King, Martin Luther Jr.
1929–1968

The 'radical King' that most people forget — King fought for voting rights, anti-poverty (the Poor People's Campaign), against the Vietnam War, and wrote in 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' that the greatest stumbling block was 'the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice.' Both candidates are deeply conservative on the King policy framework, but Cornyn is precisely the 'white moderate, more devoted to order than to justice' that the Letter from Birmingham Jail named — his measured personal conduct doesn't translate to expanded voting-rights protections or substantive anti-poverty policy. Paxton's voting-rights litigation history, his anti-Medicaid-expansion posture, his immigration enforcement framework, and his cultural-war framing land on every King fault line more aggressively. Cornyn earns marginal credit for institutional process; King's framework treats it as insufficient.