Plano, Texas — Texas voters will see little of this Republican candidates For the US Senate on Monday. But that’s only if they stay away from screens.
There are no public campaign events scheduled for the Senator. John Cornyn Nor the state prosecutor Ken Paxton On the final day of their more than year-long quest for the Republican nomination. Instead, their fight for Tuesday’s runoff continues as it has for months — intense and relentless — with more than $109 million in advertising, largely from Cornyn.
Cornyn is scheduled to host an annual event unrelated to the campaign in San Antonio to honor high school graduates who enroll in the country’s service academies. The senator, who is seeking a fifth term, held his last public campaign event in Corpus Christi on Friday, before the vote on Tuesday.
Paxton address Latest events on Thursday In the Austin area and in San Antonio, he was content to let his campaign and his super PAC carry his core message: that It has been endorsed by President Donald Trump On May 19.
Trump’s announcement and accompanying dismissal of Cornyn, who had an awkward public relationship with the president, came on the second day of early voting, which ended on Friday.
Despite the silence from the candidates over the weekend, Trump reaffirmed his support for Paxton on Sunday and disparaged Cornyn as insufficiently loyal to him.
Trump wrote on social media that Paxton “has also been very loyal to your favorite president, me,” while calling Cornyn “extremely disloyal to me.” This was Trump’s strongest rebuke of Cornyn, who dismissed his chances of returning in 2024, and repeated the president’s rebuke of Cornyn. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy Before losing the Republican Senate primary on May 15.
In the wake of Trump’s call for retaliation, Republican voters in Indiana and Kentucky also chose GOP primary challengers over incumbent GOP officeholders who bypassed the president or opposed his agenda.
For a contest that is expected to attract a small portion of Texas’ 18.7 million voters, the candidates’ campaigns and supporting groups continued to bombard all Texans with ads, albeit more from Cornyn supporters than Paxton supporters.
“It’s just a carnival for lazy workers, with campaigns and third-party groups pulling it off,” said Wayne Hamilton, former executive director of the Texas Republican Party.
The combination of Cornyn’s campaign and support from super PACs has far outspent pro-Paxton groups over the past year, by about nine to one. But the gap narrowed as the runoff approached. In the final week of the campaign, total pro-Cornyn ad spending was less than double Paxton’s group.
Cornyn’s network continued to air ads attacking Paxton over moral and character questions that clouded him to little effect throughout the campaign. Cornyn’s campaign also reran an ad indicating his inclination to vote in the Senate for Trump’s priorities.
Paxton’s campaign and groups supporting him moved midweek to all ads indicating an endorsement of Trump, though Paxton’s primary political action committee, the Lone Star Liberty Fund, began airing an ad over the weekend aimed at raising questions about state Rep. James Tallarico, the Democratic Senate candidate for Texas.