Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is firing back after his 2026 primary opponent slammed his record in a new TV ad that aired not in the Lone Star State, but in President Donald Trump’s backyard.
The ad, funded by Preserving Texas, a group supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton attacks Cornyn over his role in crafting a bipartisan safety bill in 2022, Axios reported Thursday. The group spent $60,000 to air the TV spot over the weekend on the Trump-approved Fox News, Newsmax and the Golf Channel in Palm Beach, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort, the publication added.
“As usual, President Trump was right,” the narrator says in the ad, which also references Trump’s past criticism of Cornyn as a “RINO,” another name for Republican in Name Only.
But Cornyn isn’t taking the hit lying down in an early preview of what is expected to be one of the nation’s most expensive and hotly contested Senate races of the 2026 midterms.
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“Corrupt Ken Paxton ordered up another mediocre campaign video that predictably lies about Senator Cornyn's long career of strongly supporting Second Amendment Rights," a Cornyn spokesperson, according to Axios. "As an avid hunter himself, Senator Cornyn supports the constitutional right to carry and always has."
The ad strategy highlights that the aggressive jockeying for Trump’s coveted MAGA endorsement has already begun, Axios pointed out Thursday. The approach has been tested before.
“Trump is a cable news junkie, and Republican candidates and interest groups are known to run ads in South Florida with an eye toward influencing him,” Axios reported. “In 2020, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie aired a commercial in Palm Beach in which he called his primary opponent a "Trump hater."
