Now for the main event…

After months of trailing Texas A.G. Ken Paxton in the primary for his own Senate seat, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn appears to have made up ground, pulling alongside Paxton in a pair of recent polls. You could practically hear the collective exhale from state and national Republicans, many of whom are not only loyal to Cornyn personally but also, perhaps more to the point, view him as the most electable candidate in the general.

Of course, Cornyn is hardly out of the woods—and the Texas Senate race just got messier. Earlier today, Rep. Wesley Hunt officially announced his own campaign, injecting a major complication into what was a statistical dead heat. Hunt, a longtime favorite of the West Houston donor set, has lagged far behind Cornyn and Paxton in public polling. But his disruption of the Cornyn-Paxton dynamic now all but ensures the G.O.P. primary will go to a runoff. In Texas politics, any incumbent who’s kicked to a runoff begins that phase of the campaign as an underdog.

That could be good news for Democrats, who would like nothing more than to run a candidate against Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House for bribery and misuse of office before being acquitted in the Senate. Paxton’s ongoing and very public divorce is just one chapter in an oppo book as radioactive as any you’ll find this cycle. Cornyn, for his part, is widely credited with stabilizing the state ticket the last time he was up for reelection, in 2020, when Democrats were on a massive offensive up and down the ballot.

There’s big money at stake, too: Republicans would just as soon not have to pull money from competitive races to defend what should be a safe Republican seat. Paxton’s baggage, many national Republicans believe, would make the defense that much more difficult—and expensive.

Until this morning, at least, the wind seemed to be at Cornyn’s back. “Sen. Cornyn is surging in the polls after Ken Paxton’s summer from hell,” said Cornyn senior advisor Matt Mackowiak, crediting ad campaigns by outside groups for having “successfully reminded Texas G.O.P. primary voters of Sen. Cornyn’s 99 percent voting record with Trump and delivering conservative victories for our state.”

The Paxton camp, however, is remarkably sanguine. Of course Cornyn has made up some ground, they say, after his allies spent millions on TV advertising. But Paxton and his friends have yet to fully return fire on Cornyn’s Senate record. “We’ll have all the resources we need to prosecute the John Cornyn RINO narrative when the time is right,” said Gregg Keller, a consultant working for a Paxton-aligned super PAC. In any event, much of Paxton’s record—down to the lifted Montblanc pen—is well known, and he won reelection as A.G. by double digits in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Trump-ordered Republican redistricting is still in litigation, which could delay voting until deep into the cycle, when turnout will be scant due to the excruciatingly hot Texas summer and, perhaps, favor the enthusiastic backers of an insurgent candidate. The timing could also mean that whichever nominee emerges has less time to pivot to the general-election race. (“We are going to win this race, in a primary or a primary runoff,” Mackowiak said.) With Hunt in, the last major outstanding question is whether Trump will endorse in this race.

Needless to say, the Senate leadership-aligned super PAC, which backs Cornyn, sounded furious that Hunt finally decided to make it official. “It’s unfortunate that Wesley Hunt has decided to abandon President Trump’s efforts to protect the House majority, and instead pursue his personal ambitions, also turning his back on the Texans who entrusted him with their vote,” said its spokesman, Chris Gustafson.

But does all this mean that Texas, which is perpetual fool’s gold for Democrats, might actually be in play? Certainly, the party sees a potential race against Paxton as a once-in-a-generation statewide pickup opportunity. And the Democratic Senate primary has attracted two better-than-average candidates: former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, who ran last year, and James Talarico, the state rep/internet darling who’s got uber consultant Lis Smith & Co. behind him.

Allred did okay last cycle: He lost to Ted Cruz by 8.5 points, but outperformed Kamala Harris in key bastions of the state—all while Republicans bled more than $40 million to support Cruz. Three months after his early July launch for this cycle, Allred announced he’d raised $4.1 million—a healthy sum for anyone running for Senate, but one that paled in comparison to the $6.2 million haul Talarico managed to raise in just three weeks after his September launch. It’s early, but there’s a sense in Texas that Talarico is stealing Allred’s thunder. (Barring unforeseen events, this primary won’t go to a runoff.)

Many pundits, and indeed many candidates, have been burned predicting the imminent blue-ening of the Lone Star State. Suffice to say the state’s politics are unstable—which means just about anything could happen.

Not every Republican-led state has capitulated to Trump’s redistricting demands, like Texas and Missouri, or coyly flirted with them, like Indiana. Up in New Hampshire, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has resisted the push to move the single line that separates the state’s two congressional seats. Now, she’s facing mounting pressure from Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski (a New Hampshire native, himself), who’s floating a challenge for the governorship when her two-year term is up.

The Lewandowski offensive struck some New Hampshire Republicans as excessive, given that they’re optimistic about picking up a House seat this cycle even without redistricting. Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas is vacating his 1st district seat to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, giving Republicans their best shot at winning there in years. They’re bullish about their chances to flip Shaheen’s current seat, too, since former Sen. John Sununu is seriously considering a run. Ayotte’s coattails have the potential to boost the G.O.P. in all these races—and a divisive gubernatorial primary fight could prove a distraction.

For the most part, however, Lewandowski’s threats are being met with shrugs and eye rolls within the state. A New Hampshire Republican echoed what I’ve been hearing, telling NH Journal, “O.F.F.S.” After all, the Live Free or Die state is exceptionally ornery when it comes to outside influences—and that includes Trump’s redistricting pressure campaign. “Politics is obviously something of a soap opera, nationally speaking, but in New Hampshire, people are taking politics seriously,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican consultant who previously worked for Ayotte when she was in the Senate. “It’s up to the Granite State voters to sort [its politics] out, and we do so routinely.”

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