John Cornyn, a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 2002 and re-elected in 2008. He is a member of the minority leadership as the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Cornyn was born in Houston and spent much of his childhood in San Antonio. His father was an oral pathologist in the Air Force stationed in Japan, where Cornyn went to high school. After his father retired from the service, the family settled in San Antonio. Cornyn graduated from Trinity University and St. Mary’s University School of Law, both in San Antonio, in the 1970s. He practiced law for five years with a firm that defended doctors and insurance companies in medical malpractice cases. In 1984, he ran for district court judge on the Republican ticket in Bexar County and, at age 32, upset a strong favorite in the race. In 1990, Cornyn was elected to the state Supreme Court. In 1995, he wrote a 5-4 decision upholding the “Robin Hood” school finance system, in which property-wealthy school districts had to send money to property-poor districts.
In 1997, he resigned from the court to run for attorney general, defeating two better-known opponents in the Republican primary. In the general election, he faced a grizzled veteran of Texas politics, Jim Mattox, a populist Democrat, a former U.S. House member from Dallas and the second-place finisher to Ann Richards in the 1990 runoff for Texas governor. Cornyn won 54%-44%, becoming the first Republican attorney general in Texas since Reconstruction. He argued two cases before the U. S. Supreme Court, including the Santa Fe Independent School District’s defense of reading the Lord’s Prayer at football games. (The high court nixed it.)
When Sen. Phil Gramm announced that he would not seek re-election in 2002, Cornyn got into the contest to succeed him. He had no serious opposition in the Republican primary. Democrats nominated Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, the son of the first black mailman in Austin, a teacher and former aide to Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. He had been elected mayor of Dallas in 1995, and re-elected in 1999 by a wide margin. In the primary, he overcame challenges from former U.S. Rep. Ken Bentsen of Houston, the senator’s nephew, and Victor Morales, a track coach from suburban Dallas who had been the Democratic nominee against Gramm in 1996. Morales finished just narrowly ahead of Kirk in the first round of balloting. Kirk was endorsed by Bentsen and won the runoff, 60%-40%.
In the general election, Cornyn ran as a supporter of President George W. Bush. He called for making Bush’s 2001 tax cuts permanent, for extending the research and development tax credit, and for raising Texas’ share of gas tax funds from 90.5 cents to 95 cents of each dollar of gas tax revenues. He supported government vouchers for private school tuition, individual investment accounts as part of Social Security and color-blind standards for college and university admissions. Kirk took opposite stands on most issues, but portrayed himself as a moderate Democrat who would support Bush on many issues.
Republicans ran ads linking him to Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a New York senator, and liberal out-of-state contributors. Kirk campaigned with a sense of humor and considerable charm, making fun of his bald pate and answering, when asked whether he owned a gun, “I have a wife and two little girls. You figure it out.” But he made some mistakes. He opposed the nomination to a federal judgeship of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, something Republicans seized on in ads. He refused to disclose his income tax returns, except for allowing reporters one peek at his 2001 return. Cornyn came out in favor of a bill in the Texas legislature requiring district attorneys to seek the death penalty for killers of law enforcement officials after the Austin-based district attorney had not sought the death penalty for the killer of a Travis County sheriff’s deputy. Kirk said Cornyn was acting like he was running for district attorney, and then apologized to a convention of law enforcement officials a few days later. Meanwhile, Cornyn met with the deputy’s widow. In the high-spending contest, Kirk spent $8.9 million to Cornyn’s $9.5 million.
Texas Democrats considered their 2002 ticket of Kirk for senator and Tony Sanchez for governor the “Dream Team,” and hoped it would draw a large turnout of African-Americans and Hispanics. Meanwhile, Republicans quietly registered thousands of new voters in the heavily Republican and fast-growing suburban counties around Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Polls showed the race close in the spring. Democrats operated on the assumption that Kirk had to win 85% of blacks, 65% of Hispanics and 35% of whites to win. He clearly achieved the first and probably achieved the second of those goals, but failed by a solid margin to achieve the third. Cornyn won 55%-43%—almost the same percentages as in his race for attorney general in 1998 and a fair reflection of basic party identification in Texas in recent years. Kirk carried historically Republican Dallas County 50%-49%. But Cornyn carried the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, 58%-41%. Cornyn also won metro Houston, 55%-43%, and the combined San Antonio and Austin metro areas, 51%-47%. The border went 69%-29% for Kirk, a 148,000-vote margin. But rural and small-town Texas went 62%-37% for Cornyn. He won the seat that dates to Sam Houston, who won it shortly after Texas was annexed in 1845; it was later occupied by Lyndon Johnson and John Tower. Cornyn is also the first Texas senator to come from San Antonio, once the state’s largest city.
In his first term, Cornyn chaired the Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee. He was a lead sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, which got less than 50 votes. He also supported amendments to expand the rights of crime victims and to overturn a federal court’s decision banning the phrase “one nation under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. He cosponsored the class action and bankruptcy bills opposed by trial lawyers but passed by the Senate and signed by Bush in 2005. He also took a lead role in seeking to confirm Bush appellate court appointees. Cornyn was initially critical of the “Gang of 14,” a bipartisan group of senators who ultimately succeeded in hammering out a compromise on the explosive issue of changing Senate rules to stop filibusters. He later said, “In retrospect, I have to concede they actually broke the logjam that allowed us to get some very good people confirmed.”
In more recent confirmation battles on the committee, Cornyn in May 2009 said it was “terrible” for former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich to characterize Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s self-description, “wise Latina,” as racist, but he voted against her confirmation in July, as he did against the nomination of Elena Kagan in 2010.
In a split with the Bush administration in 2007, Cornyn criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his handling of the firings of U.S. attorneys. He worked on a bipartisan basis with Democratic Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont on strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, which guarantees the public the right to view public documents. He and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar collaborated successfully in August 2010 on a bill to create take-back programs to collect prescription medicines that would be run by the government and private firms.
One of Cornyn’s first successful bills reduced, from three years to one year, the waiting period for citizenship for legal immigrants serving in the armed forces. He has opposed military patrols of the border and the building of a fence along most of its length, which he says would disrupt life in South Texas. In 2006, he voted for the 700-mile border fence pushed by House Republicans, though he questioned whether it would be a “practical use” of federal money. In spring 2007, as Republicans and Democrats in the Senate tried to negotiate an immigration bill, Cornyn took part in the talks but skipped the unveiling of the final bill. Arizona Republican John McCain angrily accused him of raising arcane legal issues to scuttle the bill. Cornyn said of the talks, “I didn’t so much walk away as got chased away.” His amendment to bar illegal immigrants convicted of identity theft from legalization processes was defeated 51-46. From then on, he opposed the larger immigration bill.
In 2010, as some conservatives called for abolishing the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship, Cornyn was cool to the idea. He told the Associated Press that hearings on the issue would be “going after a symptom rather than the cause of the problem” of illegal immigration, and that he would rather emphasize getting the federal government to do a better job securing the border and enforcing immigration laws. In May 2012, Cornyn offered a bill that would free up 55,000 immigrant visas per year for graduate students in math and science.
On the hot topic of earmarks in recent years, Cornyn supported the Republicans’ 2010 ban on the special spending provisions. Democrats sought to embarrass him and other Republicans by including their earlier earmark requests in an omnibus appropriations bill. He has sponsored bills to compensate county governments for the cost of levee replacements in the Rio Grande Valley and to protect Texas citrus farmers against citrus greening disease, after it decimated 100,000 acres in Florida.
Cornyn emerged as a leading critic of the Obama administration’s “fast and furious” program. The ill-fated plan allegedly allowed guns to cross the border into Mexico as a way to track drug cartels, but the guns were later linked to fatal shootings. In October 2011, Cornyn’s bill blocking the Justice Department from undertaking future fast and furious-type programs passed the Senate, 99-0. Cornyn later called for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign over the matter.
Cornyn also exercised his oversight powers in criticizing Ashton Carter, the head of weapons acquisition at the Pentagon. In August 2011, he sent a letter to Carter expressing disappointment for his “lack of commitment to the success” of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, which originated at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth. After Cornyn said he received assurances from Carter that the “F-35 will form the backbone” of U.S. air combat, he voted to confirm Carter as deputy defense secretary. On another weapons issue, Cornyn failed to influence the Obama administration. The Obama White House denied Taiwan the right to buy F-16 fighter jets, but Cornyn offered an amendment in September 2011 to override that decision. His amendment failed, 48-48.
Cornyn began his campaign for re-election in 2008 with polls showing he was less popular than fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. But Democratic attempts to attract a well-known challenger failed. Their nominee was Houston state Rep. Rick Noriega, who had served with the Texas Army National Guard in Afghanistan. He set a goal of raising $10 million, but ultimately raised $4 million to Cornyn’s $16.5 million. Polls consistently showed Cornyn ahead, and neither national party invested in the contest. Cornyn won 55%-43%, the same margin as in 2002. He won 36% of the Hispanic vote, an improvement over 2002. He carried 223 of the state’s 254 counties, running behind only in the Rio Grande Valley and in the counties with the central cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.
Cornyn had a major role in the Republican leadership in 2010 as chairman of the NRSC, the main political arm of the Senate GOP. Democrats had gained 14 Senate seats in the 2006 and 2008 campaign cycles, when their Senate campaign committee was headed by Chuck Schumer of New York; Cornyn wanted to reverse those results. Cornyn adopted Schumer’s strategy of recruiting candidates who could win in states not naturally inclined to his party. He urged Gov. Charlie Crist to run in Florida and Rep. Mike Castle to run in Delaware. He opposed the candidacy of former Rep. Pat Toomey, who announced he was running again in Pennsylvania against Arlen Specter, who had won their 2004 primary by only 51%-49%. But as the tea party movement gained strength and opposition to Obama administration programs grew, conservatives criticized his treatment of Toomey, a staunch conservative. In April 2009, Specter announced he was switching parties, leaving Cornyn in the embarrassing position of having to support Toomey, now the obvious Republican nominee. Toomey went on to win the seat. In Florida, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio remained in the Republican race against Crist, Cornyn’s chosen candidate, and Rubio proceeded to win endorsements from conservative groups and dozens of county Republican parties despite the governor’s high job ratings.
Despite these setbacks, Cornyn succeeded in the chairman’s major duty: raising large sums for the candidates. He brought in $115 million for the season, and came close to matching the $130 million raised for the 2010 election by the rival Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In states carried by President Barack Obama in 2008, Cornyn recruited serious candidates like Dino Rossi in Washington and saw promising newcomers emerge, like Ron Johnson in Wisconsin. Cornyn managed to surf the conservative tide when it gained strength. When Crist fell behind Rubio in polls, Cornyn urged him not to leave the party; when he did, the NRSC backed Rubio. When Joe Miller upset Lisa Murkowski in the August primary in Alaska, the NRSC supported Miller against Murkowski’s ultimately successful write-in campaign. When Christine O’Donnell upset Mike Castle in the September primary in Delaware, Cornyn sent in the technical maximum of $42,000 and then left her on her own, correctly calculating that she had no chance of making it a close race. Republicans ended up gaining six seats, many more than seemed likely in January 2009, when insiders were predicting further Democratic gains. O’Donnell lost in Delaware, where Castle would almost certainly have won. Sharron Angle lost in Nevada, and Ken Buck lost narrowly in Colorado.
After the election, Cornyn got another term as NRSC chairman for the 2012 contests without serious opposition. Plainly irritated by South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint’s endorsements of candidates whose chances he thought dim in 2010, notably Angle and O’Donnell, he urged colleagues to bring concerns they had about candidates to him. DeMint pledged not to oppose any incumbent Republican senators, a pledge probably relevant to Olympia Snowe of Maine, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Orrin Hatch of Utah, who faced the possibility of conservative primary opponents in 2012. Cornyn in turn made it plain that he would be more wary of taking sides in primaries, as he did in the Pennsylvania contest. In October 2011, Roll Call reported that Cornyn and DeMint had reached a “détente” on Senate races. This has been easier in theory than in practice. Cornyn and the NRSC remained neutral during the 2012 Republican Senate primary between tea-party favorite Richard Mourdock and incumbent Lugar. But The New York Times reported that the Team DeMint campaign committee gave a half-million dollars to the Club for Growth Action Fund, which in turn helped Mourdock oust Lugar in an upset.
In February 2011, when Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona announced that he would retire at the end of his term in 2012, Cornyn announced that he would run for whip. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee initially said he would run, but later announced he would drop out of the race and leave the Senate leadership altogether. Sen. Richard Burr, R.N.C. also briefly considered running for the whip position. But in March 2012, Burr decided against it, leaving Cornyn’s claim to the number 2 spot all but assured.
Cornyn will be up for re-election himself in 2014. Hutchison has announced her retirement in 2012 and Cornyn decided to stay neutral in the first multi-candidate Republican primary for Senate in Texas since 1984. But the upstart tea-party candidate, Ted Cruz, notably declined to endorse Cornyn’s bid for whip.
