Conservatives are about to have the chance to oust some of the Republican Party’s worst elected officials. The question is: Will they take it?
Primary elections to decide which Republicans will run in the 2026 midterms are now officially underway, with the states of Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas each holding such elections on Tuesday. The states are the nation’s first primary contests for the 2026 cycle and will hold subsequent runoff elections later this spring for races in which no candidate garners the required percentage of the vote to secure the nomination.
Among the most notable is Texas’ Republican Senate primary, where incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is facing challenges from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. While polls aren’t always predictive of how a race turns out, many surveys compiled by RealClearPolitics have consistently shown Paxton leading the pack.
According to the RCP average, Paxton leads with 39.2 percent of the vote, while Cornyn and Hunt trail with 35.4 and 15.8 percent, respectively. Should no candidate receive more than 50 percent during Tuesday’s race, the top two vote-getters will face each other in the May 26 runoff to determine who will be the Republican nominee for the general election.
Other noteworthy races include North Carolina’s Senate GOP primary to see who will compete for outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis’ seat and the Republican primary for Paxton’s soon-to-be-former seat for Texas attorney general.
The primary process is an avenue for conservative voters to ensure that the individual seeking to represent them in public office is actually willing to fight for their beliefs and preferred policies on the issues that matter, when they matter. Unfortunately, too many GOP voters have long neglected it.
What’s become apparent in recent years is Republican electors’ routine apathy to the primary process has permitted RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) to hijack the party and stonewall conservative priorities.
The battle to pass the SAVE America Act encapsulates this problem perfectly.
One would think that approving a bill codifying widely popular voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements in federal elections would be the bare minimum Senate Republicans could accomplish with their majority. Yet, a handful of GOP senators — many of whom hail from solidly Republican states — are reportedly blocking efforts to force Democrats into a talking filibuster to move such legislation forward.
Such fecklessness isn’t exclusive to the federal government, either.
“Republican” officials in so-called “red states” like Indiana sabotaged efforts to redistrict the state’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms. Others, in states like West Virginia, have blocked or killed medical freedom legislation and additional conservative-backed policies.
At every turn, left-wingers masquerading as Republicans have stifled conservative priorities. And at every turn, GOP voters (and via his bad endorsements, President Trump) have allowed them to get away with it.
[READ: Want Better Republicans? Stop Sitting Out Primaries]
Republican electors can pick whichever candidate they choose in any given election or sit out the process altogether. That’s their prerogative as voters. But continued neglect of primaries has shown there are consequences to abandoning this important feature of American citizenship.
Being a citizen is a duty that requires one to be engaged with his governments and holding his elected officials accountable when they stray from the pledges they made. That’s the responsibility of any and every American.
Should conservatives fail to realize this and act on it, then the status quo, in which RINOs screw over their constituents, will continue unabated.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
