President Trump blanketed Texas’s congressional map with endorsements on Friday — and the silence around the state’s U.S. Senate race was deafening.
With just days remaining before Texas Republicans head to the polls on March 3, Trump took to Truth Social on February 27 to throw his weight behind a sweeping slate of House and statewide candidates. The move, timed to the final day of early voting, underscored his continued grip on the Texas GOP. But his conspicuous refusal to pick a side in the state’s marquee Senate contest — a three-way slugfest between sitting Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt — left one of the cycle’s biggest questions very much unanswered.
A Map Redrawn, A Base Rewarded
Trump’s endorsements weren’t scattered. They were strategic. He opened with a pointed salute to Gov. Greg Abbott, crediting him with shepherding a mid-decade redistricting effort that Republicans believe will deliver five new MAGA-aligned seats in the House. “Thanks to Greg’s bold and effective Leadership, the wonderful people of Texas will have the opportunity to elect 5 new MAGA Republicans in the 2026 Midterm Elections with the passage of their new, fair, and much improved, Congressional Map,” Trump wrote.
That map is now the backdrop for nearly every race on the ballot. Trump’s endorsements followed its contours closely — blessing incumbents across 18 congressional districts, including Nathaniel Moran in TX-1, Keith Self in TX-3, Lance Gooden in TX-5, and Ronny Jackson in TX-13, among others. He also extended his blessing to Jessica Steinmann in TX-8, where a retiring Republican left an open seat. The list was long. Methodical. Almost exhaustive.
Almost.
The Unendorsed
Two notable absences stand out. The first is the Senate race itself, where all three major candidates — Cornyn, Paxton, and Hunt — attended Trump’s Texas event without walking away with what each of them most wanted: his blessing. When asked about the race earlier, Trump was characteristically breezy and noncommittal. “They’ve all supported me, they’re all good, and you’re supposed to pick one, but we’ll see what happens, but I support all three,” he said. That’s not exactly a ringing declaration. It’s a shrug dressed up in compliments.
The second omission is more personal: Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who emerged from Friday’s announcement as the only sitting Texas Republican House member left without a presidential nod. That’s not an accident in Trump world. Crenshaw has had a fraught relationship with the MAGA base for years, and the snub — deliberate or otherwise — is unlikely to go unnoticed heading into primary week.
Meanwhile, in Texas’s 19th congressional district, where incumbent Rep. Jodey Arrington is stepping aside, candidates are jostling for position without any presidential cover. One of them, Abraham Enriquez, has leaned hard into his Trump alignment on the trail. “My top priorities are to make President Trump’s border policies permanent, restore American energy dominance, and cut the regulations and spending that are squeezing working families,” Enriquez told the Texas Tribune. Trump, for his part, has stayed out of it entirely.
The Senate Race Hangs in the Balance
So what happens next? If none of the Senate candidates clears 50 percent on March 3 — and in a three-way race, that’s a real possibility — the top two finishers will meet in a runoff on May 26. That’s when a Trump endorsement could prove decisive. And that, some observers believe, may be exactly the point. Holding his endorsement in reserve gives Trump maximum leverage over whichever two candidates survive to fight another day.
The political betting markets seem to agree. A market on PredictIt tracking whom Trump will eventually back in the Senate primary has been active for weeks, with no clear consensus — a reflection of just how genuinely uncertain the situation remains.
Trump’s visit to Texas was officially framed around economic messaging. “President Trump looks forward to returning to the great State of Texas this week to discuss the economy and tout his ‘Drill Baby Drill’ agenda,” a statement from his team noted ahead of the trip. That’s the official line, anyway. But in the hours before primary week, every handshake and every omission carries its own unmistakable message.
In Texas Republican politics right now, what Trump doesn’t say matters just as much as what he does — and three Senate candidates are learning that lesson in real time.
