Meeting with Sen. John Cornyn in Austin on Tuesday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the political group he leads, called the Lone Star Freedom Project, will spend “whatever it takes” to see Cornyn in the bruising Republican primary, in addition to the nearly $18 million it has spent on his behalf.
Cornyn, who is serving his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, is fighting to retain his seat in the face of challenges from Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston in a contest that appears destined to go to a May runoff.
Outside groups, Senate Republican leadership and Cornyn’s own fundraising committees have spent tens of millions of dollars to support the incumbent senator and attack GOP rivals. The Texas Senate race became the second most expensive in the nation on Tuesday, according to AdImpact, with total ad spending of $98.2 million. About three-quarters of the money from the GOP came from pro-Cornyn sources — and yet recent public polls have shown Paxton leading the contest.
Perry’s group outspent all but one other group among Cornyn’s handful of outside supporters, who along with the senator’s campaign dropped nearly $60 million in the race, on AdImpact. The former governor has made it clear that he will continue on the tour if Cornyn makes it through the March 3 election.
“We’re committed to John and we’re going to spend whatever we have to spend to make him successful,” Perry said when asked if he thought that level of fundraising and spending would continue.
Cornyn, embarking on a 10-stop statewide tour on the first day of early voting, warned that Republicans would see an “election day massacre” in November if he loses the GOP Senate nomination to Paxton.
“Republicans up and down are going to pay the price for having an albatross like the corrupt attorney general hanging around their necks,” Cornyn said at a Tex-Mex restaurant with Perry and other supporters, where he further argued that Paxton’s nomination could threaten the new red congressional seats that Texas Republicans picked up last summer to shore up their slim House majority. “We haven’t lost a statewide election in Texas since 1994, but we could this year if the wrong person is at the top of the ticket.”
The senior senator argued throughout the campaign that he would keep moderate and swing voters in the GOP tent who would otherwise be turned off by Paxton’s ethics baggage — a history that includes indictment, impeachment and federal investigations that the attorney general has largely resisted.
Meanwhile, Paxton claims in his campaign that Cornyn is a relic of the GOP and is in ideological decline with President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. The third-term attorney general has long been dogged by a laundry list of legal and ethics problems — including allegations of securities fraud and his impeachment by the GOP-controlled Texas House on bribery and abuse of office charges — from which he has emerged largely unscathed. More recently, Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, filed for divorce on “biblical grounds” after accusing him of cheating on her.
In a statement, Paxton adviser Nick Maddux said, “Character matters in this race, and that’s why the people of Texas overwhelmingly support Ken Paxton. They know he’s a conservative warrior who will always fight for us and our freedoms, even in the face of the Left trying to take him down.”
Maddux added that Cornyn “is just like any other career politician who talks tough during election season, but then does the exact opposite in DC and betrays Texas by repeatedly pushing gun control and amnesty.”
Trump declined to endorse in the primaries on Monday, telling reporters, “They’ve all endorsed me, they’re all good, and you should pick one. So we’ll see what happens, but I’m endorsing all three.”
In response, Cornyn said Tuesday that he would be “proud” to have Trump’s endorsement.
“I appreciate his kind words, referring to me as a friend and calling me a good man,” Cornyn said. “The president knows he can trust me to be there to support him and his agenda, and I appreciate that. But it’s going to be up to him to make that call. I think he kind of likes a good fight, and he’s going to see one right here in Texas.”
In his remarks, Perry praised Cornyn’s work on border security and other conservative causes during his four decades in public office. The two were flanked by representatives of the National Border Patrol Council, which endorsed Cornyn for re-election.
“The people of the state of Texas know John Cornyn,” Perry said. “They know character matters. They know this man is going to come back to Washington, DC and day in and day out he’s going to deliver for them. What you have is a vanity campaign on the other side and a corrupt campaign on the other side.”
In a statement, Hunt’s spokesman James Kyrkanides accused Perry of soliciting comments from Cornyn’s supporters in the Senate GOP leadership and noted how much Cornyn-aligned groups have spent against Hunt.
“If Hunt’s candidacy wasn’t a threat, why would it be [Perry] spend his money attacking Wesley? Kyrkanides said. “On March 3rd, Texans will prove they are tired of gutter politics and establishment games. They are ready for a new generation of leaders.”
Asked if he thought “character” still matters in a Republican primary contest, Perry said, “We’re getting ready to find out. If it’s OK to win with a corrupt candidate, then that’s not the Republican Party I joined in 1989.”
The Senate primary is Perry’s latest foray into a landslide GOP contest in his home state, after campaigning for Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan in 2024 and helping the Beaumont Republican narrowly overcome a tough challenger backed by Paxton. Perry also published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal before Paxton’s impeachment trial in which he suggested state senators should reject Paxton’s efforts to dismiss the case.
Paxton is also embarking on a get-out-the-vote tour during early voting, planning up to nine rallies across the state to “engage conservative voters, drive early voter turnout and build national momentum,” according to Lone Star Liberty PAC, a group that supports Paxton and is sponsoring the tour.
Texas Rep. James Talarico, who is seeking the Democratic Senate nomination, also launched a statewide “Take Back Texas” tour Tuesday with 12 rallies, in addition to stops at local restaurants and cultural landmarks, before March 3.