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Cornyn Invokes Trump Age after Hunt
Warns on Senate as Retirement Home
Capitol Inside
October 25, 2025
U.S. Senator John Cornyn is treating Houston-area congressional Republican Wesley Hunt like an inadvertent stalking horse whose recent emergence as an obstacle to his re-election with no shot at victory with a campaign that could ruin the incumbent's hopes for winning the GOP primary election outright in March.
But Hunt
made cases against both Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton while pumping up his own credentials in a memorandum that the publication Punchbowl News posted on Monday and portrayed as an attack first and foremost on the longtime solon who's fighting to keep the job he won initially in 2002.
Hunt acknowledged in the memo that Cornyn would be favored over the Democrats' nominee in the general election next year if he made it that far in the bid for a fifth term in the upper house of Congress. But Hunt contended that Cornyn has no chance to win the Republican nomination in the race at the top of the Texas ticket again in 2026.
Hunt also claimed that the Republicans would have to shell out an extra $100 million to prop Paxton up in a fight with a Democrat if he's carrying the torch for the GOP in the U.S. Senate contest here next year. Hunt also suggested that Paxton could have a devastating effect on the down-ballot Republicans here if he's the nominee.
"With Wesley Hunt, Texas, and the GOP, have the only candidate who can win both the Primary and the General Election without much controversy or cost," the second-term representative asserted. Hunt - according to the campaign missive - would be the safest choice for Republicans if he leapfrogs the Senate race's two leading contenders and seizes the nomination for himself instead in a subsequent runoff in the spring.
But Hunt hit a nerve late last week when he raised the specter in a television interview that Cornyn was too old to keep the post any longer than he has. Hunt told Jason Whitely at the ABC affiliate in Dallas that the U.S. Senate should not become a retirement home in a direct slap at Cornyn. The incumbent, who's 73, fired back in a discussion with Whitely on Friday.
"Look, I'm no spring chicken," the 73-year-old senator said on the show. "I admit that. But I'm healthy and enjoy the job."
Paxton is nine years older than Hunt at the age of 62.
"And look, I work hand in glove with a 79-year-old at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who seems to be doing just fine, too," Cornyn added in a reference to President Donald Trump.
Cornyn suggested that Hunt was desperate for name identification and juice for a fledgling campaign as a candidate who's largely unknown outside political circles and the district he's represented for three years in southeast Texas.
"I think the congressman's a little frustrated because he doesn't have a positive case for his election - and he's got no credible path to win," Cornyn said.
"So he throws out crazy talk like that."
more to come ...
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