I'm sure there are some other bad attorney generals in some states, but none can match Ken Paxton of Texas in both idiocy and criminality. Here's what James Hohmann says about Paxton in The Washington Post:
Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, has been under felony indictment for securities fraud since 2015, and a judge has ordered him to sit for a deposition in the case next month. He is under FBI investigation for assisting a real estate developer who allegedly hired his mistress and remodeled his home. Four of Paxton’s former top lieutenants are suing to get their jobs back, saying they were fired in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act for reporting potential crimes by the attorney general to the feds.
No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since 1994, and former congressman Beto O’Rourke is extremely unlikely to win his race against Gov. Greg Abbott. Beating Paxton should have been Democrats’ best chance to end the drought. But they nominated former ACLU lawyer Rochelle Garza, whose claim to fame is helping a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant get an abortion while in federal custody.
Paxton now appears likely to be reelected next month as the chief law enforcement officer in a state of nearly 30 million people. Meanwhile, the Texas State Bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline is seeking court sanctions against him for peddling false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election. It was Paxton who filed Texas’s frivolous lawsuit seeking to throw out the votes of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case, Paxton warmed up the crowd for President Donald Trump at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol insurrection
Just 34 percent of Texans think Paxton has the integrity to serve as attorney general, according to a poll conducted last month by the Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, including only 50 percent of Republicans. But Paxton led Garza by seven points in the same survey because 68 percent of Republicans nevertheless plan to vote for him.
Paxton has filed as many lawsuits challenging President Biden’s policies as anyone, including about a dozen on immigration alone, which plays to his advantage. He has earned loyalty from social conservatives as an outspoken foe of reproductive rights. He recently ran away from someone serving him a subpoena in a case seeking to clarify whether abortion rights groups will be liable for helping women cross state lines to access care. A federal judge has ordered Paxton to testify in that suit.
Paxton announced in June that he would defend Texas’s long-unenforced law against sodomy if the Supreme Court followed Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion to “correct the error” of its 2003 decisionin Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a 1973 state law criminalizing gay sex.
This fixation on cultural issues might have distracted Paxton from the core responsibilities of his job. The Associated Press reports that his office recently dropped a series of human trafficking and child sexual assault cases after losing track of one of the victims. The story also revealed that a Paxton adviser was quietly let go after less than two months on the job when he showed child pornography during a staff meeting.
“One prosecutor said he quit in January after supervisors pressured him to withhold evidence in a murder case. Another attorney signed a resignation letter in March that warned of growing hostility toward LGBTQ employees,” according to the Associated Press.
That office drama followed a 2020 revolt by senior staff. Eight former deputies accused Paxton of abusing power, accepting bribes and tampering with government documents. Everyone who reported Paxton was either fired or left under pressure. Among the allegations was that Paxton, who otherwise opposed covid-related restrictions, invoked the public health emergency to issue an opinion in the middle of the night that delayed a foreclosure sale for one of the developer’s properties.
Paxton issued a 374-page report last August that he claimed exonerates him and argues that he has the right to fire any appointees for any reason. He denies all wrongdoing in every case and, channeling Trump, cries that he’s the victim of a “witch hunt.” He’s said he’s being persecuted by “the Biden FBI,” even though the investigation began when Trump was still president and Trump appointed the current FBI director. Paxton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, including an interview request.
Garza highlights Paxton’s ethics problems on the stump, but abortion is what animates her. The Morning News poll showed the limits of this issue: Texans are evenly split over whether Roe v. Wade should have been overturned, and 49 percent believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. As a result, no prominent Republican has endorsed Garza.
Paxton is so well-positioned that he is not even bothering to air television commercials in what has been a frustratingly sleepy contest. He doesn’t publicize campaign events and mostly restricts appearances to friendly MAGA outlets. Last month, Trump appeared at a Paxton fundraiser in Bedminster, N.J.
The former president has been Paxton’s ace up his sleeve. His support is how Paxton held off a well-funded primary challenge from George P. Bush this past spring, and it’s why he’s favored to win a third term next month despite being the worst attorney general in the United States. Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
