Roosevelt, Theodore
1901–1909

TR was a progressive Republican — trust-busting, conservationist, the original anti-corruption crusader who broke up Standard Oil and took on the meatpacking industry — and believed great wealth concentration was a threat to democracy. Both candidates are too conservative on antitrust and conservation for TR's preferred policy framework, but Cornyn earns marginally more TR credit on tech-platform antitrust (Open App Markets Act co-sponsorship, Journalism Competition and Preservation Act) and on the absence of forum-shopping abuse-of-AG-power that TR's anti-corruption framework would treat as exactly the kind of institutional decay he organized to oppose. Paxton's BlackRock lawsuit attacked divestment from coal rather than monopoly behavior — the inverse of TR's anti-trust framework. Neither candidate would clear a TR-style policy framework but Cornyn is the cleaner institutional fit.