How Fighting for Conservative Causes Has Helped Ken Paxton Survive Legal Woes
“He’s the strongest conservative we’ve ever had as attorney general,” said Matt Mackowiak, the chair of the Republican Party in Travis County, which includes Austin. “He’s been at war with the establishment for some time.”
Along the way, Mr. Paxton has made strong allies and many enemies, both among Democrats and within his own party, who have shuddered at the revelations of his various alleged misdeeds over the years, including using his office to try to conceal an extramarital affair. Most of those abuses were detailed in the 20 articles of impeachment presented to the Texas House on Thursday.
“My reaction to this is, frankly it’s frustrating that it took our state leadership so long to do something about his corruption,” said Rochelle Garza, a former Democratic nominee for attorney general who ran against Mr. Paxton in 2022. “They’ve been complicit with it for years.”
When it came to the expensive pen, a spokesman for Mr. Paxton explained at the time that Mr. Paxton had mistakenly picked it up and later returned it. Nevertheless, his Democratic opponent in the attorney general’s race in 2018 used the surveillance footage in an attack ad that also referenced Mr. Paxton’s criminal indictment on the securities fraud charges, a case that is still pending. “He won’t steal your pen,” the ad noted of the Democrat. Mr. Paxton won the race.
The allegations that form the basis of the articles of impeachment, set to be voted on at 1 p.m. on Saturday, have been publicly known for several years. Many were revealed in 2020, after his top aides accused him of abuse of office, mostly to benefit an Austin real estate investor who had contributed to his campaign, and reported their concerns to the F.B.I. The federal agency began an investigation, but no charges have been filed.
Four of the aides, conservative lawyers and senior officials in the attorney general’s office, were fired as a result. They subsequently filed suit.
The allegations prompted several Republican challengers to jump into the 2022 primary race against Mr. Paxton, including George P. Bush, the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush and the son of the former Florida governor, Jeb Bush. Mr. Paxton won a primary runoff against Mr. Bush with nearly 70 percent of the vote, taking almost every county in Texas.
Source: The New York Times
