Cornyn and Crockett remain top skeptics of their party’s U.S. Senate nominees after primary losses
By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune
June 24, 2026
This week when Democrats meet at their state convention to energize and organize their party ahead of November, they’ll be doing so without U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, who declined an invitation to headline the event from James Talarico, the Senate nominee who defeated her in March.
Last week, Crockett told The Dallas Morning News that she hadn’t listened to Talarico’s message asking her to speak but thought the invitation was an “afterthought.” She added that she “had no idea” if she’d be actively campaigning for her primary opponent because she was focusing more on down-ballot candidates.
Across the aisle, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is no closer to letting up on his beef with Attorney General Ken Paxton, who bested him for the Republican Senate nomination last month. In recent interviews, Cornyn said he would not campaign nor raise money for Paxton and stands by his sharp criticisms of the attorney general from the primary as corrupt and unfit for office.
A month since the U.S. Senate race in Texas was set, Paxton and Talarico’s most notable skeptics of late are still their primary opponents, who have publicly cast doubt on the coalitions behind the nominees — highlighting potential vulnerabilities the candidates face in shoring up their support ahead of November after deeply divisive primaries.
Cornyn and Crockett’s comments spotlighted the voting blocs who backed them in the primary whose support and enthusiasm the nominees are now looking to capture. While Paxton will need to minimize potential defections by Cornyn’s voters — traditional Republicans repelled by the attorney general’s long list of legal and ethical scandals — Talarico will need to gin up excitement among Black voters, who are central to the Democratic base and broke overwhelmingly for Crockett in March.
“I’ve not heard a bunch of kumbaya,” Crockett told the Dallas Morning News about whether Talarico had done enough to win over Black voters. “People don’t seem to be convinced at this point, but there’s a lot of time between now and November.”
Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said Cornyn and Crockett’s muted support could stifle enthusiasm on Election Day.
“There’s some sour grapes on both the Democratic and the Republican sides about the way that things ended up playing out,” Wilson said. “While in the end both Cornyn and Crockett will signal support for their party’s ticket, the level of enthusiasm that they bring to that is going to be pretty limited.”
In a statement, Crockett spokesperson Karrol Rimal reiterated the congresswoman’s endorsement of Talarico, which she issued the day after she lost the primary and noted during a social media livestream Saturday.
“The congresswoman is a lifelong Democrat who wants to see Dems retake the House, Senate, governor’s mansion and the state Legislature,” Rimal said. “Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett will continue being a force for change, civil rights and equal representation with or without a title.”
In a statement, Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis said, “James is honored to have Congresswoman Crockett’s endorsement in this race.”
He added, “While Republicans, Independents and Democrats continue to reject Ken Paxton’s corruption, Texans are coming together in this election to do something extraordinary: End thirty years of one-party rule and give hope to working people left behind by this broken, corrupt political system rigged by billionaire megadonors and puppet politicians like Ken Paxton.”
Cornyn’s campaign declined to comment for this story.
Paxton spokesperson Madison Cercy did not address Cornyn’s remarks or Republican divides in response to a request for comment for this story, and instead issued a statement about racial tensions among Democrats, calling on Talarico to “publicly apologize” for what she cast as “sexist and racist attacks” during the primary.
Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist uninvolved in the race, argued that the tenor of conversation at this point in the cycle was “normal for competitive and often emotional primaries,” and not necessarily indicative of a deeper or lasting discontent among Cornyn and Crockett’s supporters with their party’s nominee.
“It’s a long way from November, and eventually Republicans and Democrats are going to come home,” he said.
On the Republican side, Texas GOP leaders have repeatedly urged their party to come together — or risk a Democratic upset in November.
But Cornyn has stood by the attacks he levied against Paxton during the primary, telling Semafor that he would leave it to President Donald Trump to shell out the tens of millions of dollars Paxton’s campaign will need for the general election. He also predicted to The New York Times that Trump, who all but sealed the senior senator’s demise by granting Paxton an 11th-hour endorsement, would regret his decision to do so and see Paxton’s nomination threaten GOP control of the seat and down-ballot races.
“It’s going to make things harder, certainly more expensive in Texas, and make it harder around the country,” Cornyn said. Trump is “going to have the most miserable two years of his life in the last two years of his term, I think, because I think November is going to be a disaster.”
At the Texas GOP convention last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called Cornyn one of two “sore losers” among Republicans who lost their primaries for his unwillingness to throw his support behind his former opponent.
“I’ve already seen bad behavior by two” Republicans who lost, Patrick said. “We cannot have any people deserting our party in November of 2026 if we’re going to keep Texas red. We have to come together.”
Comments like those, Cornyn told Semafor, are evidence that Texas GOP leaders were “basically continuing to alienate what I would call traditional conservative Republicans like me, and the people who voted for me. Makes no sense whatsoever.”
Other Republicans have also been outspoken about their reluctance to support Paxton.
“Please explain to me how bashing Sen. Cornyn, a good man with a lifetime of service to the state of Texas and the country, is going to help convince his 900k supporters to vote for Ken,” former Southlake mayor and state Senate candidate John Huffman, a Republican, posted on X. “Newsflash to the top of the ticket – YOU NEED US. Best you start acting like it.”
The enduring intraparty conflict signals an opening for Talarico, who has made appealing to Cornyn supporters and disaffected voters across the political spectrum central to his general election strategy. Recent polling has found Talarico narrowly trailing Paxton overall, but winning up to 30% of Cornyn supporters and trouncing the hardline attorney general among independent and moderate voters.
Steinhauser said he expected Paxton’s campaign to “recalibrate a little bit on focus and messaging for the general election” and coalesce Republican voters.
“They’re going to continue to be that conservative fighter that the voters want to see, but I also expect that you’re going to see Paxton and his team do a good job of appealing to Cornyn Republicans, appealing to independents who lean conservative,” he said. “They’re very aware that they need to do that, and I expect them to do so.”
As Talarico pursues potential crossover voters, he’ll also need to mobilize Black Texans, among whom Crockett is an influential leader.
She endorsed him quickly after the primary. But since then, the Dallas congresswoman, one of the state’s most prominent Black leaders, has questioned the unity of voters behind the statewide ticket and said her focus will largely be on boosting down-ballot candidates through FIRE PAC, her new leadership PAC, rather than the top of the ticket.
Crockett’s comments set off an online firestorm that revived racial tensions from the primary, with many of the congresswoman’s social media allies viewing criticisms of her remarks as unfairly demanding she campaign for Talarico.
“People seem to be obsessed with now dictating what I’ll do and when?!” Crockett posted on social media Friday. “I said as a senate candidate that I’d be focused on the down ballot and my plan to do that hasn’t changed.”
Dallas Jones, a Democratic strategist uninvolved with the race, argued that while Talarico needed to energize Black voters to support a surge in Democratic turnout in November, Paxton faced the more daunting task of curtailing crossover voting.
Still, Jones said, muted enthusiasm for Talarico from Crockett could make it harder for his campaign to “show that there is a genuine desire and quest to go after these Black voters, particularly around Black women who have experienced being the most loyal voting bloc in this party and suffering disappointments — what I have called Kamala trauma.”
Roughly two-thirds of Black voters said they would support Talarico over Paxton, according to recent public polling — lower than the proportion that have backed the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in previous cycles.
Talarico has worked to win over Black voters since the primary, visiting Black churches and universities, meeting with Black leaders around the state, rolling out a plan to tackle maternal mortality, which disproportionately impacts Black women, and more.
Numerous Black elected officials have campaigned and served as surrogates for him, including influential Black Democrats Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis and state Sen. Royce West of Dallas. Texas Organizing Project, which supported Crockett during the primary and is dedicated to mobilizing Black and Latino voters, also endorsed Talarico last month.
Ellis predicted that Talarico would win a “tremendous amount of support in the African American community because Black Texans more than anybody else — we’ve had the brunt of disadvantages in the state, and we know how important it is to end this one-party rule in Texas.”
“I was for Jasmine Crockett in the primary — that was then, this is now,” Ellis said on stage at a Talarico campaign rally in Houston last month. “There’s too much at stake to be petty.”
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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.