John Cornyn

In 1998 Cornyn ran for Texas Attorney General. In the March Republican primary Railroad Commissioner Barry Williamson received 38% of the vote and Cornyn, then a state Supreme Court Justice, 32%.[12] In the April runoff election, Cornyn defeated Williamson, 58% to 42%.[13] In the general election Cornyn defeated former attorney general (1983–1991) and U.S. Representative Jim Mattox with 54% of the vote.[14] He was the first Republican elected Attorney General of Texas since Reconstruction and was sworn in by Governor George W. Bush.[15]

State of Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, 1997

Cornyn created the Texas Internet Bureau to investigate illegal internet practices. He fought government waste and corruption by investigating fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims.[16]

Cornyn was criticized for failing to investigate in a timely manner the false drug convictions of numerous African-Americans in Tulia, Texas. On September 6, 2002, the Austin Chronicle reported that Cornyn had announced that his office would investigate the 1999 drug bust, where the accused represented 16% of the town's black population.[17]

In 2005 Cornyn was mentioned as a possible replacement for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist.[18]

2002

In the 2002 Republican primary, Cornyn was promoted by the Texas Republican Party. He easily defeated the five other candidates without debating them. Cornyn defeated his closest Republican challenger, self-financed Dallas-based international physician Bruce Rusty Lang, in the election by a ten-to-one margin. In the general election Cornyn defeated Democratic nominee Ron Kirk in a campaign that cost each candidate over $9 million.[19] Cornyn's predecessor, Phil Gramm, resigned early, effective November 30, 2002, so that Senator-Elect Cornyn could take office early, and move into Gramm's office suite in order to begin organizing his staff.

2008

Texas has not elected a Democrat in a statewide election since 1994, and according to Rasmussen polling, in October 2008 Cornyn had an approval rating of 50%.[20] Christian activist Larry Kilgore of Mansfield challenged Cornyn in the Republican primary, but Cornyn easily defeated him.[21] Texas Representative Rick Noriega won the March 4 Democratic primary against Gene Kelly, Ray McMurrey, and Rhett Smith. Yvonne Adams Schick was the Libertarian Party's nominee,[22] and the Green Party of Texas sought ballot access for its candidate, David B. Collins.[23] The same Rasmussen poll showed Cornyn leading Noriega 47% to 43%, suggesting that the race might prove unexpectedly competitive, but most polls showed a much wider margin, and Cornyn was reelected.

2014

John Cornyn speaking at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.

Cornyn was reelected in 2014, and according to the Dallas Morning News, "never broke a sweat."[24] He won the March Republican primary with 59% of the vote against Houston-area congressman Steve Stockman.[24] In the general election he raised $14 million, outspending Democratic nominee David Alameel by nearly 3-1.[24]

In 2004 Cornyn co-founded and became the co-chairman of the U.S. Senate India Caucus.[25] In December 2006 he was selected by his colleagues to join the five-person Republican Senate leadership team as Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.[26]

Cornyn has received various awards and recognitions, including the 2005 Border Texan of the Year Award; the National Child Support Enforcement Association's Children's Champion Award; the American Farm Bureau Federation's Friend of Farm Bureau Award; the Texas Association of Business's (TAB) Fighter for Free Enterprise Award; the National Federation of Independent Business's (NFIB) Guardian of Small Business Award; the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders's (CONLAMIC) Latino Leadership Award; and the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce's (TAMACC) International Leadership Legislative Award.

In 2005 Cornyn gained notice by connecting the Supreme Court's reluctance to hear arguments for sustaining Terri Schiavo's life with the recent murders of Judge Joan Lefkow's husband and mother as well as the courtroom murder of Judge Rowland Barnes. Cornyn said: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and building up to the point where some people engage in violence".[27] His statement and a similar one by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay were widely denounced, including by The New York Times.[28] Cornyn later said that the statement was taken out of context and for that reason he regretted the statement.[29]

In 2005 the Project On Government Oversight, a government watchdog group, presented Cornyn and Senator Patrick Leahy with its first ever Bipartisan Leadership Award in honor of their cooperation on issues of government oversight and transparency, including their co-sponsorship of the OPEN Government Act of 2005, which prevented burying exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act in legislation.[30]

On May 18, 2007, Cornyn was involved in an altercation with the late Senator John McCain. During a meeting on immigration, McCain and Cornyn had a shouting match when Cornyn started questioning the number of judicial appeals that illegal immigrants could receive. McCain yelled an insult at Cornyn and said "I know more about this than anyone else in the room." Previously, Cornyn told McCain, "Wait a second here. I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line."[31][32]

Jim Jubak of MSN Money described Cornyn as one of "Big Oil's ten favorite members of Congress", as he has received more money from the oil and gas industry than all but six other members of Congress.[33]

On the day of Obama's inauguration, it was reported that Cornyn would prevent Hillary Clinton from being confirmed as secretary of state by unanimous floor vote that day. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's spokesman reported to the Associated Press that a roll call vote for the Clinton confirmation would be held instead on the following day, January 21, 2009, and that it was expected Clinton would "receive overwhelming bipartisan support".[34] The vote was 94–2 in her favor, with only Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC) and David Vitter (R-LA) voting in opposition.[35]

As chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Cornyn was a strong supporter of Norm Coleman's various court challenges to the 2008 election certification of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race.[36] Cornyn advocated for Coleman to bring the case before the federal court, and said the trial and appeals could take years to complete.[37] Cornyn threatened that Republicans would wage a "World War III" if Senate Democrats had attempted to seat Democratic candidate Al Franken before the appeals were complete.[38] Coleman conceded after the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Franken had won the election.

On March 18, 2020, Cornyn made comments about COVID-19 that were described as both incorrect and racist, as well as perpetuating a myth about Chinese cultural practices.[39] The National Council of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders criticized Cornyn's remarks, saying, “These are wildly irresponsible comments when anti-Asian hate crimes are on the rise.”[40]

Senator John Cornyn as U.S. Senate Majority Whip, after 2014 re-election.

On November 14, 2012, Cornyn was elected Senate Minority Whip by his peers.[41]

Cornyn was named Senate Majority Whip after the 2014 election, in which Republicans gained a Senate majority.[24][42]

In February 2013 Cornyn became one of the sponsors of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act to expedite open access to taxpayer-funded research.[43]

After the death of Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, Cornyn said that anyone Obama nominated to replace him would have a difficult confirmation process and feel like a piñata.[44] He also said that no serious candidate would accept a nomination knowing that they would not be confirmed. When Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, Cornyn said that even if the president has the constitutional authority to nominate someone, the Senate has full authority on how to proceed. Cornyn also said that the voice of the people should play a role and that the vacancy should be filled by the winner of the upcoming presidential election, so no hearings on Garland should be held.[45] The Senate did not vote on Garland's nomination, which expired after the November election of President Donald Trump. Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the seat, and Gorsuch was confirmed.

President Donald Trump with Senators Cornyn and Ted Cruz, August 29, 2017

Cornyn supported the Senate resolution expressing objection to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which called Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories a flagrant violation of international law.[46]

Cornyn and Trump in El Paso, Texas on August 7, 2019

On June 8, 2017, Cornyn questioned James Comey on Hillary Clinton's emails at a committee hearing whose announced topic was the Russian interference in the 2016 election and Comey's dismissal as FBI director.[47]

In September 2018, during the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Cornyn accused the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of devolving into mob rule by breaking the rules of decorum when asking for postponement or adjournment of the hearing to obtain or review documents from Kavanaugh's time working for the George W. Bush administration. Cornyn said that it was hard to believe the Democrats' claim that they could not properly assess Kavanaugh without the documents because it seemed that their minds were already made up.[48]

• United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
• Committee on Finance
  • Subcommittee on Health Care
  • Subcommittee on Taxation, IRS Oversight, and Long-Term Growth
  • Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
  • Subcommittee on the Constitution
  • Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security (Chairman)
  • Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security

In the 2004 debate surrounding the Federal Marriage Amendment, Cornyn released an advance copy of a speech he was to give at The Heritage Foundation. In the speech, he wrote, "It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right... Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife". According to his office, he removed the reference to the box turtle in the actual speech,[51] but The Washington Post ran the quote, as did The Daily Show.[52][53]

Cornyn sponsored a bill to allow law enforcement to force anyone arrested or detained by federal authorities to provide samples of their DNA, which would be recorded in a central database.[54] He voted to recommend a constitutional ban on flag desecration and for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. He also voted for the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act and extending its wiretap provision.

In a February 24, 2019 tweet, Cornyn mocked dictatorship, centralized power and democratic socialism by quoting Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini as saying "We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become."[55]

In August 2018 Cornyn and 16 other lawmakers urged the Trump administration to impose sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act against Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority in western China's Xinjiang region.[56] They wrote: "The detention of as many as a million or more Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in "political reeducation” centers or camps requires a tough, targeted, and global response."[57]

Cornyn voted against a measure recognizing that climate change was man-made.[58] He was one of 22 senators to sign a letter to Trump urging him to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.[59] In May 2019, Cornyn said it was important that the United States take measures to combat climate change, but condemned the Green New Deal as proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[60] In April 2020, he claimed that climate scientists' models of the effects of climate change do not use the "scientific method."[61]

Cornyn was one of 22 senators to vote against the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 that expands the educational benefits for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.[62] Instead he co-sponsored S. 2938, which gives benefits that are dependent on length of service.[63]

In December 2010 Cornyn was one of 26 senators who voted against the ratification of New Start,[64] a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation obliging both countries to have no more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers deployed during the next seven years and providing a continuation of on-site inspections that halted when START I expired the previous year. It was the first arms treaty with Russia in eight years.[65]

In August 2012, following news reports that a Russian Akula-class nuclear-powered submarine operated in the Gulf of Mexico purportedly undetected for over a month, Cornyn demanded details of this deployment from Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert.[66][67]

In 2013 Cornyn said that, despite the sequester, the Pentagon would actually see its budget increase.[68]

In July 2017 Cornyn voted in favor of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that grouped together sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea.[69]

In April 2018 Cornyn was one of eight Republican senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan expressing "deep concern" over a report by the United Nations exposing "North Korean sanctions evasion involving Russia and China" and asserting that the findings "demonstrate an elaborate and alarming military-venture between rogue, tyrannical states to avoid United States and international sanctions and inflict terror and death upon thousands of innocent people" while calling it "imperative that the United States provides a swift and appropriate response to the continued use of chemical weapons used by President Assad and his forces, and works to address the shortcomings in sanctions enforcement."[70]

Cornyn supported U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.[71][72] In December 2018 he said that the U.S. should stand with Saudi Arabia despite the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, saying: "Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war against Iran in Yemen, and an overreaction, in my view, would mean that we cancel arms sales and simply abandon our ally."[71]

In a Washington Post op-ed, Cornyn highlighted concerns raised by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said that widespread adoption of Huawei technology could increase vulnerability to cyberattacks and endanger NATO troops engaged on 5G-equipped battlefields.[73]

Cornyn greeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2002

Cornyn with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005

Cornyn warned Trump about anticipated negative effects of restructuring tariffs on Mexican exports, saying, "We’re holding a gun to our own heads by doing this."[74]

As Majority Whip, Cornyn filed a resolution welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to address a joint meeting of Congress in March 2015, a resolution co-sponsored only by Republicans. Vice President Joe Biden and numerous Senate and House Democrats said they would not attend the address.[75]

In January 2018 Cornyn was one of 36 Republican senators to sign a letter to Trump requesting he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the 21st-century economy.[76]

In a Washington Post op-ed, Cornyn argued against letting Chinese technology giant Huawei install and operate a 5G network in the U.S., writing that Huawei does not function "independently of its government. This would allow the Chinese government to export all the worst excesses of its cutting-edge police state to free soil."[73]

Cornyn has said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is "actively working against American interests, whether it's in Syria or here in our own backyard."[66]

Cornyn urged Trump to restart trade talks on the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump called "a disaster."[77]

Cornyn voted to ban intact dilation and extraction (a procedure also known as "partial-birth abortion") except in cases where the mother's life was in danger, and for a criminal penalty for harming a fetus while committing another crime. He also voted in favor of notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. He voted against expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines.[78] He voted to prevent contributions to organizations that provide abortion as a component of family planning, and to prevent funding of organizations that support coercive abortion.[79]

Cornyn voted to confirm Samuel Alito as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and John Roberts for Chief Justice of the United States.[78] In September 2005, during Roberts's Supreme Court hearings, Cornyn's staff passed out bingo cards to reporters. He asked them to stamp their card every time a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee used terms such as "far right" or "extremist".[80]

On July 24, 2009, Cornyn announced his intention to vote against President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, saying that she might rule "from a liberal, activist perspective".[81]

In February 2019, Cornyn was one of 11 senators to sign a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen urging them "to work with all federal, state and local regulators, as well as the hundreds of independent power producers and electricity distributors nation-wide to ensure our systems are protected" and affirming that they were "ready and willing to provide any assistance you need to secure our critical electricity infrastructure."[82]

In 2018 Cornyn voted for Omnibus bill H.R. 1625, which is projected to add $1.3 trillion to the U.S. deficit.[83][84]

Cornyn voted to permanently repeal the estate tax and to raise the estate tax exemption to $5 million. He voted in favor of $350 billion in tax cuts over 11 years and supports making the George W. Bush tax cuts permanent.[78] He opposes extending the 2011 payroll tax holiday.[85]

Cornyn is a cosponsor of the Fair Tax Act of 2007.[86] He also voted for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 but against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009.

In 2005 Cornyn voted against including oil and gas smokestacks in mercury regulations. He voted against factoring global warming into federal project planning, and against banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He also voted against removing oil and gas exploration subsidies.[78] During his tenure in the Senate, Cornyn has scored 0% on the League of Conservation Voters' environmental scorecard, a system of ranking politicians according to their voting record on environmental legislation.[87]

In 2008 Cornyn voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), also known as the Wall Street bailout, and later voted to end the program.[88]

Cornyn opposed President Obama's health reform legislation; he voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) in December 2009,[89] and against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.[90] Cornyn said that Senator Ted Cruz's efforts to defund Obamacare by threatening to default on the U.S. government's debt obligations were "unachievable", adding, "the shutdown did not help our cause. What did help our cause was the president's implementation of Obamacare, which has overwhelmed everything else. I don't hear anyone thinking that another government shutdown is the way to achieve our goals."[91] Cornyn joined other Republican leaders to block Cruz's procedural move to reject an increase in the debt ceiling.[92]

In April 2013 Cornyn was one of 46 senators to vote against a bill that would have expanded background checks for all buyers. He voted with 40 Republicans and 5 Democrats to stop the bill.

In January 2014 Cornyn introduced the "Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act". The bill would provide interstate reciprocity for persons with concealed weapons permits. Cornyn described the bill as "It's like a driver's license. It doesn't trump state laws. Say you have a carry permit in Texas; then you use it in another state that has a concealed-carry law."[93] He was rated "A" by the National Rifle Association (NRA) as of 2003[78] and 2014;[93] as of 2018 his NRA rating was "A+".[94] Cornyn has continued to support Concealed Carry Reciprocity as of 2018, with the Republican-held House of Representatives passing a bill in late 2017 with this language attached to gun control measures from the Senate's Fix NICS bill.[95]

Cornyn has long opposed anyone profiting from memorabilia tied to convicted murderers, and has made three attempts to pass laws against it. He introduced his first "Stop the Sale of Murderabilia to Protect the Dignity of Crime Victims Act" in 2007, which died in committee. He revived it three years later with cosponsor Amy Klobuchar. The 2010 version of the "Murderabilia" bill met the same fate.[96]

In 2013, inspired by a Nidal Hasan letter put up for sale by artist Kelly Hutchison, Cornyn decided to continue working on his bill. The listing claimed that all proceeds would be donated to charity, and the letter was reported to have sold for anywhere from $2,000[97] to $500,000[98] by various sources.