As Texas Republicans Tout Their Trump Ties, Experts Say It Could Come Back to Haunt Them
By OISAKHOSE AGHOMO
Reporting Texas
As Tuesday’s primaries inch closer, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing ads from Republicans trumpeting their ties and devotion to President Donald Trump.
Candidates are trying to brand themselves as the “most MAGA ever,” calling their constituents to “stand with President Trump” and taking digs at their opponents for not being MAGA enough.
Experts say although alignment with Trump has been a key advantage within the Republican Party and its base, it may have implications in the November general election as public opinion of the president fluctuates.
Daron Shaw, a University of Texas government professor, said the phenomenon called the “Trump tax” has shown up before.
“MAGA-leaning candidates tended to underperform Republican averages in states in 2018 and 2022,” Shaw said. “I think the idea of a Trump tax was that in 2022, the cost of being overtly identified as a Trump candidate was about two to three points.
Texas has already had an upset this year in a special election to fill theTexas Senate seat in District 9. Democratic candidate Taylor Rehmet won against Leigh Wambsganss, a well-funded Republican, and flipped the Fort Worth-based district that Trump won in the 2025 by 17 points.
Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, said he expects a shift similar to what he saw in the midterm election during Trump’s first term.
“The fact that Rehmet won by 14 points in a district that Trump had won by 17 made people talk about a 31-point swing toward the Democrats,” Jillson said. “There is a swing toward the Democrats nationally and in Texas throughout 2025 and into 2026. Not 31 points, but it might be 8, 10, 12 points.
“I do expect Democrats to have a year like 2018, where they pick up a number of seats in the Texas House, maybe a few in the Texas Senate, a couple of U.S. House seats and several of the seats that Republicans targeted in South Texas with a redistricting will, I think, stay Democrat.”
According to the Texas Politics Project, 43% of Texans polled in February 2026 disapprove strongly of the job the president is doing, compared with 39% in February 2018 during a similar point in Trump’s first term.
“One of the biggest questions of the 2026 election overall is whether or not Republican candidates, once the primaries in their rearview mirror, decide to create distance between themselves and the president,” said Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin.
Blank said endorsements historically tend to matter more for down-the-ballot voting.
“There aren’t any other Republican politicians who have the same stature within the Republican electorate that Donald Trump has. These are the people who participate in Republican primaries,” he said.
Trump has used his endorsement to boost candidates he deems loyal, making sure to blast those who have fallen out of his favor as “Republican in Name Only,” or RINOs.
“There’s sort of two different types of Trump endorsements. There’s the blanket endorsement; there’s the specific endorsement,” Shaw said. “He has endorsed almost the entire Republican caucus of the Texas House of Representatives for re-election. And that was a carrot that was put in front of them in order to get some policy across the finish line here in Texas, both redistricting, but also vouchers.”
However, Trump has stayed neutral in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate as he declined to endorse any candidates from the trio of Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. Republicans in Washington fear the race could draw dollars away from other key battleground races, Politico has reported. If no candidate gets a majority in Tuesday’s primary, a runoff will decide the nomination in May.
Cornyn’s website touts his 99.2% voting record with Trump. Cornyn has run ads against Hunt calling him “Fake MAGA.”
“John Cornyn and his allies try to engender the president’s support, more support from insiders, based on the notion that it’s going to be more expensive for the party as a whole to keep Texas a Republican Senate seat with Ken Paxton at the top of the ticket versus John Cornyn,” Shaw said.
Cornyn, who has been a U.S. senator since 2002, has also served as the Republican whip from 2013-19.
“They would both have money. They would both be financed,” Shaw said. “But the difference is John Cornyn is a prodigious fundraiser. That’s why he’s in the leadership. He can raise lots of money. He can lean on those networks.”
He said that Paxton would face some challenges as he has “only run statewide and state races” with little legal oversight over campaign finance.
Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, said that Paxton may not be raising as much money for this leg of the race.
“And it’s partly because he doesn’t have the same backing from some of his normal, you know, deep-pocketed funders here in Texas. And part of it is that he’s waiting… to make his biggest moves,” Rottinghaus said. “No need to spend money in this round when you know you’re a lock to get into the runoff.”
Rottinghaus predicted that Paxton will emerge as the Republican nominee but remains doubtful about “whether he’ll win the general” as Democrats look to flip the seat.
Shaw said he suspects that Trump’s decisions on endorsements are based on polling, “even if the other candidate seemed like one that he might have endorsed.”
Jillson agreed.
“Trump is very careful about making endorsements in races where the ultimate winner is not clear because he wants his batting average to be up at 85, 90 percent,” Jillson said.
In Texas, Trump has endorsed 29 candidates running for U.S. House of Representatives and three candidates for Texas House of Representatives, according to Ballotopedia.
Jillson said socially conservative Republicans have been the dominant faction of the party for more than a decade while more conventional Republicans have “gone quiet.”
“In 2014, in the Republican primary, there was a choice between more traditional business-friendly Republican candidates and more socially conservative candidates that are now the MAGA candidates,” Jillson said. “Social conservative MAGA candidates won 2 to 1 in 2014. So, I think Republicans have been in their (social conservative) moment for quite some time “