A Republican Senator Calls Trump’s Paxton Endorsement a “Colossal Mistake.” A New Poll Shows Exactly Why.
Sunday, September 27, 2026. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told CNN’s Jake Tapper that President Trump’s decision to endorse Ken Paxton (R-TX) over sitting Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the May primary was “a colossal mistake.” The same day, a new Texas Public Opinion Research poll showed Democrat James Talarico leading Paxton 49%–44% — a Texas Senate seat Republicans haven’t seriously worried about in decades, suddenly a real contest.
“John Cornyn’s a great member of the U.S. Senate. Paxton has his challenges,” Tillis said. “We would not be spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas if Cornyn had won.”
- 49%–44%Talarico leads PaxtonTPOR poll, 1,007 likely voters, Sept. 19–22, MoE ±3.6% — Talarico's second consecutive 5-point lead since July.
- 63.8%–36.2%Paxton beat CornynMay 26, 2026 GOP runoff, after Trump's endorsement one week earlier.
- $120,000,000GOP defense pledge'Texas PAC' committed to defend the seat, with up to $80M more possible.
- +32Talarico's lead with independentsPer the new TPOR poll's internal crosstabs.
On May 19, 2026, one week before the runoff, Trump posted on Truth Social that Paxton is “a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas,” adding that Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.” Paxton won the runoff 63.8% to 36.2%. Cornyn, a four-term incumbent who voted with Trump 99.2% of the time by one analyst’s count, remains a sitting senator until his term ends in January.
Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate. John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.
Paxton’s legal history is largely resolved, not pending: the Texas Senate acquitted him on all 16 impeachment articles in September 2023; a 2015-origin state securities-fraud case ended in a 2024 pretrial deal with roughly $300,000 in restitution and no admission of guilt; and a parallel federal investigation was closed without charges. What remains unresolved is personal: his wife, Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator, filed for divorce in July 2025 alleging infidelity, which Paxton denies. The case moved toward a settlement by mid-2026.
The new TPOR poll isn’t an outlier — it’s the second consecutive 5-point Talarico lead from the same pollster since July. But the wider polling picture is less uniform: a late-July Fox News poll showed Talarico up just 3 points, within the margin of error, and a mid-September Emerson College poll had the race at 1 point. TPOR’s director, Luke Warford, is a Democratic strategist — a detail worth knowing even though the firm calls itself nonpartisan.
Talarico, a Texas state representative and Presbyterian seminary student, has led among independents by 32 points in the new survey and carries Black, Latino, under-55, and college-educated voters; Paxton leads only among voters 55 and older and white voters. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has launched a “Texas Forever” PAC to support him, while a GOP-aligned “Texas PAC” has pledged $120,000,000, with up to $80,000,000 more possible, to hold the seat.
Texas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988. A competitive race here means national Republican money that would otherwise flow to Georgia, Michigan, or New Hampshire is instead defending what used to be a safe seat — exactly the dynamic Tillis flagged when he said the party wouldn’t be “spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas if Cornyn had won.”
Talarico has challenged Paxton to a Fox News-moderated debate with Bret Baier; Paxton has not accepted. With the general election roughly five weeks out, both parties are treating Texas as newly live — a state where the primary fight Trump picked is still generating headlines about the general election he didn’t have to worry about.
A sitting Republican senator is calling his own party’s presidential endorsement a mistake in public, on CNN, four months before the election it decided. The polling gives him a receipt: Texas is closer than it has been in a generation, and the reason on the record isn’t Talarico — it’s who Republicans nominated instead of Cornyn.
