Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) placed third in the Republican Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday and was eliminated, with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton advancing to a runoff.
According to NOTUS, that loss comes after Hunt only ran his Senate campaign as a last-ditch effort to get out of a seat in the House that he hates representing.
"His defeat ... marked the end of a campaign that GOP officials in Washington and Texas found uniquely frustrating," said the report. "The congressman had little chance of winning, Republicans said, but his presence might have prevented Cornyn, the favored choice of many party officials, from winning the race outright Tuesday. Instead, the incumbent now faces a time-consuming and expensive 10-week runoff against Paxton. And top Republicans blame both Hunt and the people working on his campaign."
GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund director Alex Latcham told NOTUS, "Ultimately, I feel bad for him. Because he torched his career. And in my opinion, he was taken advantage of by his team and his consultants.”
Running for Senate was not Hunt's original plan to exit the House; his first preference had been to work in the Trump administration, per the report: "According to correspondence between Hunt and a Trump transition official reviewed by NOTUS, Hunt badly wanted out of the House and did not view running for Senate as the only way to achieve that goal. Shortly following the 2024 election, Hunt pushed Trump officials to find a place for him in the Cabinet, the correspondence shows. He routinely asked if he could be secretary of the Energy or Interior departments and even asked people to advocate for him to Susie Wiles, Trump’s incoming chief of staff."
One of the key lines of attack against Hunt on the Senate trail was his chronic absenteeism from the House, with Cornyn going after how many votes he missed while on the campaign trail. A Cornyn strategist also attempted to post evidence that Hunt tried to vote illegally in 2016, but this backfired after that evidence doxxed personal information about Hunt and his family.