Old family grudges in Texas don’t fade. They just wait for an election.
President Trump’s pick for the US Senate sits in a dead heat, and the state’s most famous political dynasty smells blood.
But one Bush just crossed a line his famous family spent decades guarding.
Neil Bush Cast His Vote and Then Made Sure Texas Heard About It
Neil Bush, the 71-year-old Houston-based brother of former President George W Bush, broke his social media silence during early voting with a Facebook post about the Senate race.
It wasn’t a vote for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“I’m breaking that tradition because I voted early today, and I voted for James Talarico for the United States Senate,” Neil wrote, after noting he had never posted a political message on the platform before.
He pinned the decision on “deep concern about Ken Paxton’s record and genuine admiration for the character and principles I see in James Talarico.”
And then he delivered the line that probably earned a standing ovation at every country club in Dallas.
“I have been a Republican for most of my life, and I still believe deeply in many traditional Republican principles. But character matters more than party affiliation,” Neil wrote.
But Neil isn’t freelancing. Barbara Bush, the 44-year-old daughter of George W Bush and an NBA executive in Brooklyn, chipped in money to Talarico’s campaign, according to FEC records.
And the former President himself, who rarely shows his face in public these days, stepped out as guest of honor at a fundraiser near his Dallas home for six Republican Senate candidates. Paxton didn’t make the cut. Before that, Bush cut a $5,000 check to the reelection bid of US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), his first donation to a federal candidate in Texas since 2022.
Three Bushes. Three different methods. One message, and nobody in the family even had to say Paxton’s name.
The Welcome Sign Ken Paxton Once Bragged About
Here’s the part that makes this feud downright strange.
A little over 20 years ago, Paxton served as a back-bench member of the Texas House. When the Dallas Morning News asked him to name his crowning achievement, he didn’t pick a tax cut or a school bill.
“I am most proud of House Bill 137,” he said.
That law told the state to put up signs on major highways reading “Welcome to Texas – Proud Home of President George W Bush.” Governor Rick Perry signed it in May 2005.
So the man the Bush clan now treats as untouchable once built his proudest legislative moment around saluting them.
But the party changed underneath everybody. Donald Trump steamrolled Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary, and the family made it known they wouldn’t back Trump’s campaign that year.
George P Bush, Jeb’s son, broke ranks and backed Trump anyway. That bet didn’t pay off. When George P challenged Paxton for attorney general in 2022, Trump endorsed Paxton, and Republican voters handed Paxton a runoff win of more than 35 points. The loss ended four straight decades with a Bush holding elected office.
Paxton hasn’t hidden how he feels about any of it. He has told supporters in recent years that the time has come to “end the Bush dynasty.”
And the bad blood kept flowing. In 2023 the Republican-controlled Texas House impeached Paxton on charges that he abused his office to help a donor. His lawyers called the whole thing a Bush-orchestrated plot against his pro-Trump politics. The Texas Senate acquitted him, and Paxton has denied any wrongdoing.
And in May 2026, Paxton knocked off Cornyn, a longtime Bush ally, in the Republican primary. Cornyn has since called the nominee a “bad candidate” and an “embarrassment.”
Talarico piles on by accusing Paxton of growing $27 million richer in office and collecting 15 homes. Paxton’s federal disclosure in August listed a net worth somewhere between $1 million and $27 million, and campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy dismissed the attack as “a bad attempt to manufacture controversy where none exists.” His wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, has filed for divorce “on Biblical grounds,” citing alleged affairs.
Karl Rove Dusted Off the Same Old Playbook
The Bushes have help. Karl Rove, the strategist who steered George W Bush from the Texas governor’s mansion to the White House, has openly campaigned against Paxton.
Trump fired back in a Truth Social post in mid-October, tagging Rove as Cornyn’s “Liddle’ Buddy” and a “Super RINO.”
“If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career,” Trump wrote.
Rove earned that reputation the hard way. He ran strategy for the establishment RINO wing of the party, the crowd that pushed amnesty for illegal aliens in 2007 until furious voters jammed the Senate phone lines, cheered trade deals like CAFTA that helped ship factory work south of the border, and sold the country on Iraq.
The results came fast. Republicans lost Congress in 2006. Then came the Wall Street collapse, the TARP bailouts, and the 2008 wipeout that handed Barack Obama the keys to the White House.
Mark Updegrove, chairman and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, spent hours interviewing both Bush Presidents for a book. He listed what made George W Bush tick.
“Bush was pro-democracy, pro-immigrant, pro-free trade, pro-NATO. All these things that Trump has come out against,” Updegrove said.
Put that list in front of a Texas Republican primary voter and watch the reaction. Pro-immigrant meant nation-changing numbers of newcomers, legal and illegal, arriving faster than any community could absorb them. Pro-free trade meant factory towns watching their paychecks pack up for Mexico and Communist China.
Democrats run their family fights differently, by the way. When progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat Chuck Schumer’s recruit, Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI), in Michigan’s Senate primary, Schumer promptly said he’d work with the winner. No Democrat dynasty went shopping for a Republican to vote for.
Why the Brawl Over Texas Is Really About 2028
Steve Bannon, the MAGA strategist who served in Trump’s first-term White House, has been rallying the grassroots across Texas and came away with a blunt verdict.
“It’s a political civil war down here,” Bannon said.
He warned that “the Bush junta is still very powerful in Texas,” with reach that runs through “a deep network of law firms, real estate, banking and oil money.”
Updegrove sees the same opening the family sees. The Bushes, he said, may view the race as “some opportunity here for more traditional Republicanism to resurge.”
And there it is. The prize isn’t one Senate seat. It’s control of the Republican Party once Trump leaves office.
Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson laid out why Texas carries so much weight. “If Republicans don’t carry Texas, they can’t elect a president, because there aren’t enough remaining conservative states to get to 270 electoral votes,” he said.
That math explains the traffic. Jillson noted Trump has made several trips to Texas in recent weeks, the party will hold its 2028 nominating convention in Houston, and Elon Musk has poured $158 million into Texas politics in a single month.
And it explains why the old guard wants a beachhead. Vice President JD Vance stands as the MAGA heir apparent heading into 2028, and he rejects the endless wars and open-border policies that undercut American workers, the very agenda the Bush-Rove machine spent two decades selling. An establishment that can’t win a Texas primary can still try to prove MAGA can’t win a Texas general election.
Is that really the plan? Maybe Neil Bush just likes the young Democrat’s manners. Possible. Bushes rarely do anything in Texas politics by accident, though.
Talarico certainly knows a gift when he sees one. “We’ve been endorsed by more than 20 current and former Republican officials across the state because they see that one-party rule leads to extremism and corruption,” he said, adding that “the days of George W Bush or George H W Bush were gone by the time I was voting in our state.”
A Democrat now waves the Bush name around like a campaign asset.
In 2005, Ken Paxton put the Bush name on the welcome signs at the Texas line. In 2026, a Bush put a Democrat’s name on his ballot.
Sources: Daily Mail, “The Bush family are determined to bring down Trump – even if it means turning Texas blue to achieve it: ‘It’s political civil war’”; Axios, “The fall of the Latino Bush”; Fox News, coverage of George P Bush’s 2022 attorney general runoff defeat; The Texas Tribune, coverage of George P Bush, Ken Paxton, and Donald Trump; NBC News, “George P. Bush’s ‘risky’ move: Challenging Texas’ pro-Trump attorney general”; CBS News, “Abdul El-Sayed projected to win Michigan Democratic Senate primary, defeating Haley Stevens”