John Cornyn, left, and Ken PaxtonMother Jones illustration; Douglas Christian/Zuma; Bob Daemmrich/Zuma
Ken Paxton’s path to becoming one of the conservative movement’s most powerful lawyers is littered with the sort of obstacles that might have brought a more reputable politician down.
The third-term Texas attorney general is a law enforcement official whose own staff reported him to law enforcement; a former state representative who was later impeached by the state house; a securities broker who admitted to breaking securities law; and a promoter of Biblical values whose wife recently announced she was leaving him over “Biblical” transgressions. His petition to the US Supreme Court to effectively overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election was such a mess that lawyers in the Florida attorney general’s office mocked him in private and the State Bar of Texas tried to impose sanctions. But in a political moment in which Republican officeholders are engaged in endless displays of debasement, Paxton’s shamelessness is his superpower. He is the guy you get when you need someone to go above and beyond what a respectable lawyer would do—the smirking face of lawfare.
Paxton did what he’s always done when power or attention are in the offing: wield the legal system against his opponents.
And this year, he’s seeking a promotion. Polls give the AG a healthy lead in his primary challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, but the outcome could hinge on which of the two candidates earn the endorsement of President Donald Trump. So when Democrats in the Texas house of representatives fled the state earlier this month to block passage of a Trump-ordered mid-decade redistricting bill that would likely net the party five seats in Congress, the 62-year-old Paxton did what he’s always done when power or attention are in the offing: wield the legal system against his opponents.
Republicans have attempted to use financial penalties, litigation, removal from office, and imprisonment to get their maps passed. And Paxton, eager to distinguish himself to the president and his most loyal voters, has led the way. Since Democrats left the state, Paxton has gone to court to try to remove 13 Democratic representatives from their seats—including minority leader Gene Wu and James Talarico, a possible Senate candidate. He asked a judge in western Illinois to enforce arrest warrants issued by the Republican speaker of the house for the Democrats (the representatives are staying much further away, outside of Chicago). He is suing Beto O’Rourke—the 2018 Democratic Senate nominee who is reportedly considering another run for Senate next year—and alleging that the former congressman broke the law by using funds from his political organization to support quorum breakers. And on Tuesday, Paxton took his most serious step, asking a judge in Fort Worth to have O’Rourke jailed for allegedly violating a temporary restraining order that barred him from “raising and utilizing political contributions from Texas consumers to pay for the personal expenses” of legislators.
You don’t need a strong imagination to conjure a scenario in which this situation might have played out much more tamely. When Texas Democrats broke quorum in 2003 in an attempt to block a similar mid-decade redistricting effort, Greg Abbott was the Republican attorney general. He didn’t attempt to have the Democrats removed from office. In 2021, when Democrats flew to Washington to break quorum, Republicans waited out their Democratic colleagues to eventually pass a voter-suppression law.
But the incentives are different this time around. Paxton is trying to stay one step ahead of scandal, and Cornyn is trying to stay one step ahead of Paxton—or if you trust the polling, catch up, before anti-Paxton Republicans in Washington give up hope and hitch their wagon to someone else. (Reps. Wesley Hunt and Ronny Jackson, are both reportedly considering entering the race.) Cornyn has gamely played his hand, writing to FBI director Kash Patel last week to request the FBI’s assistance in locating the absconding Democrats. Nevermind that their absenteeism was not a federal issue, that the Democrats’ whereabouts were so widely known that their hotel has been evacuated for a bomb threat, and that many of the legislators were holding public events.
“I think Senator Cornyn is trying to stay relevant in his primary battle with Ken Paxton,” Talarico told me last week.
But Paxton has a lot more tools at his disposal, and he’s adept at using them. In addition to seeking O’Rourke’s detention, and his ongoing efforts to have quorum-breaking lawmakers removed from office, Paxton has deployed one of his favorite tactics as attorney general. Under Texas law, the attorney general can “request to examine” the books of any Texas non-profit. As I reported last year, Paxton has frequently used RTEs to harass and intimidate organizations that work with migrants and promote voting rights. And he’s used such fishing expeditions to promote conspiracy theories that those organizations were involved in human trafficking and voter fraud—which, in turn, could be used to justify further crackdowns.
Last week, he issued an RTE for O’Rourke’s political action committee, Powered by People, accusing it of “potentially operating an illegal financial influence scheme to bribe runaway Democrats who fled Texas to break quorum.” A candidate for higher office demanding to see the communications and other internal records of a critic and political rival is a potentially enormous abuse of power—surpassed only by the threat to jail the same rival. For Paxton, it was just another Wednesday. By Friday, he was suing O’Rourke on behalf of the state, accusing him of “scamming” Texans by using political donations to commit “bribery.” (O’Rourke has denied that there is anything illegal about his group’s operations and is fighting Paxton’s claims in court.)
The redistricting episode is a microcosm of the late-Trump-era GOP: A ruling party prioritizing a partisan power-grab over flood relief; entirely-serious threats to prosecute and jail political opponents; the casual misuse of the FBI; and a messy primary battle pumping gasoline onto the fire. Some of Paxton’s legal argument might be losers—Texas legislators have been breaking quorum for 150 years, and no legislators have been expelled for breaking quorum anywhere in the United States since colonial New Jersey. But the chief flunky of the Big Lie has long played by a different set of rules: bad cases are how he wins.