Cornyn beats Hegar to snatch fourth term
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, one of the top Republicans in the Senate, is heading back to D.C. for a fourth term.
Democratic challenger MJ Hegar, a former Air Force pilot, conceded the race about 8 p.m. Tuesday and was trailing by nearly10 percentage points at 10:30 p.m.
Cornyn, a former state attorney general and Texas Supreme Court justice, vowed to represent all Texans — “whether I earned your vote or whether you were pulling for my opponent.”
“My goal as your United States senator is simple: continue to make Texas a
place of exceptional opportunity for all,” he said.
Texans have not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen won a third term in 1988. Still, Hegar appeared on track to come closer than any challenger to defeating Cornyn, who has won each of his past re-election races by double digits, including a 27-point victory in 2014.
Hegar is a decorated combat veteran and political newcomer who presented herself as a motorcycleriding “badass” who could bring fresh ideas to D.C., where, she argued, Cornyn had lost touch with Texans over the last 18 years.
“I am confident that the work we did will move our state forward for years to come,” Hegar said in an email to supporters. “Take some time to rest and recover, and then, let’s get back towork. We can’t give up, and we won’t.”
Much has changed since Cornyn’s last race. Texas has added millions of voters — many of them young or from out of state — as the state’s largest cities grew and tilted further Democratic and as the suburbs around them followed suit.
Hegar, a native of Williamson County, a long-red stretch north of Austin where she still lives, sought to capitalize on those changes.
Hegar spoke openly about her own “political evolution” — raised in a Republican family, she voted for GOP candidates consistently until 2012, but said she realized after leaving the military that Democrats were more in line with her views. It was a change of thinking that she hoped would draw other moderates in Texas, especially in suburbs.
But it appeared that strategy fell short as Hegar trailed in key suburban counties, including her home county. Joe Biden led Trump there late Tuesday.
Cornyn painted Hegar as “too liberal” for Texas, roping her in with Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Cornyn stuck close to Trump through most of the race— his campaign sold shirts calling Texas
“Trump Country.” But the senator offered some rare criticism of the president in the final fewweeks, including saying Trump “let his guard down” on the coronavirus, the issue that dominated the elections — and one that Hegar repeatedly accused Cornyn of downplaying.
Still, Cornyn, who appeared to be winning more votes than Trump in Texas, said Tuesday that he is “proud to work with this president” to confirm judges, cut taxes and slash regulations. He said that when he disagrees with Trump, the president listens.
Cornyn led in polling throughout the race, but Hegar saw a late surge in fundraising, raking in at least $5 million more than Cornyn in the final days.
She also benefited from an expensive advertising blitz by her campaign and outside groups, which poured tens of millions of dollars into advertising to help Hegar familiarize herself with voters.
“I think our friends on the other side had so much money, they had more money than they knew what to do with, so they ended up investing in a long shot, like places like Texas,” Cornyn said.
Name recognition was something Cornyn struggled with, too — and that polling that consistently showed that as many as a third of voters weren’t familiar with the incumbent after 18 years in the Senate was one of the main reasons Democrats believed he was vulnerable.
Cornyn said he felt his ads focused on “important but maybe rather small accomplishments,” such as legislation aimed at curbing human trafficking or cutting down on the backlog of untested rape kits, helped push him to victory.
“I think people saw me as a problem solver,” he said.