of those districts are not on either party’s radar; Trump won those incumbent-held seats by between 16 and 25 points. But the memo argues that Paxton would lose or barely win those districts, making Republican House members unnecessarily vulnerable.
“The data suggests that nominating Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate in 2026 would impose a measurable down-ballot penalty for Republicans in Texas,” the memo concludes. “His candidacy not only reduces the likelihood of flipping competitive Democratic-held seats but also exposes multiple GOP-held districts to potential Democratic gains.”
In an election where everyone agrees Democrats are raring to go, a successful Republican will need to do the best possible job of turning out Trump’s base, some operatives argue. Getting as many solid Republican voters to the polls gives down-ballot GOP candidates a high floor.
John Thomas, a Dallas-based GOP strategist, said he sees both candidates’ arguments. Paxton, he said, would be better equipped to excite the base, while Cornyn is less likely to turn off some members of the Republican coalition that naturally turn out. But Thomas said he thinks base turnout is more important for 2026, given that the Democratic base is ginned up.
Either nominee would paint the Democratic candidate as too far left, Thomas said — but Paxton is better equipped to bring Republicans out because they’re excited to vote for him.
“The powerful combination is that one-two punch — scare your base about the other guy running, and have them enthusiastically ready to pull the lever for you,” Thomas said. “I think Cornyn’s probably missing one of those.”
The narrative that Paxton endangers the Senate seat could also benefit Republicans for two reasons, Thomas said: GOP voters would be more encouraged to turn out if they think the race is competitive, and more Democratic donors would flock toward the Senate race instead of spreading their cash to down-ballot races.
But turning out low-propensity Trump voters when the president is not on the ballot is an electoral riddle that Republicans around the country have had trouble cracking.
“As much as Ken Paxton has cultivated the traditionally conservative base of the Republican electorate, Ken Paxton is not Donald Trump,” Blank said. “I think that’s a tough one.”
The Senate Republican nominee is not the only factor set to drive the outcome of down-ballot contests. The Democratic nominee will also make their imprint on the electorate, with Dallas U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and Austin state Rep. James Talarico locked in a similar argument over whether persuading moderates and independents or expanding the Democratic base is the best strategy.
And while the Senate race will be at the top of the ballot, gubernatorial candidates have their own coattails, and Gov. Greg Abbott has a massive war chest to spend. While he will be on the ballot himself, Abbott has also telegraphed plans to deploy his money to Harris County in particular, hoping to lift down-ballot Republicans, particularly in state-level contests.
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