Rep. Wesley Hunt is running for US Senate in Texas, defying GOP leaders to take on Cornyn and Paxton

Associated Press

(CNN) — Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt is running for the US Senate in Texas, defying Senate GOP leadership and adding a new element to an already contentious primary campaign.

The two-term Houston-area congressman said he’s running because he doesn’t believe Republican incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, who’s had a cool relationship with President Donald Trump, has shown he can beat Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running despite being shadowed by legal and personal issues.

“What I’ve seen in polling over the past few months is people want an alternative, and I’m going to give it to them,” Hunt said in an Associated Press interview on Sunday.

Senate Republican leaders have worried aloud that questions that have dogged Paxton, who entered the race in April, would cost the party many millions more dollars to defend in a general election, despite Texas’ Republican lean.

Yet, Senate Republican leaders including Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have publicly chided Hunt, who’s been weighing a Senate campaign since April.

Hunt has been testing the waters as a potential third way for Texas Republicans as Cornyn and Paxton have waged a contentious battle of words in the media. Since the spring, Hunt and groups supporting him have spent $6.5 million on advertising in Texas, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.

Groups supporting Cornyn, however, have spent more than $21 million on television ads this year, according AdImpact, to promote the four-term senator and attack Paxton.

In a September memo, Thune and Scott said that Cornyn had narrowed his deficit with Paxton and that Hunt “continues to cling to the false narrative he pushed as a justification for his own ambitions.”

“There never was, and never will be, a tenable pathway for Hunt,” they said in the memo. “It’s time for the vanity project that could cost Republicans control of the Senate and dilute our resources to end.”

Hunt argued that it’s Senate Republicans who are wasting on Cornyn resources that could be used in other states to hold and perhaps expand the majority.

“This is not a vanity project. This is about giving the people of Texas a viable alternative,” Hunt told the AP. “Let’s stop the exercise in futility and get the right person for the job.”

Hunt, an Army veteran and US Military Academy graduate, represents a suburban Houston district that he and his supporters argue straddles both sides of the Republican divide. To the north, cities such as Tomball are heavy Trump country, while to the south, exclusive communities such as River Oaks are home to older, traditionally monied Republicans in the vein of their onetime neighbor the late President George H.W. Bush.

While Paxton has been a strong supporter of Trump, Hunt has kept close to the Republican president’s orbit. He was the first Republican to endorse him after the former president’s 2022 comeback campaign announcement, and he gave a prime-time speech on opening night of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He also campaigned 17 times for Trump last year, more than any other Republican surrogate.

Paxton has been shadowed by troubles including state and federal corruption investigations and a 2023 impeachment trial that exposed an extramarital affair. Though a state fraud indictment and federal corruption probe were dropped this year and the impeachment ended in acquittal, Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, announced in July she was filing for divorce “on biblical grounds.”

Paxton aides have said the questions about him haven’t cost him politically.

Cornyn aides and Senate Republican leadership have said the ad campaign has cut into Paxton’s advantage.

It’s unclear how Hunt entering would factor in Republicans’ effort to hold their Senate majority in next year’s midterms.

Democrats would need to net four seats to gain the Senate majority, and they’ve recruited big names in North Carolina and Ohio, where Republicans are defending seats. Another, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, has taken steps toward running for that state’s Republican-held seat and is expected to announce her plans as early as this month.

Even if those states fall Democrats’ way, Texas has proved difficult for the party.

Democrats were hopeful in 2018 when then-Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke lost narrowly to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. In 2024, Cruz beat then-Rep. Colin Allred by a wider margin but fewer than 10 percentage points.

Allred announced in July he was running again. Texas state Rep. James Talarico announced last month he was running.

Trump carried Texas by 14 percentage points in 2024. Trump has remained neutral in the Texas Senate primary.

The-CNN-Wire
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