Former President George W. Bush showed up Monday, September 21, 2026, as a special guest at a fundraiser in Dallas, Texas, for Republican Senate candidates, lending his name to campaigns in several states. One Republican got nothing out of it. Trump’s endorsement in the state’s Senate race belongs to Ken Paxton, who serves as Texas attorney general, and the president’s backing did not translate into a mention in Dallas.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, hosted the evening, a benefit for the Maintain the Majority fundraising committee. Cornyn lost to Paxton in what was the most expensive Republican Senate primary ever. The proceeds were earmarked for six sitting Republican senators and GOP hopefuls in the midterms, across a map that takes in Iowa, Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota and Maine.
The Republican running in the host’s own state did not make that roster. The room of old-guard Republicans gave Paxton no public endorsement, which left the marquee contest in Bush’s home state as the one race the former president’s fundraising muscle passed over.
A Texas Seat Republicans Fear Losing
The timing is awkward for the party. Some Republicans have warned that Paxton could cost the GOP a seat Texas normally delivers without drama. Several polls have put Democrat James Talarico ahead of him, in a race both parties rank among the most closely watched on the map. Voters decide it on November 3.
The consequences reach past Texas. Democrats would move much closer to a Senate majority if Talarico wins, and Republicans are also widely expected to lose control of the House in November. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since 1988, and Talarico is hoping to break that streak. His party has also gone decades without a Texas Senate seat, and a victory by him would deliver its first.
Impeachment, a Divorce and a Primary Win
Paxton carries considerable baggage. In 2023 the Republican-controlled Texas House impeached him on accusations of corruption, bribery and obstruction of justice. The Texas Senate acquitted him, though corruption allegations kept dogging him afterward. After rumors of an affair surfaced, his wife filed for divorce, citing “biblical grounds.”
Establishment Republicans pointed to exactly that record when they lined up behind Cornyn during the primary. Senate Majority Leader John Thune joined the figures endorsing the incumbent, and party veterans argued that Cornyn stood a far better chance of holding the seat. Primary voters saw it differently, and Paxton took the nomination anyway.
Not the First Bush-Paxton Collision
Paxton has tangled with the Bush family before. In 2022 he won the GOP’s attorney general nomination in Texas by beating George P. Bush, a nephew of the former president.
The family name is still stitched into Texas institutions. President George H.W. Bush held a conviction that there is nobility in serving the public, and Texas A&M University built the Bush School of Government and Public Service around it when the school opened in 1997. Its teaching reaches students in College Station, Washington, D.C., and online to this day.
Rove Breaks With a Texas Republican
Other Republicans of that vintage are also keeping their distance from the newer standard-bearers the party has produced in Texas, and Bush is not alone in doing so. Karl Rove, the veteran GOP strategist behind Bush’s victories in both the governor’s mansion and the White House, has said he will cast his ballot in the Texas Railroad Commission contest for Democrat Jon Rosenthal instead of Republican Bo French.
A post on X preceded Rove’s decision: French had circulated an image of University of Texas students who are not white cheering a college football win. The caption read: “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Rove wrote that the GOP now has a growing number of “Bo Frenches.” He described a party that increasingly makes room for antisemites who hide behind innocent-sounding questions, for misogynists devoted to hypermasculinity, for religious bigots who lump Muslim American patriots in with terrorists, and for conspiracy theorists chasing clicks for profit.
Rove also wrote that Rosenthal will be only the second Democrat he has ever voted for; the first was Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994. As of September 17, French had refused to back down in the face of bipartisan blowback, including from Cornyn, telling a conservative radio audience that his critics were simply “less conservative people.”
Trump attacked Rove publicly over the Railroad Commission endorsement, posting on Truth Social: “Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often.” The post came after the split over French became public.
For Paxton, the Dallas event underscores a problem that Trump’s support does not resolve by itself. His party’s old guard in Texas is, at minimum, refusing to vouch for him in public. The committee is sending its checks to states including Iowa, Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota and Maine. Left off that list was the Senate race being fought in the very city where the money was raised.