‘He wants me to lose’: Paxton complains about lack of support from Cornyn in leaked audio

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — Ken Paxton has publicly said he would “love to have” John Cornyn’s support after their bruising Republican primary runoff in the Texas Senate race. But privately, Paxton has grown frustrated with the outgoing senator’s distance from his campaign.

“He’s clearly not helping. He wants me to lose,” the Texas attorney general said at a fundraiser last month, according to an audio recording obtained by CNN from an attendee who opposes Paxton.

While Paxton has minimized his criticism of Cornyn following their runoff, the private remarks demonstrate how their long-running tensions continue to roil the race, coming as national Republicans mount an all-out effort to help Paxton defeat Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. With polls showing a tight race, Republicans have poured well over $100 million into the general election in Texas, a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994 but is now critical to Republican hopes of holding a Senate majority.

Paxton made the comments at a September 24 gathering in Washington after receiving a question about Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman whom Talarico defeated in his primary, according to two sources familiar with the discussion. The recording obtained by CNN begins with Paxton apparently referencing Crockett, who has not campaigned for Talarico, saying he does not “know how much she really affects votes.”

“I mean maybe a little bit around the margins, just like Cornyn, basically how much he affects me,” Paxton said.

After saying Cornyn wants him to lose, Paxton pointed to a recent encounter that he said a friend had with the senator at a Dallas restaurant. Paxton said the friend bought Cornyn’s table dessert and sought to thank him for “supporting the ticket” — and for “supporting Ken Paxton” — and Cornyn reacted angrily.

“Cornyn’s face went red. He backed off,” Paxton said. “He said, ‘Paxton’s gonna lose. We need to teach those Republicans a lesson. It’s going to be hard to learn, but they need to know that their decisions have consequences.’”

“That’s what he’s trying to do,” Paxton said. “That’s John Cornyn.”

CNN has not independently confirmed Paxton’s account, and a Cornyn representative, Rob Jesmer, told CNN that the conversation at the restaurant did not happen.

“If Sen. Cornyn wanted Ken to lose, I can assure you he’d be more active in the campaign,” Jesmer, a longtime political strategist for Cornyn, said. “He has said he supports the Republican ticket. Given all Ken has said and done, I think that’s a pretty good place for Sen. Cornyn to be.”

Asked for comment on the audio, Paxton’s campaign dismissed it as “a story that doesn’t exist” but noted that Paxton “has called, texted, and offered to have a conversation with Senator Cornyn.”

“Like all Texans, General Paxton appreciates his decades of service to the Lone Star State,” Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux said in a statement. “We hope he will join us in our fight to preserve the institution that is the United States Senate and help save our majority.”

The two lobbyists who hosted the fundraising event, Chris Brinson and Susan Hirschmann, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did Talarico’s campaign.

A spokesperson for Crockett said she has taken a different approach than Cornyn since losing her own primary.

“Cornyn is the sitting senator and continues to attack his party’s nominee,” the spokesperson, Karrol Rimal, said in a statement. “Crockett endorsed Talarico on March 4th and has not stopped working to support Democrats across the nation since.”

Continued problems for Paxton’s campaign

Paxton’s problems with his own base, including former Cornyn supporters, have loomed over the final weeks of the race.

A Paxton campaign memo dated Tuesday, reported by Punchbowl News, told supporters that the “biggest challenge we face is shoring up Republicans following a bruising primary.”

A Fox News poll done late last month found that nearly a third of Republican likely voters had an unfavorable opinion of Paxton. While he was winning 90% of GOP voters, about a fifth of “non-MAGA” Republicans were breaking for Talarico.

The clip obtained by CNN is at least the fifth recording that has leaked from the fundraising event last month and put Paxton’s campaign on the defensive in the final weeks of the race. Previous clips have featured Paxton saying the GOP’s midterm convention damaged him politically and that he feels like he has lost “control” over his campaign as outside groups have handled most of the spending.

President Donald Trump, who backed Paxton in the primary, has said he is “worried” about the Texas race but largely declined to address the recordings when asked about them. He said Wednesday he was not second-guessing his endorsement.

“I would have no regrets at all,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The president visited San Antonio on Wednesday night for a rally with Paxton where he praised him as “perhaps the greatest attorney general in the United States of America.”

Years of bad blood

The bad blood between Cornyn and Paxton goes back years.

Cornyn, who served as Texas attorney general from 1999 to 2002, has long made clear that he believes Paxton has disgraced the office and served as an example of what happens when Republicans do not police their own. Paxton has dished it back, painting Cornyn as a relic of a bygone era of Republican politics in Texas, especially after Cornyn ushered through a bipartisan gun safety law in 2022.

When Paxton faced a competitive primary for reelection in 2022, Cornyn did not make an endorsement but said Paxton’s long-running indictment on state securities fraud charges was an “embarrassment.” The case finally ended two years later with a deal where Paxton agreed to do community service and pay restitution.

After Paxton was acquitted in a state Senate impeachment trial in 2023, which centered on allegations he abused his office to help a donor, he wasted little time teasing a potential run against Cornyn in 2026. “Everything’s on the table,” he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a triumphant interview days after the trial.

“Hard to run from prison, Ken,” Cornyn said in a February 2024 social media post after Paxton called for Texans to elect a new senator in 2026.

Paxton, who denies all wrongdoing, launched his campaign in April 2025 with a promise to “send John Cornyn packing.” Cornyn and allied groups unleashed tens of millions of dollars of bitter, negative ads against Paxton, some of them highlighting allegations of infidelity. Cornyn finished narrowly ahead of Paxton in the primary but did not earn enough support to avoid a runoff against Paxton.

“I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn said on primary night, adding, “Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.”

But Trump ultimately had other plans. He endorsed Paxton a week before the runoff, dealing a crushing blow to Cornyn and his hopes of stopping a fellow Republican who, to him, embodied much of what is wrong with the modern GOP.

‘He was not my first choice’

Cornyn had long promised to support the “Republican ticket” regardless of the outcome of the primary. But since losing, he has avoided helping Paxton and even leaned into his frustrations with the nominee and his wing of the party at times.

The senator criticized Paxton as a “poor campaigner” and “lazy” candidate in an August interview with the Texas Tribune. Cornyn and former President George W. Bush headlined a fundraiser in Dallas last month for six Senate GOP candidates in battleground races – but not Paxton.

Cornyn’s refusal to endorse Paxton has annoyed some Texas GOP leaders, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a top Trump ally in the state. Patrick suggested in June, following the primary runoff, that Cornyn was part of “sore losers undermining our party.”

Talarico, meanwhile, has sought to appeal to people who supported Cornyn in the GOP primary. He told CNN last month that he hopes to “live up to” Cornyn’s legacy and that he welcomes the incumbent’s supporters to “join this movement we’re building.”

The Democrat’s campaign even hired a former staffer in Cornyn’s office over the summer. Cornyn defended the staffer’s move amid some intraparty backlash, saying on X that “those concerned might want to channel their energy into broadening R[epublican] outreach.”

Some prominent supporters of Cornyn from the primary continue to show reluctance about voting for Paxton.

“I’m supporting the party, but he was not my first choice, and I do think it’s going to have an impact down-ballot,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN last month. “And I do think there are Republicans … that may just not vote, and that’s the danger.”

Paxton has made some headway with his intra-party opponents. In the weeks after the primary runoff, he was joined on the campaign trail by state Rep. Jeff Leach, who endorsed Cornyn in the primary and served as a leader in the 2023 impeachment case against Paxton.

Yet some Texas Republicans continue to worry that GOP voters could simply skip the race. Ken Paxton’s estranged wife, Angela Paxton, addressed that possibility during a recent speech to a group of GOP women, urging them to set aside their reservations with any particular candidate for the good of the party.

“When you can’t vote for, then vote against,” she said, “but vote.”

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