The country's largest union of Border Patrol officers has abandoned its endorsement of Sen. John Cornyn and thrown its support behind Ken Paxton, a move that consolidates Republican backing for the Texas attorney general as a new poll shows him locked in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent.
The National Border Patrol Council shared its endorsement switch with Fox News Digital, which first reported the development. NBPC President Paul Perez said the union was backing Paxton because of his record on border enforcement, and because he stood up when others wouldn't.
"While many looked the other way during the Biden border crisis, Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken action to defend our state, our nation's sovereignty and to support those on the front lines."
The endorsement flip matters for two reasons. First, it signals that the institutional GOP apparatus that once rallied around Cornyn is now coalescing behind Paxton ahead of a general election fight no one expected to be competitive. Second, it lands just as a New York Times/Siena College poll released in late June showed Paxton and Democratic candidate James Talarico tied at 47 percent among likely Texas voters, a result that sent shockwaves through a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in nearly four decades.
Paxton defeated Cornyn in the May primary runoff after President Trump issued a last-minute endorsement. The margin was decisive, Paxton routed the three-term incumbent by 27 points, but primary fights leave scars, and the NBPC's original backing of Cornyn was one of them.
Now the union has come around. Perez framed the decision in operational terms, not political ones.
"We know Ken Paxton stands with the men and women of the National Border Patrol Council who are on the frontlines protecting our borders, and he has always fought to uphold the rule of law."
Perez added that the NBPC was endorsing Paxton "because we know he will continue fighting for the resources, policies, and leadership our agents need to keep America's borders secure."
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who had previously backed Cornyn, has also expressed support for Paxton, described as saying he was "all in" for the attorney general. The party consolidation follows a familiar pattern: a bruising primary, a clear winner, and a general election threat that focuses minds.
Paxton has built his candidacy around the border. As attorney general, he sued the Biden administration more than 100 times, many of those suits targeting immigration and border security policy. He filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on its last day in office over offshore drilling limits. Texas, which comprises over 60 percent of the U.S. southern border, gave Paxton an outsized stage for those fights.
That record is what Paxton pointed to in responding to the NBPC endorsement.
"As Attorney General, I have spent years fighting the Biden administration's unlawful immigrant agenda, defending Texas' right to secure our border, and standing with law enforcement officers."
He pledged to carry that posture into the Senate, saying he would ensure "President Trump's border security agenda is fully implemented, funded, and never undermined by partisan politics."
A close Trump ally, Paxton has leaned into that relationship throughout the campaign. Trump's endorsement one week before the runoff proved decisive, and the president has continued to weigh in on the general election contest.
For decades, a Texas Senate race was a formality for Republicans. The NYT/Siena survey upended that assumption. With Paxton and Talarico deadlocked at 47 percent, Democrats suddenly have a plausible path, at least on paper, in a state that hasn't sent one of their own to the upper chamber in close to 40 years.
Talarico, a 37-year-old former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian, has proven to be a prolific fundraiser. He raised $27 million in the first three months of this year, making him one of the top Democratic fundraisers in Senate races nationally.
His campaign unveiled what it called a "commonsense border security agenda" that includes hiring more Border Patrol agents, improving threat detection technology at the border, and hiring more immigration judges. The campaign says the agenda has been endorsed by Republican, Democrat, and Independent border sheriffs and elected officials.
JT Ennis, a Talarico campaign spokesperson, told Fox News Digital that "both parties have failed us on the border" and that Talarico "is the only candidate in this race to unveil a border security agenda endorsed by Republicans and Democrats."
But Ennis also offered a line that reveals where Talarico's actual priorities sit. He said Talarico was running "to keep our country safe by deporting criminals instead of hunting down moms, babies, and small business owners who have been contributing to our economy for decades." That framing, drawing a sharp line between criminal aliens and the broader illegal immigrant population, is standard progressive positioning dressed in border-hawk clothing.
Paxton has made clear he intends to define Talarico by his own words. The attorney general said flatly that "Talarico doesn't belong in Texas" and that "he fits in California."
The basis for that claim extends well beyond border policy. Talarico has previously stated that "God is nonbinary," claimed there are six biological sexes, and described himself as a Christian who "hates Christianity." He has also said the southern border "should be like our front porch" with "a giant welcome mat out front, and a lock on the door."
Those statements may play well in Austin faculty lounges. Whether they play well in Midland, Lubbock, or the Rio Grande Valley is another question entirely. Even some Democrats have declined to rally behind Talarico, exposing fractures within the party over whether he can hold together a coalition broad enough to win statewide.
Paxton, meanwhile, has faced his own political headwinds. Democrats have tried to make his personal conduct a campaign issue, but the NBPC endorsement and the broader GOP consolidation suggest the party faithful are looking past those attacks and toward the general election fight.
The NBPC's decision to switch from Cornyn to Paxton is more than symbolic. Border Patrol agents are not abstract political actors. They are the men and women who physically stand on the line between legal entry and illegal entry, between an orderly immigration system and chaos. When their union says one candidate understands their mission and the other doesn't, voters in a border state tend to listen.
The endorsement also removes one of the last institutional holdovers from the Cornyn era. With Thune on board, the NBPC on board, and Trump's endorsement already secured, Paxton enters the general election with a unified Republican flank, something that seemed uncertain just weeks ago.
Talarico's $27 million war chest and his 47-percent polling number are real. No serious observer should dismiss them. But money and a momentary polling snapshot are not the same as a durable coalition in a state where border security is not an abstraction, it's a daily reality for communities stretched along more than 1,200 miles of frontier.
Trump himself has predicted a Paxton victory, and the consolidation of party support suggests the president's confidence is shared by the institutional right.
A candidate who says the border should have "a giant welcome mat out front" is now asking Texans to send him to Washington to secure it. The Border Patrol agents who actually work that line just told voters what they think of that pitch.
