President Trump’s political advisers expect him to endorse Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s May 26 Republican-primary runoff election following the incumbent’s better-than-expected finish against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the first round of voting yesterday, three people briefed on the deliberations told us.Trump declined to get involved in the race before the first round of voting, and Republican Senate strategists had been worried that he wouldn’t endorse Cornyn, who has been critical of the president in the past. Strategists have also warned that Paxton, a scandal-scarred favorite of Trump’s MAGA base, would need more money from top GOP donors than Cornyn would require to defeat the Democratic nominee, James Talarico. Estimates of the added cost of Paxton being the nominee in the general election range from about $80 million to more than $200 million, according to several top strategists, given the Democrats’ ability to raise massive sums of money in the state from individual donors if the race is perceived as winnable.Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Punchbowl News this morning that an early Trump endorsement “saves everybody a lot of money.” “If the president can weigh in, it would make it enormously helpful,” Thune told the outlet. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.Republicans have been working for months to rebuild the relationship between Cornyn and Trump, culminating in an invitation last week for the senator to ride on Air Force One with the president from Washington to a rally in Texas. The trip happened as Trump gave the green light for the U.S. attack on Iran. “It takes a lot of political courage, because, you know, these things are easier to start than to end,” Cornyn told CBS News Saturday about his conversations with the president about the strikes. “I told him I really respected the fact he would take the chance—the political risk, really—to strike Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.”The three people we spoke with noted that they have long expected Trump to endorse Cornyn in a runoff—a prospect made even more likely by Cornyn’s strong showing last night. Paxton consistently led Cornyn in polls leading up to the primary, but Cornyn eked out a top-place finish, albeit not a resounding-enough victory to avoid a runoff. The president has not yet made a final decision, however, and is prone to last-minute vacillation, they noted. Both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund,… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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