First on FOX – Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden has sided with the major battles of Lone Star’s burgeoning GOP Senate over the years Senator John Cornyn Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Gooden approved Paxton on Thursday, representing the legislative district, which includes parts of eastern Dallas, and the council district, which includes a large strip of suburban, suburban and rural areas east of the city. He is known as the ally of the Maga Firebrand and the President Donald Trump.
“Attorney General Paxton is the necessary conservative champion in the US Senate,” Gooden wrote in a statement shared with Fox News.
He predicted that Paxton would “take Sledgehammer to establish, secure the border and fight hard for President Trump’s agenda. Ken Paxton has my full and full support.”
Prepare for Texas’ nasty and expensive GOP Senate primary
Rep. Lance Gooden has approved Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Texas. Paxton is the main challenge that challenges longtime GOP Sen. John Cornyn. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc, Getty Images)
Gooden, a member of the House Armed Service and Judiciary Committee, is the second member of the Texas Congressional delegation to back up Paxton, following Republican Rep. Troy Nairs, who supported the Attorney General on Wednesday.
Cornyn has the support of top Republicans in the Senate as he most certainly prepares to become his roughest reelection of his decades-long career, John Tune, the leader of the majority South Dakota and the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC).
And Republican sources confirmed with Fox News that Thune and NRSC Chairman Sen. R-Sc, Sen. Thune, personally asked Trump to back up Cornyn.
The president’s grip on the GOP has never been stronger, and the support Trump may make in the Texas Emerging Republican Senate primary is highly influential.
Paxton announced his candidacy on Tuesday night on Fox News. “Ingraham’s angle.”
“It’s time for a Texas change,” said Paxton, the first state attorney general to win the election in 2014, and he has launched the campaign.
Attorney General Ken Paxton will speak at an event outside the Texas Capitol on February 28, 2022 in Austin. (Fox News – Paulsteinhauser)
Pointing to Ted Cruz, a conservative senator from Texas. Paxton insisted “It’s when we have another great senator who actually stands up and fights for Republican values, fights for the values ​​of the people of Texans and supports Donald Trump in an area where he is focusing in such a critical way.”
Paxton flirted for several years by launching a major 2026 challenge to Cornyn, a former state senator, former Texas Supreme Court judge and former state attorney general who won the first election to the US Senate in 2002.
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Paxton has long argued that Cornyn is not representing conservatives Texan valuesand accused the senator of not being Trump’s ally. He is also labelled “Rino” by Cornyn. “Only the Republican Names” – inhumiliation Maga and “America First” Republicans have been using it regularly to criticize more mainstream or founding members of the GOP.
Cornyn said he likes the GOP to take a new direction in the early stages of the Republican presidential nomination race in 2024. However, the senator approved Trump in late January last year. The then president won both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, the first two contests on the Republican presidential nomination calendar.
Senator John Cornyn will speak at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on March 14, 2025 at Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Ben Cartis)
Since Trump returned to the White House three months ago, Cornin is like that Supporting the President’s Cabinet candidates and the agenda.
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In a video of the Senator’s campaign launch last month, the announcer emphasized that “Texas Senator John Cornyn had his back” during Trump’s first term.
Cornyn told reporters at Capitol Hill on Wednesday that he “has a 92% voting record with President Trump.”
“It’s unclear exactly what motivates Paxton other than vanity and personal ambitions, but as I was a supporter of President Trump and his agenda, it doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of voting records,” the senator argued.
Paxton attracted the public’s attention for his failure in 2020 Texas vs. Pennsylvania He spoke to the Supreme Court that sought to overturn former President Joe Biden’s victory over Keystone State Trump, and to speak at a Trump rally near the White House just before the fatal Jan. 6 attack by right-wing extremists blocking Biden’s Congressional certification of election college victory.
During his four years at Biden’s White House, Paxton took the administration to court multiple times.
Paxton, who served his third year as Texas Attorney General, has long been a legal warrior of the Maga movement, but he also has a lot of personal political baggage.
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton at a major evening celebration on March 1, 2022 in McKinney, Texas. (Fox News – Paulsteinhauser)
Paxton was charged with securities fraud charges shortly after taking office in 2015 and was investigated by the FBI’s allegations of bribery and corruption. In 2022 he survived the bruises amid many legal difficulties.
In 2023, Paxton was fired each by the Texas House of Representatives, but he was later not guilty of all charges by the state Senate.
The long-term federal corruption investigation claims were removed in the final weeks of the Biden administration.
Paxton has for years denied fraud and survived legal battles, but will continue to face the tough optics and many incoming fires surrounding past predicaments during the Senate showdown.
“Paxton has a checkered background. He’s a scammer and a scam, and I think Texans know that,” Cornyn indicted Wednesday.
The Senator added: “This is something that will be litigated in the course of this campaign.”
Matt Makowiak, a veteran Republican strategist and communications consultant based in Texas and Washington, D.C., pointed to the bruiseful intraparty fighting as he told Fox News that “it is the most expensive, most troublesome, most aggressive and most personal US Senate primary in Texas history.”
“You’re two candidates trying to raise important funds, you’re in a critical position, you don’t like each other, you don’t like each other, your team doesn’t like each other, you don’t have a high interest.”
Texas GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt will see the opening of his first Trump Campaign office in Pennsylvania on June 4, 2024. (Fox News – Paulsteinhauser)
A potential complicating the major battle is the possibility of a Senate bid by Conservative Rep. Wesley Hunt, who represents the Houston area.
The third, 43-year-old Texas Republican and the Rising Magaster, made his point to the president’s political team, sources confirm with Fox News. Hunt’s argument is that he is the only person who can win both the GOP primary and the general election.
Outside groups that support Hunt are currently spending seven figures running ads across the Lone Star State to raise awareness of lawmakers’ names.
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The ultimate winner of next year’s GOP Primary will be considered a favorite in the general election against those nominated by Democrats.
Former Democrat Colin Allred said he will decide by summer whether to hold a 2026 Senate campaign.
Allred, a former Baylor University football player and later representing Texas’s 32nd Congressional District (including some of the suburbs in Dallas and surrounding areas), was a democratic challenger in his competition with Cruz last year.
