Texas Attorney General Paxton defeats Bush in Republican runoff

AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won his Republican runoff election against Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush on Tuesday despite facing a slew of legal problems, including an FBI investigation and a trial on securities fraud charges.

Bush is the only member of his famous family still in office, but the loss means he will now exit in January. That will leave the Bush dynasty out of elected office for one of the few times in the last 40 years.

The coming end of the Bush era — at least for now — came at the hands of a two-term incumbent still dogged by a 2015 felony indictment and a separate FBI investigation into accusation of corruption. But importantly in Texas, Paxton had the backing of former President Donald Trump, who has mocked and antagonized the Bush family on his way to taking their mantle as the GOP’s standard-bearer.

Paxton, who has denied wrongdoing, is now within reach of a third term in Texas, where a Democrat hasn’t won statewide office in nearly 30 years. More recently, the State Bar of Texas is weighing possible reprimands against Paxton over his baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

It was one of two closely watched primary runoffs in Texas: On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress, was in the fight of his political career against Jessica Cisneros, who supports abortion rights.

Despite finishing second in March’s four-way primary, Bush trailed Paxton by 20 points. The wide gap underscored Paxton’s continued political durability and showed how much ground the 46-year-old scion of the Bush political dynasty needed to make up with GOP voters in Texas, where his uncle, former President George W. Bush, was once governor and his late grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush, was a congressman and longtime Houston resident.

But the Bushes’ influence in the GOP is not what it once was. Two years ago, Pierce Bush, a cousin of George P. Bush, became the first member of his family to lose a race in Texas in 40 years in a failed run for Congress in Houston.