The Senate Leadership Fund spent $71 million of donor money propping up John Cornyn in the Texas primary.
Now they burned it all down in one press release.
The night Cornyn squeaked past Ken Paxton by less than a point, the Thune-controlled super PAC attacked the guy who just lost – and insulted every single person who voted for him.
Senate Leadership Fund Attacks Wesley Hunt Voters the Morning After the Primary
Alex Latcham, John Thune's handpicked executive director at the Senate Leadership Fund, put out a statement calling Wesley Hunt's third-place finish a "career-ending vanity tour without any substance or political reasoning."
Hunt finished with just under 290,000 votes.
That's 290,000 Texas conservatives who woke up Wednesday morning to the Republican establishment spitting in their faces.
Latcham congratulated Hunt on an "abysmal third place finish" and accused his campaign consultants of getting rich while "Republican voters are now forced to endure an even longer primary runoff election."
The problem with that attack is that it's factually backwards.
Cornyn and his allies spent north of $70 million – the most expensive Senate primary in American history – while Paxton spent less than $5 million.
If anyone's consultants got rich, it wasn't Hunt's.
Breitbart's Matthew Boyle made another point the establishment doesn't want to hear: the runoff wasn't even Hunt's fault.
Other minor candidates combined for roughly 85,000 votes – well above the margin between Cornyn and Paxton.
A runoff was coming either way.
Why the Cornyn Paxton Runoff Just Got a Lot Harder for the Establishment
Hunt's 290,000 votes are now the most valuable votes in Texas.
Cornyn needs them to win the runoff on May 26.
And the Senate Leadership Fund – the organization designed to elect John Cornyn – just told those voters they were stupid for showing up.
Even Tim Scott, the NRSC chairman who wants Cornyn to win, directly contradicted Latcham's attack.
Scott sent out his own statement saying the race was heading to a runoff anyway – which made Latcham's blame-Hunt narrative look not just classless, but wrong.
Cornyn went silent when Breitbart asked him to address what his own allies did in his name.
Thune's Senate office punted too – deferring to the SLF team, whose spokesman Chris Gustafson claimed Latcham "was speaking directly to Rep. Hunt and his staff, not Texas voters."
That explanation doesn't hold up.
When you call a candidate's campaign a "vanity tour" the morning after 290,000 people voted for him, you're talking about the voters too.
Republican operatives who weighed in privately called Latcham's move exactly what it was – "dumb."
Trump Endorsement Looms and John Thune Owns What Happens Next
John Thune spent most of the last year lobbying Donald Trump to endorse Cornyn.
Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday that he'll make his endorsement "soon" – and called on whoever he doesn't pick to drop out immediately.
That endorsement was supposed to be the closing argument for the establishment.
Instead, Latcham handed Paxton's team their best recruiting pitch.
Conservative activists who were ready to consolidate behind Cornyn are now heading back to Paxton.
The Senate Leadership Fund was built by Mitch McConnell's allies in 2015 – the same McConnell machine that conservatives spent a decade trying to displace.
Now Thune's own super PAC is doing what McConnell's machine always did – treating grassroots conservative voters like an obstacle rather than a constituency.
Texas Republicans built one the most dominant one-party states in America by taking their voters seriously.
The Senate Leadership Fund apparently didn't get that memo.
Two hundred ninety thousand Texans showed up, voted their conscience, and handed the establishment a problem it created for itself.
Paxton doesn't need to win the argument anymore.
Thune's own people already made it for him.
Sources:
- Matthew Boyle, "Thune's Right Hand Man Undercuts Cornyn Consolidation with Broadside Against Hundreds of Thousands of Texans," Breitbart, March 4, 2026.
- Gabby Birenbaum, "Trump Says He Will Soon Endorse in Runoff Between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton," Texas Tribune, March 4, 2026.
- "Trump Says He Will Endorse Soon in Texas GOP Senate Runoff," CBS News, March 4, 2026.
- "With Trump Endorsement Looming, Cornyn and Paxton Prepare for Knife Fight in Senate Runoff," Texas Tribune, March 4, 2026.
