Texas Republicans have long set aside primary-season bitterness and closed ranks each November to carry the GOP nominee across the finish line. This cycle, that reflex is faltering. According to a report in The Atlantic, Republicans across the state believe President Donald Trump has, this time, planted them at a bridge too far.

Among them are John Huffman, a 43-year-old Texas entrepreneur, and Hillary Shepheard, who say they are not willing to bail the party out of its own poor choices by helping elect Senate candidate Ken Paxton or Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate Bo French. Despite its name, the Railroad Commission is the state agency that regulates the state's oil and gas industry.

“Our party needs a slap in the face,” Shepheard said, adding that for the long-term survival of her party, “Ken Paxton has to lose.”

In their telling, Trump has remade the Texas Republican Party in his own image, transforming it into a machine built not for winning general elections but for allowing him to “dominate poisonous primaries.” The result, they warned, is some of the worst candidates ever to soil a Texas ballot.

“What we have,” Huffman said, “is a fractured set of relationships that we are finding harder and harder to mend.”

French, the former chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party, once shared a poll asking whether Jews or Muslims were a bigger threat to America. Atlantic writer Elaine Godfrey reports that French, now a billionaire-backed GOP nominee, continues to post bigoted messages.

Paxton carries his own well-documented baggage. He was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 over allegations that included bribery, though state senators acquitted him later that year and he remained in office. “Then there is Paxton. The three-term Texas attorney general is well known by now for facing accusations of securities fraud and bribery, for his alleged extramarital affairs, and for his less important but notable decision to pocket a $1,000 pen that did not belong to him,” Godfrey writes.

Huffman said he has limits. “I held my nose and voted for Trump three times, knowing that he didn’t share a lot of my moral compass,” he said. But voting for Paxton, he added, “would be admitting to myself and my family and my friends that character truly doesn’t matter as long as your jersey is Republican.”

When Godfrey pointed out that Paxton and Trump share “a remarkably similar set of ethical problems” and asked why “support one but draw a line at the other,” Huffman answered that the presidency matters more than a single Senate seat. “There’s also part of me that understands the compromise I had to make to vote for Trump, and maybe this is my way of reclaiming a little bit of that,” he said.

For Huffman and Shepheard, the damage is already beyond repair. They told Godfrey “it’s too late — that Trump and his allies ripped the door off its hinges years ago,” with devastating results.

Huffman saw the fallout firsthand. In last year’s special election to fill a state Senate vacancy, he lost a three-way fight against a self-described “ultra-MAGA” candidate and a Democrat. Trump carried that district by 17 points in 2024, Godfrey noted, yet it elected the Democrat by 14.

If Paxton tanks, Huffman believes the Texas GOP might feel compelled to reform the way it runs primaries, opening the way for “more reasonable, less morally compromised candidates” to succeed. “Ken Paxton losing may be the thing that could save the Republican Party in Texas.”

Other Republicans, however, are terrified of what could happen if Democrats start building inroads, no matter how flawed the GOP’s options may be.

No Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas since 1994. “We are exactly where we wanted to be 30 years ago,” said Jill Tate, a 53-year-old Republican activist and the president of the Texas Federation of Republican Women. “If we lose one statewide, the door is open. We cannot let it be open.”

The November midterms will show which view reflects where Texas Republican voters actually stand.