This is a continuation of my series of posts on the internal politics of major U.S. states. Today’s installment focuses on Texas.
If you’re interested here’s the first two pieces in the series:
The Cali piece focused on the constitutional crisis that was breaking out last weekend.
The New York piece was looked at a red-hot Democratic mayoral primary with enormous national implications given the Presidential aspirations of disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo and the chance for the Bernie Sanders wing to knock off the establishment.
Ironically, New York had some constitutional crisis action of its own Tuesday with City Comptroller and Mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested by ICE agents.
Despite mountains of crazy going on in Texas politics, I’m going to focus on what is shaking up to be the most important primary of 2026 for our Naked Capitalism readers.
One last point before we dive in — all three states are essentially one-party fiefdoms. Both New York and California have been almost completely controlled by Democrats for most of this century. Texas, of course, has been under complete GOP control since the early 2000s and hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.
Texas: Why You Should Care
It’s huge:
Texas has 40 of America’s 538 electoral votes and is absolutely critical to the GOP presidential coalition. If the Republicans lose Texas in 2028 there are almost no realistic scenarios in which they hold the White House.
It’s closer than you think:
Yes the dire Kamala Harris 2024 campaign lost Texas by 14% and over 1.5 million votes, but in 2020, Biden came within 6% and 550 thousand votes. More impressively, Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 US Senate challenge to the loathed Ted Cruz came within 3% and 215 thousand votes.
It’s A National Money Magnet
The 2024 Texas elections drew at least a “combined $33 million” as of May of that year, from out of state donors including Miriam Adelson of Nevada, Jeff Yass of Pennsylvania, George Soros of New York, Reed Hastings of California, and Richard Uihlein of Illinois.
Texas is the front lines of a GOP civil war:
Unlike it’s blue state giant peers California and New York, Texas has seen two-decades of intra-ruling party warfare in which both sides have won some and lost some and we’ve got a major primary brewing.
With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get into the specifics.
The Texas 2026 Senate Primary Stands to Be the Frontlines of MAGA vs RINO
The 73-year-old RINO (Republican In Name Only) John Cornyn has been a mainstay of the Republican Senate caucus since his 2002 election. He is the former Majority Whip of the Senate — that’s the second highest ranking member of the caucus, just under majority leader.
In November 2024, following the elections, Cornyn stood for Majority Leader to replace the visibly senile and probably incontinent Mitch McConnell. Cornyn lost to South Dakota’s John Thune by only four votes.
Despite his standing in D.C., Cornyn’s public approval levels have been weak for over a decade. As one of the last Texas politicians owing his career to Karl “Turdblossom” Rove he has not been truly in sync with his electoral base since G.W. Bush was president.
Cornyn, who was state Attorney General before he ran for Senate is now being officially challenged in the 2026 GOP primary by the current Texas AG, Ken Paxton.
This matchup pits the notoriously stupid Cornyn against the infamously corrupt Paxton.
The Stupid RINO
Cornyn began his career at a white chip San Antonio law firm in 1977 and according to Texas legend was only able to earn the firm’s money back when they got him elected to a district court bench where he reliably ruled in favor of his former colleagues and their clients.
Cornyn won his first state-wide election due to a ridiculous fluke:
Cornyn caught a big break when a formidable Democratic judge lost his primary to an unknown lawyer who benefited from sharing a name with the famous tap-dancing actor Gene Kelly. “It was a gift from the gods, and we took advantage of it,” said Bill Miller, an Austin lobbyist hired by Cornyn to run that campaign. He skated to victory and became a sitting Texas Supreme Court justice at the age of 38, providing the business lobby with a coveted majority.
From there, Karl Rove took Cornyn under his wing and masterminded his election to Attorney General where Cornyn “turned the attorney general’s office into a faithful ally of industry, bolstering Texas’ reputation as a big-business paradise.”
His reward was a U.S. Senate seat in 2002.
The Corrupt MAGA
Paxton was under federal indictment for stock fraud for the first nine years of his term as AG and that’s been his least notorious criminal scandal while in office.
In 2023, Paxton was impeached by the Texas House “on 16 articles of impeachment related to accusations, primarily by his former top deputies who became whistle-blowers, that he had abused his office for the benefit of himself and an Austin real estate investor who was said to have assisted Mr. Paxton with home renovations and an extramarital affair.”
Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate in a trial presided over by “the pale, white-haired lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, whose stranglehold on the Senate is undisputed. Though he was the ostensible judge in the proceedings, he was indebted to the pro-Paxton donors who had graced him with $3 million in campaign loans and contributions shortly before the trial.”
Despite Cornyn’s decades of yeoman’s work at turning campaign contributions into legislation serving corporate interest, Paxton is a next level tool of the oligarchy, seemingly wholly owned by just six billionaires.
MAGA is Beating RINO In Early Polls
In a matchup that will remind boxing fans of a classic old lion being fed to a young lion bout (think Muhammad Ali vs Larry Holmes, or Larry Holmes vs Mike Tyson, not the more recent Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul), Paxton seems set to mop the floor with Cornyn, the relic of the Bush era.
The poll from Texan Southern University’s Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center shows Paxton leading Cornyn by 9 percentage points in a two-person race and by 7 points if U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston enters the primary.
“Right now, if it’s a head-to-head race between Paxton and Cornyn, Paxton is a very strong favorite, and it’s tough to see how, absent, say, a Trump endorsement of Cornyn, Cornyn could effectively flip the table on Paxton,” said Mark Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute and co-author of the survey with TSU’s Michael O. Adams.
A Paxton win could present opportunities for Democrats:
But Paxton’s lead drops to 3 points in a hypothetical matchup against Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro of San Antonio and to just 2 points against former Dallas Congressman Colin Allred, putting either Democrat within striking distance of victory. The poll shows both Cornyn and Hunt leading either Democrat by larger margins.
That’s all for now but I’ll return to Texas in future posts to discuss such crazy as a potential ban of THC that’s drawing right-wing backlash, a MAHA-driven law that will put warning labels on any food product containing any of 44 common food additives, Senator Ted Cruz’ work to prevent state regulation of AI, Governor Greg Abbott’s Biden-era pioneering of the kind of state vs. federal law enforcement we’re currently seeing in California and New York, the 2024 primary purge of rural Republicans who tried to defend their local school districts from big money hell bent on educational vouchers and much, much more.
But let’s close with the kind of delusional nonsense that passes for political discourse in Texas (and I’m someone who’s come to admire some of Tucker Carlson’s anti-war positions so don’t think I’m just a hater, but this segment is batshit).
Tucker Carlson and Texas AG Ken Paxton talk about how George Soros funded DAs now cover 70% of the entire Texas population and have allowed the cartel to flourish
“Every big construction site in this country has prostitution run by the cartels, often of children”
“Our… pic.twitter.com/3E5p7jeE4t
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 7, 2025
