Ken Paxton, the Donald Trump-backed Texas attorney general, triumphed over incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff for senator. His victory signals that even a scandal-plagued candidate can win over the deep red state with the support of the president.

“After a public service career lasting more than four decades and 18 consecutive campaign wins, tonight we’ve come up short in this primary runoff,” Cornyn said shortly after the race was called. “I’ve always supported the GOP ticket. I intend to do so again this general election.”

The race had wide implications for Trump’s strength heading into November’s midterm elections, where Paxton will now face James Talarico, a Democratic pastor and state legislator whose message of peace and populism has attracted much attention. If he wins, Talarico would become the first Democrat in more than 30 years to win statewide office in Texas.

Midterm elections often serve as a referendum on the sitting president and tend to help the opposing party. This year Democrats are favored to win the House of Representatives, though a supreme court decision that decimated the Voting Rights Act could allow for more Republican-leaning districts and complicate the picture. The race for Senate remains in flux, though candidatessuch as Talarico, Graham Platner in Maine, as well as purple states such as Ohio and Michigan, could upset the Republican lead.

Texas, which Trump won in 2024 by a gaping 14 percentage points in 2024, remains a conservative state, and the Republican primary was a testament to hot button issues – from religion to economy – that animate the base.

First elected state attorney general in 2014, Paxton sought to position himself as a national leader on the far right, launching some of the first criminal investigations in the US over abortion bans and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. He also led a lawsuit attempting to overturn Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020, an effort the US supreme court rejected.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said: “Paxton was Donald Trump before Donald Trump was. He was in the vanguard of the Tea Party movement, which was a major spur for the Maga movement nationally.”

But Paxton comes with significant political baggage, and national Republicans worry they will have to spend significantly more with him as the nominee. Paxton was impeached in 2023 after being accused of corruption, and reported to the FBI. He was later acquitted in a trial in the Texas senate, where his wife was a state senator but not allowed to cast a vote.

Paxton was also indicted on charges of felony securities fraud that could have led to a prison sentence, but the case was dismissed after a 2024 pre-trial diversion agreement. And last year his wife of 38 years, Angela Paxton, filed for divorce “on biblical grounds”, citing adultery.

Cornyn, meanwhile, has had a less incendiary tenure, but sought to win over Trump diehards with his own conservative bona fides, and even introducing a bill to name a future highway after Trump. But Cornyn, a prominent figure in Republican politics who was nearly chosen to be the Senate majority leader, became the latest target of Trump’s retribution campaign. In a Sunday social media post, Trump said Cornyn had been “VERY disloyal” to me and implored voters in Texas to “REMEMBER!”