Goodbye, John Cornyn
Ted Cruz must be in a good mood today. He will be Texas's senior senator come January — just in time to kick off his presidential campaign.
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May 27, 2026
After I graduated law school, I went to work for a civil litigation firm in San Antonio. We mostly represented plaintiffs, and most of them were workers’ compensation claimants. (This was before the massive restructuring of the comp system in 1989 and 1990.)
I passed the bar on my first try, thank goodness, and soon I was asked to represent one of our clients at a hearing. After receiving what the client thought was an inadequate resolution to his claims administratively, we had filed suit on his behalf. The insurance company had moved to dismiss the lawsuit.
The hearing that day was conducted by a young judge named John Cornyn. He had become a judge after working for one of the silk stocking insurance defense firms in the city. He looked the part – tall, distinguished, already developing the silver mane of hair that would be his trademark. To no one’s surprise but my own, he quickly ruled that the lawsuit should be dismissed on the grounds of something something insurance bullsh*t.
By the time I got back to my office, I had a pretty good head of steam on, and I convinced my partners that justice required that we appeal Cornyn’s decision to the local court of appeals. Which we did, with me arguing the case. And we won.
That was my last contact with that case. By then, the firm and I were part of the AFL-CIO’s lobbying effort to make sure the Lege did not go overboard on its workers’ comp reforms. Which it did. A story for another day …
John Cornyn, for his part, went on to become a judge on the Texas Supreme Court, then Attorney General, and then United States Senator for Texas – an honor he will hold until next January, having been “obliterated” – a word that is au courant these days – by Ken Paxton in last night’s GOP primary runoff (63%-36%).
To me, John Cornyn will always be that smug, confident district judge, riding the yacht of success and prestige in America while obeying its first commandment: don’t rock it. He rode the escalator upwards quickly, from district judge to Attorney General in less than a decade, and to the Senate four years later.
And in the Senate … what? He always seemed to be auditioning for a place on the U.S. Supreme Court, eschewing the behind-the-scenes rumbles that occasionally birth good policy. Someone will write a political obituary which mentions his greatest accomplishments, but the vast majority of his votes were intended to prop up the system where the right got richer and were held less accountable. He was, as I’ve said before, no Sam Houston.
There’s been speculation that Cornyn, liberated from having to kiss Trump’s ass and dance for the MAGA hordes, will join Thom Tillis and other retiring Republican senators in finally holding Trump to account. It’s a target-rich environment: a disastrous war of choice, mismanagement of the economy, and corruption on a spectacular level that would be unimaginable to the Founding Fathers whom Cornyn reveres.But I doubt it. After 40 years carrying water for the corporate and insurance interests he has served, why change?
In his concession speech last night, Cornyn suggested that his time in politics was ending. (He also — unfairly, in my opinion —suggested comparisons to Teddy Roosevelt and Saint Paul.) Good on him – I wish him and his family well.
As for the GOP, they will have their hands full this fall defending Ken Paxton as their standard bearer. What Cornyn’s defeat really shows is that the Texas GOP is out of control, incapable of nominating candidates who aren’t corrupt or crazy. More on that later this week.
The notion that he might have had Supreme Court ambitions is laughable to me, but I suppose that was a part of his predictable pablum on every issue of importance. He's never done a damned thing of consequence for voters during all his tenure, and when the Rs made their noises about getting rid of professional politicians, he went into hiding, because his early days, which were brief, are the only ones where he wasn't getting paid by taxpayers. He took that seriously by ruling against them and voting for corporate interests every chance he got. His politics were deceptively benign but harmful because he let others decide for him and paid no interest to what mattered to his constituents. The idea that he's going to make life tough on Trump as he makes his exit seems impossible to me. Senator Seriously Concerned has lived too long as a political jellyfish to acquire a skeletal structure.
He had small shoes to fill as an AG after felon morales. I see him as a law prof at A&M for his next gig. someplace conservative with few morals needed.