Fox News’ chief political analyst has offered a sobering assessment of Donald Trump’s endorsement in a Senate battle and what it may mean for an up-and-coming Democrat’s chances.
“I think that the seat is now at least in some danger,” Brit Hume said Wednesday of the Texas seat due to be contested by Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a rising star in the party, come November.
The president threw his backing Tuesday behind Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, in a neck-and-neck battle with the incumbent, Sen. John Cornyn, for the GOP nomination. The pair are headed into a runoff next week after both failed to secure a majority in the primary in March.
The race has proved something of a lightning rod for Republican powerbrokers. Cornyn, 74, has the backing of the Senate GOP leadership apparatus—among them Majority Leader John Thune and the Senate Leadership Fund—while Paxton, 63, counts Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon and other MAGA activists among his supporters.
Paxton has been dogged by controversy. The Texas House of Representatives, controlled by the GOP, impeached him in 2023 for abuse of office over allegations he misused his powers to run favors for a campaign donor, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who was under federal investigation at the time. Paxton was further accused of getting Paul to hire a woman with whom the attorney general was having an affair.
Fox News host Bret Baier, discussing the race Wednesday with Hume, quoted an editorial in The Wall Street Journal saying the president “will deserve complete and total credit” if Paxton secures the party nomination and then loses the seat to Talarico.
Hume suggested Trump’s reasons for endorsing Paxton over Cornyn were “pretty flimsy,” before noting that the president’s intervention does indeed appear to have lessened the party’s chances.
“Look, Texas is still Texas,” he said. “Ken Paxton may yet win, but he has a ton of baggage. There’s no doubt about that, and he doesn’t really bring in all segments of the Republican base.”
“Talarico, he’s got some baggage too,” Hume said of the 37-year-old Democrat. “But he’s a slick talker and impresses a lot of people. So, he’s got a shot now that maybe he didn’t have if his opponent had been Cornyn.”
