Two huge wins Tuesday in Texas elections for President Trump – including defeating John Cornyn by nearly 30 points.
Ken Paxton’s victory over Cornyn in the Republican U.S. Senate runoff wasn’t just a defeat for the incumbent senator.
It was a complete blowout – 64 percent for the Trump favorite, attorney general Paxton, to 38 percent for the four-term loser, Cornyn.
Trump last week endorsed Paxton, whose victory showcased the president’s power over his party as he seeks to punish Republicans he sees as insufficiently loyal.
Cornyn has actually been a Trump loyalist, helping him win cabinet nominees and three Supreme Court justices.
But it didn’t matter.
“Trump did not care,” says Philip Elliot of Time magazine. “He liked that Paxton used his office of attorney general to troll Democrats, and that his style of politics at times flirted with burn-it-down nihilism.”
Paxton now goes on to the general election against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November.
Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly 40 years, not since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.
In another big win Tuesday for Trump, U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee defeated presidential critic U.S. Rep. Al Green in the Lone Star State’s 18th congressional district Democrat runoff.
Green, a 20-year incumbent, “has been among Trump’s fiercest critics in Congress, pursuing impeachment charges on multiple occasions against him during both of Trump’s terms,” Alec Schemmel of Fox News said.
Green has also been kicked out of Trump’s State of the Union addresses multiple times as well for standing up and protesting in the middle of the speeches.
The reason two Democrat congressmen from Texas were going up against each other was because of redistricting.
