05/27/2026
If only...!!!
"You just lost the fight for your political life, and your decisive defeat in Tuesdayâs Republican runoff was especially gutting. Your GOP challenger, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been indicted and impeached; plagued by infidelity and investigations; and proven more practiced at bombast than building anything of value. But in the Trump era, the laws of electoral gravity no longer apply.
This week you lost. Paxton will battle Democratic state Rep. James Talarico for your soon-to-be-former seat.
But this next part is important.
You won something else, if you choose to claim it: your political freedom.
After President Donald Trump stiffed you with his last-minute endorsement of Paxton, you are no longer tied to this president, no longer compelled to court him or cover for him. You are no longer captive to the fiction that raising tariffs helps U.S. consumers, or that the massive deportation efforts hurting Texas families and businesses are somehow putting America First. You donât have to shrug as Trump presses ahead in the Big Bend region with costly, damaging border wall construction opposed by Texans of all political stripes. You need not stay quiet while the president disregards Congress and common sense in his war with Iran.
For the remaining seven months of your term, you are free to represent your principles and Texansâ values, to be the senator our state deserves.
You are now an enviable creature in Washington: a seasoned senator free to speak his mind and vote his conscience, a former majority whip who knows the levers of power in a narrowly divided chamber where one vote can change the outcome."
Source: Austin-American-Statesman
