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Texas Primaries Reach Boiling Point With Help of Vicious Attack Ads

Jasmine Crockett speaks during a rally in Houston on Nov. 8, 2025. (Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle)

Pedro Boccalato Rodriguez-Aparicio is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal. Send an email to Pedro.

New attack advertisements from candidates in the race for Texas’ Senate seat against their primary opponents, recent polling has brought the Texas race to a boiling point.

Republican Candidates Get Vicious

On Wednesday, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, released an ad against his primary opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for “cheating on his wife” and “now sleeping around with a married mother of seven.”

The ad then states Paxton’s net worth increased by 7,000% while in office, and that his actions in office are “even more troubling.”

Paxton was then accused of “giving money to left-wing orgs,” which include those who “perform gender affirming surgeries to children as young as seven.”

Paxton did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

On Tuesday, the Star Liberty PAC, a repeated contributor to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign, aired an advertisement attacking his primary opponent, Rep. Wesley Hunt, for his voting record.

“Hunt has missed 85% of the vote this year,” the ad said. “Hunt has one of the worst voting records in the House.”

Hunt has repeatedly missed votes in the House of Representatives to be with voters in Texas ahead of the election. Most notably, Hunt missed a key appropriations vote in January.

The ad then said Hunt has gone “AWOL,” and accused him of stalling President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“By going AWOL, Wesley Hunt has stalled President Trump’s agenda, but Hunt has made time for luxurious island trips and made taxpayers reimburse him for $65,000.”

Hunt and Cornyn did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

Another ad released by Texans for a Conservative Majority, a PAC that has contributed to Cornyn in the past, called Hunt “Woke,” after it was reported in December that he served on a private school’s board of trustees while it made diversity, equity, and inclusion “foundation” to the school’s principles.

Another ad against Hunt called him “fake MAGA.”

In response, Hunt said on social media that “when it mattered most, John Cornyn didn’t fight. He folded. He compromised. He surrendered to the Left.”

Recent polling of likely voters shows Paxton leading Cornyn by a point with Hunt in a distant third. Nearly 30% of Emerson College’s poll said they were “undecided,” however. Trump has yet to endorse a candidate.

NEW: TEXAS POLL Democratic Senate PrimaryJames Talarico 47%Jasmine Crockett 38%15% undecidedRepublican Senate PrimaryKen Paxton 27%John Cornyn 26%Wesley Hunt 16%29% undecided@PPowerRanker analysis: https://t.co/5bJUNDp6hAFull results: https://t.co/wxpd9dIOdU pic.twitter.com/uTAqmRbZs3— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) January 15, 2026

NEW: TEXAS POLL Democratic Senate PrimaryJames Talarico 47%Jasmine Crockett 38%15% undecidedRepublican Senate PrimaryKen Paxton 27%John Cornyn 26%Wesley Hunt 16%29% undecided@PPowerRanker analysis: https://t.co/5bJUNDp6hAFull results: https://t.co/wxpd9dIOdU pic.twitter.com/uTAqmRbZs3

Democrats’ Senate Fiasco

On the Democrat side, the race between Texas State Rep. James Talarico and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, for the Senate nomination is a “coin flip,” according to Luke Warford of the Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, a group supporting Democrats in the Lone Star State.

Warford recently told NOTUS that “this is the most competitive Democratic primary we’ve had in a long time.”

Victory will likely be determined by non-white voters, as a majority of the Democrat base in Texas is non-white, NOTUS noted, citing a study by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.

“We’ve seen in the polling that Jasmine Crockett is clearly winning among Black voters, and Talarico probably has a not as big magnitude, but a slight lead among … white voters and Latino voters, depending on what poll you look at,” Warford told NOTUS.

A recent Emerson poll showed Crockett in the lead by double digits over Talarico, with 56% of respondents choosing Crockett and 44% choosing Talarico.

Talarico, however, might be able to make a final push for victory given Crockett’s recent comments about Hispanic Republican voters.

Crockett claimed Hispanic Republicans have a “slave mentality.”

“It’s almost like a slave mentality that they have,” Crockett said. “It is wild to me when I hear how anti-immigrant they are, as immigrants, many of them. I’m talking about people that literally just got here and can barely vote that are having this kind of attitude.”

Crockett and Talarico have not responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

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