Cornyn Confirms 2026 Reelection Bid as Paxton Weighs Challenge

After meeting with three small-business owners at an Austin burger joint, which also sells soft-serve ice cream, to discuss their hope to keep the soon-to-be-expired tax cuts from 2017, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn couldn't resist taking part in a time-honored political tradition.

The four-term Republican senator from Texas tied on a store apron, which already had his name tag fastened to it, and joined store owner Robert Mayfield for a lesson on how to fill a cone, twirl the top of the soft-serve into a curl and dip it into the chocolate or fruit-flavored syrup.

The finished products by the one-time waiter at a Steak and Ale restaurant were more than passable, nearly as pretty as the cones prepared by the owner of Wally's Burger Express on Mesa Drive in Northwest Austin. But Cornyn, 73, kept his modesty.

"I think I'll keep my day job," Cornyn deadpanned as he made his way through the bank of TV cameras and the scrum of reporters who crammed into the kitchen to witness the ice cream work.

The event Thursday afternoon, after the lunch rush hour, wasn't a campaign stop. But because Cornyn must face Texas Republican primary voters in less than 11 months if he, indeed, wants to keep his day job, there couldn't help but be a sniff of politics in the early spring air.

After making the case that the tax cuts enacted by Donald Trump during his first term as president must be extended if the business owners he had just met with are to prosper, Cornyn emphatically told reporters that he will seek a fifth six-year term in 2026.

"I am running for reelection," he said.

And as he announced his future political plan, the Republican who is seen as Cornyn's strongest primary rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was 1,516 miles away at the White House to watch Trump sign an executive order to begin dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.

For more than a year, Paxton, 62, has been running something of a shadow campaign against Cornyn, who himself was the state attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2002. Part of Paxton's motivation might date back to when Cornyn called him "a source of embarrassment" over being indicted on securities fraud charges and allegations of other misdeeds.

But Paxton has been tight with Trump, earning his endorsement when then-Land Commissioner George P. Bush ran for attorney general in the 2022 GOP primary. And Paxton was among the speakers on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump was desperately seeking to stop Congress' certification of the results of the election that put Joe Biden in the White House.

Cornyn's relationship with Trump has never been nearly as warm, though the senator gave Trump his full-throated endorsement for the GOP presidential nomination soon after the 2024 New Hampshire primary. And at his recent event with the Austin business owners, Cornyn repeatedly gave Trump credit for the tax cuts he was seeking to extend and showered him with overall high marks for actions his administration has taken since returning to the presidency in January.

Not long after the event at the burger joint, Cornyn posted a photo on X of him reading Trump's "Art of the Deal," published in 1987.

And that gave Paxton an opening. "It doesn't matter how desperate you are — voters aren't going to forget the years you've spent trying to stop the President," he wrote on X in a reply to Cornyn's post. "We all remember when you said that President Trump's 'time had passed him by.'"

He included a clip of a May 2023 news story that reported Cornyn's quote.

That broadside came just a few days after Paxton told Punchbowl News that he believes he could beat Cornyn for U.S. Senate, but that no official decision would be made until he gauges his own fundraising ability.

Cornyn, who has served in the Senate GOP leadership but fell short in his bid last year to be majority leader, sought to categorize a challenge from Paxton, or anyone else, as more of a sideshow than a threat.

"I've always had a primary, and fortunately, always been successful," he said. "My last primary in 2020, I won by 76% of the vote. But I'm really not thinking too much about 2026 now; I'm thinking about 2025 and what we can do to finish the work we need to do in Congress."

Cornyn, who before the gaggle with reporters had given his ice cream cones to two Wally's customers, steered the conversation back to tax cuts and other kitchen-table concerns. But he didn't stray too far from the topic of the 2026 election.

"I would say I've always found that good policies (make for) good politics," he said. "And vice versa."