Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton has held off a primary challenge Tuesday night, according to Decision Desk HQ.
The race was called at 8:37 p.m. ET.
George P. Bush, the nephew of the former President George W. Bush and son of former Florida GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, was defeated in the race against the incumbent Paxton, who had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Paxton consistently led in polling in his reelection bid for a third term, though surveys tightened in the weeks before the vote. He beat out Bush, the state's land commissioner, for Trump's endorsement.
But the younger Bush's underdog status highlights a remarkable shift within the state's Republican Party over the past decade, with the center of power moving from the business-friendly wing squarely into the social conservatives' camp.
Paxton boosted his standing in right-wing circles when he asked the U.S. Supreme Court to bar Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania from casting their electoral votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The court tossed out the case.
In the state's March 1 primary, Paxton took nearly 43% of the votes, while Bush won nearly 23%. The top vote getter in Tuesday's runoff will be well-positioned to win office against a Democrat opponent in November in heavily Republican Texas.
Republican primary voters "see [Paxton] as a fighter, as someone who will take the fight to Democrats, to the liberals and the socialists with vigor," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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