Top GOP senator reveals he's closing gap in heated primary amid opponent's alleged affair scandal

EXCLUSIVE – With just six months to go until Texas kicks off primary season in the 2026 midterm elections, the blockbuster battle between longtime Republican Sen. John Cornyn and his GOP challenger, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, appears to be tightening.

Paxton, a MAGA champion and longtime ally of President Donald Trump who has been battered over the past decade by multiple controversies, enjoyed a comfortable double-digit lead over Cornyn in polling at the beginning of the summer.

But the most recent surveys point to a closer contest, as the two Texas heavyweight politicians blast each other in what's turned into an expensive and bitterly brutal battle.

"While many in the media were writing Senator Cornyn’s political obituary in May and June, the current state of the race paints a far different picture," argues a state of the race memo from the Cornyn campaign that was released on Wednesday.

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The memo from top Cornyn political advisers, which was shared first with Fox News Digital, highlights that "the race has significantly tightened with momentum on our campaign’s side, with plenty of room for continued growth."

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And the memo points to what it describes as "Ken Paxton’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Summer," which included the blockbuster news that Paxton's wife of over 30 years filed for divorce on "biblical grounds," as well as reports alleging Paxton committed mortgage fraud by claiming multiple properties as his primary residence on bank loans.

Paxton, in an interview Tuesday on Fox Business' "Mornings with Maria," pushed back against the allegations and accused Cornyn of "absolutely lying."

"John Cornyn doesn’t tell the full story. He slants it to make it seem like something bad happened," Paxton told host Maria Bartiromo.

Paxton also took issue with the latest polls, saying "I don’t think it’s as close as" the surveys suggest.

"I think the voters of Texas are pretty smart, especially Republican voters. In a primary, they know what John Cornyn hasn’t done. They know what he has done," he added.

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And Paxton claimed that Texas Republicans "know that he’s [Cornyn] voted against them on 2nd Amendment issues. He’s not been a Donald Trump supporter. He’s not been a border wall supporter. He’s been against the issues that most Texans have really cared about a lot. That’s going to come out in this election."

And Paxton pledged that "we’ll have enough money to talk to the voters about his record and my record."

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), and the Senate Leadership Fund, the top super PAC backing Senate Republicans, are supporting Cornyn.

But Trump, to date, remains neutral.

Paxton spotlighted in his Fox Business interview that "I’ve been a supporter of his [Trump] from the beginning and unlike John Cornyn, I haven’t flip-flopped in the last couple of months because I thought it was something popular."

"We are very different in our loyalty and our approach to President Trump," he added.

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But Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak, pointing to the tightening polls, told Fox News "the reason is Texas GOP primary voters are learning more about Senator Cornyn’s record of voting with President Trump more than 99% of the time and delivering conservative victories for Texas."

"We have a plan to win this race, and we are executing it," Mackowiak touted.

There's the possibility another Republican could enter the Senate primary.

Three-term Rep. Wesley Hunt, a rising MAGA star who represents a Houston-area district, has been mulling a Senate run for months. Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier this year that Hunt had made his case to Trump’s political team that he's the only person who can win both a GOP primary and a general election.

As Hunt considers a Senate run, an aligned super PAC has been upping its ad spending throughout Texas this summer, to increase the congressman's name recognition in the state.