Texas Senator John Cornyn has never had the hearts of many of his party’s most energized voters. He heard the boos in the earliest days of the Tea Party movement at a 2009 Austin rally outside the state Capitol.
They’ve continued through the Trump presidency. The mere mention of his name drew jeers this past March at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas.
The four-term conservative lost his re-election bid last month after President Trump endorsed the state’s attorney general, MAGA loyalist Ken Paxton, in the GOP primary. The defeat made Cornyn the first incumbent senator from Texas to lose to a primary challenger since 1970.
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