Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell.

The midterm season has officially begun, and there’s no shortage of political news—particularly, this week, out of Texas. There was CBS’s decision to pull Stephen Colbert’s interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico due to concerns it might lead to an F.C.C. investigation over Trump’s cherished equal time rule. The F.C.C. is already investigating ABC’s The View over its own interview with Talarico.

Elsewhere in the state, the San Antonio Express-News is reporting that Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales had an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide, though the congressman has previously denied rumors about their relationship and said today he would not “engage in these personal smears.” Abby has more below on the political implications of this tragic story. Finally, I’ll have fresh news and notes from the state’s G.O.P. Senate primary, plus a broader look at the growing unease among Republicans wondering if Trump will deploy his vast political war chest to help them win in November.

Also mentioned in this issue: Hakeem Jeffries, Bill Ferguson, Chuck Schumer, Wes Moore, Nancy Pelosi, Les Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein, Robert Garcia, Donald Trump, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, Wesley Hunt, Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles, James Blair, Tony Fabrizio, and more…

This political primary season actually proves the adage that everything is bigger in Texas, given the high-stakes and extremely costly contests on both sides of the aisle. Early voting has begun ahead of the March 3 primary. The high-profile Democratic primary throwdown between evangelical Christian James Talarico and left-wing firebrand Jasmine Crockett has already drawn in Stephen Colbert, David Ellison’s CBS, and Brendan Carr’s F.C.C. On the Republican side, the three-way primary between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, scandal-plagued State A.G. Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt has become the second-most-expensive in the country so far, with $98 million spent on television advertising, according to AdImpact. That’s all just a prelude to what will likely be one of the most expensive general election Senate races in history this November.

Paxton, who has led most of the polls, has accounted for just 2 percent of all that primary spending. That’s not entirely surprising: Sources close to Paxton told me late last year that he planned on spending very little, believing it wouldn’t be necessary before a likely runoff. But as early voting begins, Paxton is showing signs of life. On Friday, he launched his first television ad—a minuscule $350,000 buy, according to AdImpact—and he held his first major campaign event on Monday. His allies say his last-minute spending isn’t a symptom of anxiety about making the runoff but rather an effort to run up the score. Roughly 500,000 voters, a person close to Paxton said, are leaning toward one of the three candidates and remain persuadable. Paxton wants to pick up as many of them as possible.

While there’s little chance Paxton will win outright with more than 50 percent of the vote on March 3, the closer he gets, the easier the eventual runoff will be. Cornyn and his allies, however, see the coming vote as a chance to get a Trump endorsement, which the president has so far declined to give on the grounds of being friends with all three candidates. (Instead, he’s said, “We’ll see what happens, but I support all three.”) But if Cornyn proves that he can tie or at least get close to Paxton, and voters who didn’t vote for him appear to be coming over to his side for the runoff, that may convince Trump to endorse the incumbent. “His ballot position is going to be very critical,” one Republican operative who works on Senate races told me. LaCivita and Fabrizio, who are working for Cornyn, would surely make the pro-Cornyn case to the president.

And yet, as one Republican senator said, Trump believes that Paxton can win the general election. This complicates Cornyn’s quest for the runoff endorsement, though the senator sees it as a “massive win” for the incumbent that Trump hasn’t backed Paxton outright ahead of March 3. “It’s the reason why John Cornyn will be in the runoff,” this person said. That…and the $59 million that Cornyn has already spent on TV ads.

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