But a handful was forced into runoffs:
- Attorney General Ken Paxton, re-election
- Sen. Dawn Buckingham (R-Lakeway), running for land commissioner
- Pete Flores (R-Pleasanton), running for Senate District 24
- Frederick Frazier, running for House District 61
- Phil Sorrells, running for Tarrant County District Attorney
Despite those left to be decided, Trump touted his success on Tuesday night, saying in a statement, “Big night in Texas!”
“All 33 candidates that were Trump endorsed have either won their primary election or are substantially leading in the case of a runoff. Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick have won in a landslide. Thank you, and congratulations to all!”
The runoff will be on May 24, where the biggest race to watch will be for the attorney general’s office. Both Paxton and George P. Bush, the attorney general’s runoff opponent, pursued the Trump endorsement heavily. And despite the Bush family’s opposition to Trump, the former president considered endorsing “The only Bush who likes me.”
But in the end, Paxton secured the endorsement which Bush then chalked up to the attorney general “mislead[ing] the president.”
Trump’s choices in many races came at the behest of Patrick, whom the former president said asks frequently for support which Trump quickly obliges.
One of the latest endorsements came in for Sorrells, who is in a runoff against state Rep. Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth). Sorrells shares a consultant, Allen Blakemore, with Patrick, and in the middle of early voting the Trump endorsement came parachuting in.
It clearly gave Sorrells a boost, who finished first in the primary but didn’t clear 50 percent.
Overall, Trump favored incumbents. He threw his support behind the incumbent in every statewide race — save for the General Land Office, whose incumbent, Bush, is running for attorney general, and the Texas Railroad Commission race which he didn’t wade into.
All but two congressional endorsements were for incumbents, and those two are open seats in the 15th and 38th Congressional Districts.
The state legislature was more of a mixed bag, with only three of the endorsements coming for incumbents. But three others were Patrick’s selected candidates for open Senate seats, one of whom is a sitting state representative while another was a state senator in 2019 before losing in 2020 in his blue district.
Trump’s endorsement record in Republican contests across the country, while not unblemished, is strong and continued to be so on Tuesday night. Part of that success is often due to jumping in with the favorite, but the endorsement clearly carries boosts in support from GOP voters.
The former president has gotten involved more in Texas elections than in any other state, partly attributed to Patrick’s hold on Trump’s ear, but it also signals the importance of Texas to the former president who may aim to become the future president.
See the full list of Trump’s endorsements here.
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Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a senior reporter for The Texan and an Ohio native who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. He is an avid sports fan who most enjoys watching his favorite teams continue their title drought throughout his cognizant lifetime. In his free time, you may find Brad quoting Monty Python productions and trying to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
