Source: Politics<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for Texas\u2019 Senate GOP race in an eleventh-hour decision, siding with a longtime MAGA ally \u2014 and potentially imperiling GOP control of the seat.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s endorsement Tuesday gives Paxton a late boost over establishment Republicans\u2019 preferred candidate, Sen. John Cornyn, ahead of next week\u2019s May primary runoff, where polls show a razor-thin race. And it comes after the president refused for months to take sides, in spite of heavy lobbying from both Cornyn\u2019s and Paxton\u2019s allies<\/a>.<\/p>\n The timing of the last-minute endorsement comes as a surprise, months after he was initially expected to jump in: Just on Monday, Cornyn said \u201cthe ship has finally sailed\u201d regarding Trump\u2019s stamp of approval.<\/p>\n “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a>. “John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough.\u201d<\/p>\n Cornyn and his supporters fear that nominating scandal-plagued Paxton, a figure of the far right with significant personal baggage, would put control of the Senate at risk and cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to defend the seat this fall.<\/p>\n As Texas\u2019 top lawyer for a decade, Paxton has faced impeachment, a securities fraud investigation, ethics complaints and an ongoing divorce with allegations of infidelity. Democrats believe they have the best shot in decades at winning statewide in Texas, and Republicans worry that Democratic nominee James Talarico is a formidable opponent<\/a>.<\/p>\n White House allies predicted that Cornyn\u2019s stronger-than-expected showing in the first round of voting would convince Trump to endorse him. The president played into those expectations when he posted<\/a> on Truth Social back in early March that the Texas GOP primary can\u2019t \u201cbe allowed to go on any longer\u201d and he would announce his pick soon.<\/p>\n But in the end, after more than six weeks of delay, Trump was swayed by the MAGA wing of the party who see Paxton as a true believer in their movement and despise Cornyn for occasionally being at odds with the president.<\/p>\n Paxton is a staunch Trump ally who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And after some White House allies told POLITICO and other media outlets that Trump was looking at endorsing Cornyn, MAGA influencers including Laura Loomer<\/a> and Jack Posobiec<\/a> led a public full-court press to get Trump to reverse course.<\/p>\n