Jefferson, Thomas
1801–1809

Jefferson was the founders' most absolute defender of church-state separation (the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom protected 'the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination'), a free-press absolutist, agrarian-republican, and anti-Hamilton-banking. Cornyn fits Jefferson better than Paxton on the church-state dimension — no Ten Commandments mandate co-sponsorship, no religious-minority-targeting litigation, and his RFMA vote provides federal conscience protection. Paxton's Ten Commandments championship and CAIR litigation are the precise practice Jefferson's Statute and Danbury Baptist letter were built to prohibit; Jefferson explicitly protected Muslims from state interference. The two candidates align on states-rights and anti-large-federal-government posture, but the church-state chasm is wide. Cornyn is the more Jeffersonian Republican on the church-state core of Jefferson's framework.