Cornyn Rolls Dice with Trump Name
in Pence Plea for Help with SC Hook

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor
October 17, 2020

After trying to distance himself from a radioactive White House in recent weeks, U.S. Senator John Cornyn turned to Vice President Mike Pence for a fundraising pitch on Friday in a sign that the veteran Texas lawmaker is truly scared that he might lose this fall despite a fairly significant lead in the polls.

Pence used the email solicitation for Cornyn to defend President Donald Trump's choice of Amy Coney Barrett for an open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. But Pence gives the false impression in the Cornyn call to arms that the Barrett nomination will fail if Democrats claim the majority despite the fact that Republicans are planning a vote to confirm her before the general election on November 3.

"Will you stand by and let the Democrats rip apart the very fabric of our country because they lost an election?," Pence argued in a claim that doesn't make sense with the high court takeover by the "Far-Left" that he warns Cornyn donors about no longer a possibility if Democrat Joe Biden loses to Trump next month.

But the Pence plea for help for the endangered Texas solon comes at a considerable price that makes it a high-stakes gamble with Trump mentioned three separate times after being conspicuously missing from most Cornyn campaign emails increasingly in the midst of the president's historic unraveling during the COVID-19 crisis.

Cornyn had earned a reputation as a relatively moderate establishment Republican until doing everything in his power to tie himself to Trump when the economy was strong last fall and early this year.

But Cornyn and all of the Texas Republicans in competitive state and federal races are discovering the hard way that they can run as fast and far as humanly possible but have no way to hide from the top of the ticket in a 2020 election that appears destined to leave a permanent political alignment in Texas and beyond in its wake. Any down-ballot candidate for the GOP that is still touting association with Trump in a legislative and congressional swing district is politically suicidal or out of touch with reality.

While Trump has appeared to destroy the hopes that Republicans had for retaining control in the Texas House for the 2021 redistricting session, Cornyn could end up being the lone bright spot for the state GOP if he survives the Hegar challenge as the favorite in the polling in a race that Capitol Inside currently has ranked as a toss up 16 days before the election.

But Cornyn's decision to accept help from the Trump campaign with Pence as the mouthpiece suggests that the senator is starting to feel the twinges of desperation that many fellow Republicans are experiencing in re-election races in swing districts where they were safe four years ago and have little or no chance of winning now.

Cornyn is a savvy politico with a resume that featured stints as a Texas Supreme Court judge and attorney general before a promotion to his current post in 2002 - the same year that the GOP seized the state House majority that it's on the verge of fumbling away less than three weeks from now barring a dramatic change in the national climate.

Cornyn has been up on the Democratic challenger by seven or eight points on average in the polling here since Hegar emerged as the nominee with a victory in the primary runoff election.

The Pence fundraising communique raises the specter, however, that Cornyn doesn't believe that he's that far ahead. The VP solicitation also suggests that the Republicans simply have no other issues on which to pin comeback hopes with the economy wrecked by a pandemic that's starting to surge again in Texas and other states that the GOP controls.

But the names of Trump and Pence were nowhere to be found in a Cornyn email warning on Saturday about an unidentified political action committee pouring $9 million in money from New York and Hollywood liberals into the Hegar campaign.