Does John Cornyn’s defeat mark an end to Bush-era Texas politics?

After more than 35 years in Texas politics, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s political career appears to be at its end.

The four-term incumbent with a one-time penchant for bipartisan dealmaking lost the Republican runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who hammered Cornyn on the campaign trail as disloyal to President Donald Trump.

READ MORE: Ken Paxton wins Texas US Senate primary, ending John Cornyn’s two decades in office

His fate appeared to be sealed when Trump endorsed Paxton last week, declaring Cornyn a “good man,” but chiding him for not supporting him “when times were tough.”

Speaking after the race was called Tuesday night, Cornyn reflected that after four decades of election victories, he had “come up short.”

“I fought the good fight. I finished the race, and I kept the faith,” he said. “Over the next seven months of my service in the U.S. Senate, I intend to continue my work to make this nation a better place for all Texans and all Americans.”

The defeat creates the first open Senate seat in the state since 2012 and closes — for now, at least — Cornyn’s long career in public office, which included stints on the state Supreme Court and as attorney general.

It also signals a shift away from the pro-business, free trade policies that Republicans like former president and Texas governor George W. Bush had championed for decades, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“It’s a symbolic collapse of the Bush-era Texas model,” he said. “It sends a warning signal that every establishment figure, the senators with long records in Washington, are vulnerable.”

Cornyn’s defeat comes 18 months after the 74-year-old lost his bid to succeed U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader. Cornyn came under attack then from conservatives, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who described Cornyn as “an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney’s.”

During his reelection campaign, Cornyn attempted to rebrand himself as a loyal Trump ally and shed his reputation as an establishment Republican willing to work with Democrats on issues like immigration and gun control — heresy among Trump’s MAGA coalition.

Cornyn touted his record of voting with Trump “more than 99% of the time,” while defending policies that he seemingly would have opposed in the past. Last year, he challenged criticism of Trump’s tariffs by Republicans, including U.S. Sen Ted Cruz, despite his own longtime opposition to government intervention in trade.

But he could never escape his past criticism of Trump, including his declaration in 2023 that “Trump’s time has passed him by.” Last year, conservative leaders in Texas began contemplating publicly whether his time as a figurehead in Texas GOP politics had passed.

“Cornyn comes from a different era, a different time,” Christian Collins, head of the conservative Texas Youth Summit, said last year. “He’s not in tune with where we are now.”

A native of Houston, Cornyn began his career as an attorney in San Antonio defending doctors and lawyers from malpractice suits. 

But he soon shifted to politics, winning election as a state district judge in Bexar County in 1985. He moved quickly up through ranks to become a justice on the state supreme court, Texas Attorney General and then in 2002, a U.S. senator – following the retirement of Phill Gramm.

In the Senate, Cornyn built a reputation as a proficient fundraiser, rising in 2009 to the powerful role of chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and leading fundraising efforts for his GOP colleagues.

Three years later, he was elected by his Republican peers as Senate minority whip and helped lead Republicans’ blockade against then-President Barack Obama’s effort to install a Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin Scalia, who died on a ranch in Texas in 2016.

But his fortunes appeared to fade later that year with Trump’s surprise election to the White House. Cornyn had warned months earlier that Trump would be an “albatross” on the party.

Cornyn, with his patrician style and reputation for bipartisanship, was the stylistic opposite of the mercurial, plain-spoken Trump. Tensions came to a head in 2020 when Cornyn was one of a small group of Republicans who refused to back Trump’s unfounded claims he had won the presidential election over Joe Biden.

Two years later, Cornyn was booed at the Texas Republican Convention after he negotiated bipartisan gun legislation in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, paving the way for a primary challenge from Paxton, a longtime Trump ally.

Trump stayed out of the race until the very end. 

Cornyn was one of three incumbent GOP senators running for reelection not to receive his endorsement, along with Bill Cassidy and Susan Collins, who also rejected Trump’s election fraud claims.

Still, Cornyn refused to concede that there was any tension with the president.

“I don’t really even consider that I have really got crosswise (with Trump),” he said in an interview on the Texas Take podcast last year. “I made a prediction about President Trump’s electability. And as I’ve acknowledged, he was right and I was wrong.”

At his election night party on Tuesday, there were no supporters waving signs or pump-up music. Instead, Cornyn gathered reporters at a hotel in downtown Austin and addressed them briefly, flanked by his wife Sandy, and their daughters Haley and Danley.

“Politics is hard on families, especially, but I believe, and I know my family believes, that public service is an honorable calling,” he said. “Serving others is a high purpose, and while much about politics is ugly, we choose to serve to the good, the bad, and the ugly.”