STAND BY YOUR MAN
THREE YEARS AGO, JUST MONTHS after being sworn in as Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton’s days seemed numbered. In July 2015, a grand jury had indicted Paxton on three felony charges — two for securities fraud and another for failing to register with the state as an investment advisor. Unlike when Rick Perry faced felony indictments the previous summer, top Republicans were either silent about Paxton’s criminal troubles or gave desultory statements on the importance of due process. One poll conducted in the weeks after Paxton’s indictment found that a majority of GOP voters wanted him to resign.
Even before the criminal charges, Paxton had taken his lumps. In 2014, the bruising GOP primary for attorney general fueled scrutiny into his sketchy business dealings and had even led to a civil fine for violating state securities law. Paxton’s main opponent, Dan Branch, urged GOP voters not to “promote a lawbreaker as our standard bearer to replace Greg Abbott.” Yet this year, Paxton didn’t draw a single GOP opponent. His case is now dragging into its fourth year. If a trial ever happens — and that’s in doubt — it will come long after voters decide whether to re-elect him in November. In fact, so few people seem to remember Paxton’s legal problems that his underfunded Democratic challenger, Austin attorney Justin Nelson, has spent most of his campaign reminding anyone who will listen that the state’s top lawman faces felony charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.
“The people who know the charges are still pending, they’re the smallest group,” Nelson said. “They don’t understand why he hasn’t gone to trial in three years. They’re like, ‘Why else would he not be going to trial?’”
The answer to that question lies in Collin County, Paxton’s home turf and one of the richest, reddest counties in Texas. After a nomadic childhood as an Air Force brat, Paxton settled in McKinney, the county seat, once he got his law degree. He worked for J.C. Penney and a corporate law firm before starting his own practice in 2002, the year he was elected to the Texas House. Like ward politics in Chicago or the system in the Rio Grande Valley, conservatives in the Dallas ’burbs have built their own powerful political machine in the land of turfgrass, megachurches and the Cheesecake
