Ken Paxton hits the big time

Newspaper tradition has long held that editorialists and columnists writing for the daily opinion page not inform voters of the stupid decisions the latter have made at the ballot box, even if colossally, unforgivably stupid. Presumably this rule shows respect for the wisdom and prudence of the American voter, often enough a dear subscriber and sometimes even a cherished advertiser. Mind you, this tradition doesn't mean if the voters elected someone who has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate corruption or incompetence or flat craziness, you don't zealously chronicle this and point out regularly how corrupt or incompetent or crazy this elected person was and still is. Just don't tell the voters they screwed up big-time in electing him or her in the first place.

It's a journalistic tradition by which I have generally abided. The exception: The election of Ken Paxton as Texas attorney general in 2014. Last week once again verifies my decision, more than ever.

I've long been unable to resist pointing out to Central Texans how they had plenty of evidence this guy was not above corruption and two-facedness when he was a mere Republican candidate for the post. But instead of showing discernment, Texas Republican voters elected Paxton over more credible Republican candidates in the 2014 GOP primary election. Allegations at the time were that Paxton, as a state senator, went around encouraging people to buy stock in a tech company without revealing he was being compensated by that company. Among the people the McKinney Republican reportedly deceived were friends, business associates, law firm clients, even a fellow lawmaker.

One might think voters would have more sense than to elect to such a critical, crime-busting post someone with ethical and legal questions buzzing around him. Yet Paxton had the tea party seal of approval in 2014 and his two Republican rivals didn’t. So he won the primary election, taking 44 percent of the statewide GOP vote against Dan Branch and Barry Smitherman, then 63 percent against Branch alone in the runoff (and 68 percent in McLennan County, possibly in recognition of Paxton’s receiving two degrees from Baylor University, one in psychology, the other in business). And because he was a Republican, the party faithful blindly backed Paxton in the general election by some 20 points, presumably figuring a dishonest Republican is better than an honest Democrat, even one named Sam Houston. Not one major or mid-sized newspaper endorsed Paxton. Since then, through various legal and political maneuvers, Attorney General Paxton has managed to long delay the very justice and accountability for himself that he selectively demands of others.

In an interview, Houston highlighted the challenges of running against Paxton and the Republican Party at the time. “And it’s hard to get attention for a down-ballot race,” he told me in 2014. “It’s hard to get money when you’re not already a state senator or state representative and you’re running as a Democrat. But that’s why I’m sitting with you and talking to Jay and every paper and running a campaign the way I think it ought to be run. Let’s be open and honest, take questions whether I know the answer or not. That’s important to me. I don’t want to presume anything, but it’s a safe assumption my opponent (Paxton) will not sit down with y’all.”

Houston was right about one thing: Paxton did not want to sit down and answer questions about his conduct as a public servant.

Dismissing integrity as a qualification for the public trust and likely acknowledging his coveted reputation as a defender of voter suppression laws aimed at discouraging certain segments of voters, including people of color, Texas voters in 2018 went right ahead and elected Paxton again rather than cleaning house and voting into office a Democrat bearing not a whiff of scandal. Even so, Paxton's statewide win was by less than four points (though Paxton garnered 60 percent of the vote in robustly Republican McLennan County).

Complicating Paxton's long-delayed day in court over securities fraud charges: Texas Rangers investigating corruption allegations now refer their findings to district attorneys in the counties where allegedly straying office-holders reside. Catch: DAs in many Texas counties are Republicans, just like the majority of office-holders in the state, which raises legitimate questions about whether those DAs can aggressively or earnestly pursue charges against party allies. In the Paxton case, special prosecutors were hired — and then partisan county commissioners balked at paying them. Democrat Justin Nelson, the former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (a Republican) who ran against Paxton in 2018, found the situation confounding because so many measures actually helped Paxton stave off justice in his own case.

"I mean, think of this — we've got the top cop, the top lawyer for the state of Texas, saying that prosecutors should not be paid for prosecuting crimes, at least in the one instance in which it's his crime they're trying to prosecute," Nelson told me during the 2018 attorney general’s race. "Paxton [because of his indictment on securities fraud charges] cannot even serve on a jury now. I don't think he can even appear before court to argue [cases] based upon State Bar rules, which is just crazy. And so literally the only thing he has said in court lately is 'Not guilty, your honor.' It's nuts."

More? In October 2020, senior staffers at the Texas Attorney General's Office — as in people in the business of recognizing violations of the law and pursuing lawbreakers and scoundrels — brought criminal allegations against their boss, accusing Paxton of employing government resources to serve the financial ends of an Austin real estate investor and Paxton donor. These senior officials have pressed federal law enforcement to "investigate allegations of improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential crimes." More? Wife Angela Paxton, now a Republican state senator in Texas, not long after taking the oath of office sought to empower her husband to exempt entrepreneurs from certain state regulations so they can market "innovative financial products or services." One such exemption: working as an "investment adviser" without registering with the proper state board. Doing so is a felony in Texas — and the very offense for which Ken Paxton was issued a civil penalty in 2014 and criminally charged in 2015. Yet other matters, best left unmentioned here, would seem to conflict with supposed Republican family values, but such standards no longer really seem to matter in the Grand Old Party. Still, if you’re keeping score, Paxton finds himself under federal investigation for such crimes as bribery and still accountable for violating state law for peddling stock for profit without being licensed to do so. What a guy. And only last week while Paxton was savoring the national limelight for trying to save President Trump’s presidential bacon, federal investigators served a subpoena on the Texas Attorney General’s Office in connection with the bribery scandal.

All of which brings us to Ken Paxton's last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court last week to block Electoral College electors from four key battleground states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — from dutifully casting votes for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who won the popular vote in each of those states and is poised to formally win election in Monday's Electoral College vote. In his lawsuit, Paxton not only clearly demonstrates his rush to curry favor from President Trump but proves something former Republicans such as myself stress to citizenry: The Republican Party no longer has idealistic principles beyond grandstanding, deceit and retaining power at all costs, even if that means shredding the U.S. Constitution and nixing the will of the people in elections. Indeed, the only elections many Republicans are willing to honor anymore are those they win.

The Paxton suit, to which other Republican attorneys general and President Trump quickly joined, dismissed the actions of Republican and Democratic judges (some of them Trump appointees), state and federal, up and down the line, from one end of the country to the other, who in recent days and weeks have found dozens of similar lawsuits filed by the president's attorneys alleging election fraud and voting irregularities inconsequential, immaterial and astonishingly bereft of hard or reliable evidence. (If one wants to see an excellent example of how easily such “evidence” is dispatched in a court of law, consider Nevada District Judge James Russell’s Dec. 4 ruling.) Even when jurists have acknowledged possible disputes in election protocols, no judge or justice who values his or her reputation and the cherished institution of an independent judiciary would readily invalidate millions of everyday, ordinary people's votes on flimsy claims and hearsay — not unless he or she wants to join Chief Justice Roger Taney and Judge Roy Bean in the judiciary's Hall of Shame and Dishonor.

One need not be a political scientist or constitutional scholar to see major problems in the Paxton suit. First, it flagrantly contradicts the very principle of states' rights that Paxton and his predecessor, Greg Abbott, preached in rhetoric and court filings right along with the rest of the Republican Party during years when Democrats controlled the White House levers: The 10th Amendment indeed reserves many key rights to the individual states to manage their affairs without meddling from the federal government. What’s more, in the days of the Founders, states were fiercely protective of their rights to manage their own elections and pass their own election laws. Yet Paxton forsakes this supposedly sacred GOP principle, flip-flopping in fealty to President Trump in pressing a federal court to tell other states how to run their affairs, at least in running elections. Worse, for a state where many deeply rooted Texans have expressed to me strong reservations about people moving in from out of state and then telling them how to run their affairs, here's Texas going off half-cocked and trying to tell Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin how to run their affairs.

Even Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a former state jurist and attorney general who has sided with President Trump far more than I wish he had, drew the line on this lawsuit in an interview with CNN last week: "I frankly struggle to understand the legal theory of it. Number one, why would a state, even such a great state as Texas, have a say-so on how other states administer their elections? We have a diffused and dispersed system and, even though we might not like it, they may think it's unfair, those are decided at the state and local level and not at the national level.”

For the uninformed, this is called federalism and it once soared as a dominant principle of the Republican Party and anyone passing himself or herself off as legitimately conservative.

By contrast, Texas' junior senator, Ted Cruz, who has long advocated states' rights, did a neat 180-degree ideological turnaround last week and offered to argue Paxton's case before the highest court in the land, adding further evidence of his hypocrisy, political opportunism and quicksilver principles. Anyone remember when, early in the combative 2016 primary election season, presidential candidate Trump accused rival Cruz of stealing a victory in the Iowa caucuses? Trump tweeted at the time: "Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” Back then Cruz dismissed the Trump claim as a “Trumpertantrum.”

Second problem: General Paxton claimed officials in the four battleground states, using the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a pretense, "usurped" state laws through "executive fiat or friendly lawsuits," thus undermining state legislatures and "weakening ballot integrity" amidst a flood of mail-in ballots. Irony? Paxton's suit conveniently ignores the fact Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Supreme Court did the same thing in Texas. Given the spread of a deadly virus on his gubernatorial watch, Abbott on July 27 expanded early voting in the approaching general election by six days. He also extended "the period in which marked mail-in ballots may be delivered in person to the early voting clerk’s office, allowing such delivery prior to as well as on Election Day." By the time disgruntled Republican Party of Texas chairman Allen West, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller (dubbed by the president "Trump's man in Texas") and a handful of Republican legislators filed suit on Sept. 23 to quash the governor's orders expanding voting opportunities, the voting process in Texas was underway. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed the suit as too much too late.

Which is why Abbott's support of the Ken Paxton suit, after being sued by Republican Party of Texas chairman West and others for the same thing a few months ago, defines the word “crazy.” (In fairness, Abbott couched his support by suggesting the Paxton suit would help clarify widespread electoral disputes.)

What's more, the Texas Supreme Court on May 27 issued a nuanced decision arguably expanding mail-in ballots in Texas when such ballots are largely restricted to Texans age 65 or older and the disabled. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht insisted each voter, pandemic or not, should decide whether his or her physical condition qualified as a disability under state law: "Indeed, the Legislature rejected the requirement of a physician's proof of disability for mail-in voting applications when it amended the Election Code in 1981. And the application form provided by the Secretary of State requires only that voters check a box indicating whether the reason for seeking a ballot by mail is a disability. The voter is not instructed to declare the nature of the underlying disability. The elected officials have placed in the hands of the voter the determination of whether in-person voting will cause a likelihood of injury due to a physical condition."

So should Texas' electoral votes consequently also be up for debate? Or did the situation, ahem, not apply in Texas where General Paxton's preferred candidate, President Donald J. Trump, emerged with the most votes, even though Texas also saw a significant spike in mail-in voting as well as in-person balloting? There's enough hypocrisy here to choke an elephant.

Third, Paxton's suit was riddled with enough inconsistencies and blunders and rabbit holes to embarrass any Supreme Court justice who even for a moment contemplated it seriously. For instance, the suit insisted that invalidating the votes of more than 20 million people in the four battleground states would impact 72 electoral votes when it's actually 62. At one point it cites allegations already dismissed by previous jurists. At another point it suggests the level of fraud in different states has been so successful as to render voter wrongdoing undetectable,  which raises a question: How do you proceed when the evidence is undetectable? Other stumbling points: Congress approved Dec. 14 for the Electoral College vote. No less than the Constitution mandates electors converge in their individual states on the same date nationwide. For justices claiming to be strict constitutionalists, any variance would have invited them to violate the Constitution. Also, in their press release about the suit, Paxton’s gang got the filing date wrong.  And there's the suit's bizarre claim that Biden's chance of winning the popular vote in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was less than one in a quadrillion, lending this mess the tenor of a bad Las Vegas oddsmaker's perspective. Everything's here plus the kitchen sink and the bathroom toilet. No wonder Texas’ solicitor general quietly declined to sign off on this embarrassment. More? Well, considering that Republican-run Texas is a state whose controversial 2011 voter ID law was found to be racially discriminatory by one of the most conservative federal benches in the land (the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit); a state that by one recent international survey eclipses all other U.S. states in making it hard for people to vote; a state that last year tried to purge voter rolls of non-citizens only to ensnare a whole lot of legitimate citizens (including 366 fellow citizens here in McLennan County), there’s undeniable irony in its suggesting in this lawsuit that it’s the injured party because other states made voting more accessible and safer for their residents during a public health crisis.

Finally, the suit proves the old saying about the rotten apple spoiling the barrel, another good reason for Texas voters to have denied Paxton the job back in 2014 and certainly in 2018. Paxton's suit alone might have gone on to its proper reward as historic laughingstock or, as Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro far more accurately put it, "seditious abuse of the judicial process." However, a Louisiana congressman and Trump ally pressed fellow House Republicans to sign a brief supporting this absurd suit, stressing that the president was "anxiously awaiting the final list" to see who among them supported him. Among the 126 House Republicans signing the brief is five-term Congressman Bill Flores, the low-key, unflappable tea party lawmaker whose district includes Waco and Bryan/College Station. Some Americans stunned at such mass signings by Republican lawmakers have branded the entire lot cowards or traitors. This much is sure: It's one or the other if not both.

For Republicans unwavering in their loyalty to Trump, the Paxton votes of 2014 and 2018 will always seem right and proper and perhaps even divine. For those of us lamenting the corrupted wreckage of the Republican Party, those votes stand as colossally and unforgivably stupid. The recent words of conservative gadfly Erick Erickson should rightfully exact much pain: "Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, is under a federal investigation and would love a presidential pardon. His lawsuit is just more performative leg-humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump. The various attorneys general who have joined his lawsuit all want to either get re-elected or seek higher office. Joining the lawsuit gives them some measure of ring-kissing or protection from any rabid Trump supporters who wanted a 'just fight' moment." The same must be said of fickle Republican lawmakers who signed on to their lasting infamy.

Friday evening, the Supreme Court of the United States with just a few words put an end to the Ken Paxton lawsuit. It rejected, and without public dissent, this last-minute charade to trash the ballots of millions of voters, ballots that ultimately went in favor of Joe Biden this time around. During the suit’s short life, skeptical Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska quipped, it looked “like a fella begging for a pardon filed a PR stunt rather than a lawsuit, as all of the assertions have already been rejected by federal courts and Texas' own solicitor general isn't signing on." Even so, Paxton in his five long days of glory did significant damage not only to the nation's once globally admired institution of free elections but also to those Republicans who presumably knew better but because of moral weakness will go down in history as seeking to invalidate fellow citizens’ votes. They will lose face (or should) with rank-and-file election judges and volunteer poll workers who took an oath and put aside their partisan politics and did their level best, and at personal risk to themselves, to hold accessible, trouble-free elections during a fast-worsening pandemic.

To add insult to injury, Texas Attorney General Paxton on his Facebook page this weekend mischaracterized the high court’s decision and a technicality cited by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito: “Disappointed, of course. But two Justices agreed with us and the fight continues! Please help us continue to protect our Constitutional values!!! God bless you, God bless Texas and may God protect our Republic, always!” The truth? The brief aside by Justices Alito and Thomas concerned a procedural matter on handling such cases and, as the pair made clear, had nothing at all to do with the merits of Paxton’s case in which they sided with the rest of the court, including Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all Trump appointees. Paxton’s statement confirms his ignorance of the law or his willingness to lie in the shameless manner of his idol. Several constituents sought to correct Paxton on his Facebook page, without response of course, though others were more than happy to be misled, including one who offered a familiar refrain: “Thank you! Praying for you! Still believing that God almighty is going to intervene and President Trump will remain!” Which raises yet another question, certainly unanswerable at present: Why didn’t God just get this matter settled on behalf of President Trump on Nov. 3 instead of dragging us all through intrigue and civil strife during Thanksgiving and into the Christmas season? Hallelujah!  

More? Well, the increasingly reckless Republican Party of Texas chairman, responding to the high court’s Friday night decision, resorted to the old Texas standby whenever Texas Republicans don’t get their way  — which is why Allen West is the most colossally and unforgivably stupid pick that Texas Republicans have made at the ballot box aside from voting twice for Ken Paxton and twice for Donald Trump: “This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the U.S. Constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the Constitution.” An angry Navy veteran quickly concurred on retired Army Lt. Col. West’s Facebook page, betraying the contrary, destroy-it-all mindset long behind the Trump juggernaut in America: “I have lost all respect for the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett are complete duds. All the effort to get them confirmed was a complete waste of time. If it was possible, I would say all three of them should be impeached and removed from the Supreme Court or simply abolish the Supreme Court altogether.” On the other hand, this was also posted: “So, the African-American chair of the so-called ‘Party of Lincoln’ is making a barely veiled secession threat over a racist’s attempt to subvert democracy that was stopped by a Supreme Court packed with constitutional originalists, three of whom Trump chose himself. Gotcha. This college-educated, Christian, ex-EMT/firefighter veteran won’t be voting for this GOP anytime soon. You guys are crazy.”

I don’t know whether fellow voters ever reflect on their mistakes or lack of vigilance, but I regularly wonder if, through newspaper editorials, columns and extensive candidate Q&As in recent years, I did everything I could have as a journalist to highlight the perils in Paxton’s election and re-election, all of which helped set the stage for some of this insanity. And the madness yet continues in sometimes violent street demonstrations and calls for rebellion. Had this suit succeeded, I believe it would have signified “the end of democracy in the United States of America,” to quote Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. In one of my very last editorials before retirement from the Waco Tribune-Herald, I once more took aim at Paxton amid allegations of his corruption, bribery and abuse of office for investigating the enemies of campaign donor and real estate investor Nate Paul: “No, Paxton isn’t up for re-election this cycle, which means that, barring some unforeseen development, a hobbled Texas Attorney General’s Office will likely limp along into our future, its decisions and rulings increasingly greeted by legitimate cynicism and suspicion, even among Republicans. It’s a spectacle worth considering as voters begin casting ballots. The first question for all should be not what party the candidates have sworn allegiance to but whether voters themselves have placed such allegiances above integrity, honesty, competence and courage.”

With the 2022 election and the possibility of a pardoned Ken Paxton running for a third term as attorney general in my worst thoughts, I must finally resign myself to the Republican Party’s slow-motion implosion with Col. West only months into his rabble-rousing, apparently secessionist duties and Private Citizen Trump sure to remain a spellbinding and destructive force over the proud deplorables ultimately determining the party’s direction. Paxton will have played a major role in all of this, including the new cries of “traitors” aired at mere mention of the Republican Party, even as GOP hacks raise tiresome alarms about socialists and communists. Former Dallas Times Herald columnist Jim Schutze, lately of D Magazine, said it best of Paxton on this latest transgression atop everything else: “This guy is the true bottom of the barrel. Drag a five dollar bill through the Republican Party and this guy and the people joining him are what you get.”