President Donald Trump again declined to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary for Texas’s U.S. Senate race, saying he supports “all three” competitors running for the party’s nomination.
When incumbent Sen. John Cornyn asked Trump for his endorsement in January, the president was not ready to make his pick.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, this race would be over if you decided to endorse,’” the senator said in a January 10 interview with the Houston Chronicle. “He said, ‘I know, I know.’ He’s obviously not ready to do that. And I think he wants to see how the race develops.”
Cornyn is running to keep his seat while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt are also vying for the spot. Recent polls show Paxton in the lead.
On the first of February, Trump told reporters that his “problem” with making an endorsement in the race is that he is “friendly with all of them.”
“I’m giving it very serious thought,” he said. “My problem is that I’m friendly with all of them. So those are the hard ones.”
Adding that he likes all three candidates, he noted that “you’ll being seeing soon” about an endorsement.
This Monday, NBC News White House correspondent Garrett Haake reported that Trump again said he supports “all three candidates,” and pushed off issuing an endorsement:
The primary election will be held on March 3.
Recent polling, conducted in late January by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, found that 38 percent of likely voters intend to vote for Paxton in the March GOP primary.
Trailing seven points behind was Cornyn with 31 percent of the likely vote, then Hunt with 17 percent. Only two percent of respondents selected another candidate, and 12 percent were undecided.
Turning Point Action recently endorsed Paxton, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Cornyn.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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