Editors Note: We will not have a podcast episode next week. But check back the first week of June for more coverage of the 2026 midterms! Have a nice Memorial Day weekend.
We have just gone through a busy few weeks of primary elections. But to close out May, we get one of the biggest races of all in Texas. On May 26, Republican Sen. John Cornyn faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a primary runoff to decide who will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November.
Decision Desk HQ Chief Elections Analyst Geoffrey Skelley was joined by Patrick Svitek, a politics reporter at CNN covering the midterms who specifically covered Texas politics for about a decade. Back in April, Patrick wrote a great article for our newsletter that looked at Paxton’s past runoff performances. Just after we recorded this episode, President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton, which probably makes Paxton a somewhat greater favorite to win the runoff. However, the discussion of the race will still be enlightening to our viewers and listeners.
They began the conversation with Patrick’s view of where the Paxton-Cornyn race stood as of May 18, when they recorded the podcast (2:30). Patrick noted that Paxton had consistently won past runoffs despite being outspent by his opponents, which could be the situation again this year. Still, one of the reasons the contest continues to be at least somewhat in doubt — even with Paxton’s Trump endorsement — is that Cornyn garnered garnered more votes in the March 3 primary (4:31).
Patrick and Geoffrey then examined Cornyn’s argument that he would be a stronger general election candidate than Paxton (9:21). The thing is, early general election polling does not show much difference between how each would perform against Talarico. While Paxton does have many scandals and controversies on his ledger, he’s been able to cast them as attacks by his political opponents. However, Paxton’s ongoing divorce may be “a fundamentally different” scandal. Paxton’s wife is a well-known conservative figure, which has made it more difficult to discredit the messenger.
They closed by talking about some of the runoff and future general election dynamics. In the runoff, the campaigns have used many AI-generated ads with fake video of the candidates (20:35). And the challenge for Cornyn is that Republican runoff electorates have tended to be more conservative, which has tended to reward the more right-leaning contender. Looking ahead to November, Democrats believe Texas could be a red-leaning state they can flip to achieve a Senate majority (25:39). But Patrick said the Texas race likely falls on the low end of the competitive tier of races in part because national groups haven’t made anticipatory ad buys in Texas like they have elsewhere.
