Some analysts believe you can handicap a primary like a horse race: spread out the Racing Form on the table in front of you, scientifically compare the candidates with each other, and you can tell well in advance who’s going to win.
But the fact is, that doesn’t really work all that well at the races, and frankly, it doesn’t necessarily work all that well at the ballot box either.
At a horse race, the conditions on the track, the riders and their horses, make the difference. But in an election, the attitude of the voters, and the conditions in the outside world, can make just as much of a difference as the candidates themselves.
Especially in a primary.
John Cornyn is 74 years old, and he’s been elected to the US Senate four times already; he was going for his fifth term. He first won this seat in 2002.
That’s 24 years ago.
A generation ago.
A lot of Senators nowadays enter from the outside; they’re hereditary millionaires or self-made businessmen, who spend a mint to overwhelm a statewide race so they can start in politics at the top. This phenomenon has changed the Senate a great deal.
John Cornyn, however, went about it the right way; he started at lower offices and rose through the ranks. His first elected position was as a district judge, then he joined the Texas state supreme court. He was then elected Texas’ Attorney General, and finally got his last promotion, to the US Senate, in 2002.
Viewed from one direction, it’s respectable that he got the job the old-fashioned way.
But there’s another way to look at it.
He was elected as a conservative, and for the most part, he retained his generally conservative voting record throughout his tenure in the Senate.
But he did get comfortable, as so many politicians do, after too many re-elections. His constituents started to think that maybe – just maybe – he had begun to represent Washington DC a little too much, and to represent Texans a little less.
Is that accurate? It’s hard to say. You can’t get inside the head of another person (psychiatrists claim to specialize in it, but sometimes they seem more clueless than anyone). So all we can say for sure is that, after 24 years in the job, John Cornyn didn’t seem like the conservative outsider anymore. At least, not to the people who count: the voters of the Lone Star State who showed up at the polls on Tuesday.
Perhaps more so than any other state, the voters of Texas have a special feeling about their role in the nation, and about the job of their federal representatives. Texas is the only state besides Hawaii that was an independent country before joining the United States as a state. Texans expect their Congressmen and Senators to keep that motivation – almost as much like ambassadors as representatives – throughout their tenure in Washington, DC.
And when Texans decide you’ve lost that connection, they will quickly tire of giving you second chances.
The primary voters of Texas didn’t bounce him for a nobody, however. They chose – by a whopping two to one margin – to nominate the incumbent state Attorney General, Ken Paxton, a fearless conservative who has won statewide office three times in a row himself.
Before his 2014 election as Attorney General, Ken Paxton served a term in the state senate, after ten years in the state house of representatives.
The voters of Texas chose someone they know well, and – despite the slings and arrows of the mainstream media – they’ve demonstrated that they trust him with the job.
Texas’ Republican base clearly wants someone who doesn’t just vote right most of the time, but someone who’s a fighter – a leader – on the issues most important to the Texas worldview: that devotion to limited government and Western civilization that we should all know as the philosophy of our Founding Fathers.
The conventional wisdom warned the voters against it; the conventional wisdom says that Democrat nominee James Talarico, a 37-year old teacher and state rep who looks about 12, will clean his clock.
Sure.
Again and again, the conventional wisdom has warned Texas Republicans that they’d better nominate a moderate because the Democrat candidate is “really strong this time” – and every time, the Democrat candidate falls short in November. Texans have learned to dismiss these liberal dreams.
This time, Texans are calling the guy “Dollar Store Beto,” and real Texans are not a bit afraid of his popularity with Hollywood donors, Washington PACs, and New York journalists.
Texans want a Texan to represent them, and they can see that even though this kid was born and raised in Texas, it’s the blood of Beijing and Havana that runs through his veins.
The more Rep Talarico talks, the more enemies he makes. He attended a pretend Christian seminary – the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary – which specializes in “social justice” theology. That school taught him how to misinterpret Scripture in a way that would make Uncle Screwtape proud, but it’s hardly the kind of speech that will win him support among normal Texas voters.
Is Ken Paxton perfect? Of course not. No politician is, and solid unblemished stars like Texas’ other US Senator, Ted Cruz, are few and far between.
But the primary voters made their feelings known this year, with such a resounding message that it can’t be missed: They’re punishing John Cornyn for drifting away and taking his seat for granted…
…and they’re rewarding Ken Paxton for his consistent leadership among the nation’s attorneys general on hot-button issues like abortion, vote fraud, covid-19 authoritarianism, immigration law, and so many more. Again and again during his years as AG, on issue after issue, Ken Paxton didn’t just vote right and stop there, he led the way, and Texas voters have been proud of him for it.
The Left wants us to think that Texas voters cost themselves a Senate seat this week, giving Beijing a new member of the US Senate, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
Anybody – yes, anybody – could mop the floor with this little marxist heretic, and this coming November, Ken Paxton will do just that.
Ken Paxton has won statewide office three times, and there’s every reason to assume that in November, he’ll make it four.
This election was a win for the Republic, and with the blessing of Divine Providence, it will be one of many in this consequential election year.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer, speaker, and consultant. A President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), and his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon. His trade compliance training practice is available either in person or by webinar.
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