My Dear John (Cornyn) Letter

Stuart Stevens met the future Republican Senator nearly 30 years ago and advised several of his campaigns. Here's an inside look into Cornyn's political collapse in the Trump era.

Oh, John. It didn’t have to be this way.

When we first met, you were a highly respected Texas Supreme Court Justice. That was 1997, and you were thinking about running for Texas Attorney General. You were reluctant to leave a job you found intellectually rewarding for that thing called politics.

When you ran for AG, you had high standards about the kind of campaign we could run. When we wanted to paint you as the toughest sheriff west of the Pecos, you said no. You told us that in Texas, the Attorney General mostly deals with white collar crime and child support, not kicking in doors for hardened criminals.

When I argued you had a better chance of winning as the tough-on-crime guy, you shrugged and said that if you lost, you lost, but you weren’t going to run that kind of campaign. You won anyway. You became the first Republican AG since Reconstruction.

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When you ran for the Senate against Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who would have been the first African-American Senator from Texas, you vetoed our toughest negative ads. You wanted to win, but on your own terms. As a campaign professional, it was frustrating. But we all respected it.

When Trump rolled out his Mexicans-are-rapists campaign, you called him out in your gentlemanly, measured way: “This idea that all you can do is build some obstacle and people won’t come over it, or go under it, or go through it is naive.” That was the John Cornyn I knew.

Then came the Access Hollywood tape. Many Republicans were calling for Trump to step aside. And you showed the first symptom of the disease that yesterday killed your political career: “Well, you know the problem in presidential elections is you have two choices. The primary process has worked its way forward. I’ll support Mr. Trump.”