Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival, veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said the political baggage Attorney General Ken Paxton brought into the senate campaign is why he is struggling to move ahead of James Talarico in the polls.
“If John Cornyn were the nominee, this race would be over,” Rove said, referring to the longtime Texas senator who was defeated in a May primary runoff.
It might be unlikely red-state Texas would hand a U.S. Senate seat to Talarico, whose views and stances range from radical to bizarre, but every poll of registered voters has the Democrat narrowly ahead Paxton.
Rove's comments pointed back to Paxton's troubles, both political and personal. He was pulled into an impeachment trial by fellow Republicans over corruption charges and allegations he abused his office. Some of those allegations were tied to a girlfriend, when Paxton was still married to state Sen. Angela Paxton.
Despite that political baggage, not only did Sen. Cornyn lose in the runoff to Paxton, but Paxton trounced the incumbent 63%-36%.
Cornyn was booed at GOP convention
Cornyn is described as a “RINO” and a “swamp rat” by many conservatives, including Texas-based radio host Jesse Kelly. The blunt-speaking Kelly has criticized Cornyn for years, including a 2024 post when it was rumored Cornyn was being considered for Senate Majority Leader.
“I cannot put into words how disastrous this would be,” Kelly wrote. “If you could get in a lab and build the worst person to be the next GOP senate leader, you’d build @JohnCornyn.”
Cathie Adams, a longtime conservative activist in Texas, knows the political history of both Cornyn and Rove from when she led the Texas Republican Party.
"It's very interesting that Karl Rove founded John Cornyn and made him into a U.S. senator,” Adams said, referring to when Rove identified Cornyn as a rising political star in the 1990s.
Rove and his political firm helped Cornyn in 1998, in his race for Texas attorney general, and helped him win statewide office. He would go on to win a U.S. Senate race two years later, sending him to Washington, D.C.
“So now Karl Rove is running back to the man that he made, and he cannot leave it alone,” she said.
When the Texas primary was nearing, Kelly reminded Texas voters their GOP senator had voted with Democrats in 2022 to pass an anti-gun bill.
Taking advantage of the Uvalde school shooting, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed 65-33 in the U.S. Senate. Cornyn was credited in a Texas Tribune story for pressuring fellow Republicans to support the bill and get it passed.
Knowing their GOP senator was working to pass the anti-gun bill, the Tribune reported Cornyn was “viciously jeered” by fellow Republicans when he appeared at their Texas convention days before the bill went to the floor and was approved.
“If the pundit you follow blames John Cornyn’s loss on anything other than John Cornyn and his gun control vote, that person is either an idiot or a liar,” Kelly wrote in a Sept. 24 post.
