Nelson should be clear choice over corrupt or incompetent Paxton

By some accounts, this was one of the ugliest weeks in modern political history.

Personally, I thought the ugliness was bracing, in its way.

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said Thursday during his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was telling the truth about that much, at least. And any subsequent fibs were irrelevant to the question at hand — whether he should be confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh has been credibly accused of sexual assault, among other things. But President Donald Trump was unfazed by that revelation about his second Supreme Court pick, and Republicans control the Senate. So the confirmation process, in itself, has eroded the American public’s confidence in the judiciary.

But on the bright side, the entire sordid debacle helps explain why I think all Texans should be paying attention to this year’s attorney general race — and why all Americans should be rooting for Justin Nelson, the Democratic nominee.

I say that not as a partisan but as someone who believes in the rule of law and the separation of powers, and who thinks that all our state officials should aspire to both competence and decency.

It’s an indictment of the Republican Party of Texas’ current leadership that Ken Paxton became Texas attorney general in the first place in 2014. A metaphorical indictment, I mean. While running for the Republican nomination that year, he admitted to violating a state securities law that he had voted to create some years previously as a member of the Texas Legislature, and he paid an ad-

ministrative penalty.

For Republicans like Greg Abbott, who was then running for governor, that might have been a warning sign. Paxton’s admission triggered an investigation by the Texas Rangers; just months after being sworn in as the state’s top law enforcement official, he was charged with several felonies. But Abbott continued to support Paxton’s bid for office, as did most of his Republican colleagues. In fact Paxton — still indicted — was unopposed in this year’s primary.

Even the most blindly loyal Republican voters should be outraged by that. Paxton began his term with Chip Roy as his first assistant attorney general; that gave me confidence that a reasonably competent adult would be overseeing the day-to-day operations of the agency. Paxton also had a sterling solicitor general, Scott Keller.

But Roy left Paxton’s employ in 2016; he is now the Republican nominee for Congress in Texas’ 21st Congressional District. Keller left recently for a private sector gig. One can hope that Paxton’s current deputies are working hard on behalf of the state and providing effective leadership for the thousands of public servants whose work they oversee.

But it is impossible to have confidence in the attorney general himself. The most charitable explanation for Paxton’s conduct in office is that he is profoundly incompetent. The most plausible one is that he is a corrupt and opportunistic charlatan, who rode Abbott’s coattails to the attorney general’s office, which he has proceeded to use for his personal enrichment and political gain.

Even under normal circumstances, it would be hard to make a case for Paxton’s re-election. And under the current circumstances, it’s crucial that Texas have a genuinely independent attorney general. I’ve written before that I see Trump as a mostly incidental threat to the rule of law; he seems to chafe at constraints on his own power, rather than that of the office he holds.

Still, an incidental threat may be real enough, and Trump’s haphazard attacks on the rule of law have been met with no resistance from Paxton. In fact, since Trump’s inauguration, Paxton has helped pursue the president’s agenda through the judiciary; this year, the state is seeking to end the Affordable Care Act’s protection of patients with pre-existing conditions, among other things.

But Texas voters have a real chance to oust Paxton in lieu of Nelson this November. There haven’t been many public polls of this race, but all show the Democrat within single digits, despite the fact that many voters have never even heard his name. That’s a measure of how underwhelming Paxton’s tenure in high office has been. And although Nelson is a first-time candidate, his résumé holds up to scrutiny. He is an ethically rigorous and highly qualified centrist whose priorities are what one hopes they would be.

“We want to have an independent voice in that office,” Nelson told me recently at an Astros game. “We want to have someone who is a check on power. We want to have someone who will stand up for the rule of law.”

We do. And we don’t have that in our attorney general’s office. Paxton once swiped an expensive fountain pen from a security bin at the Collin County courthouse and returned it to its rightful owner only after being identified as the culprit thanks to CCTV.

But that’s a story for another day, perhaps. For now, all Texans should be aware that we have a clear choice to make in this year’s attorney general race between Paxton and Nelson. And I hope everyone, in this case, votes for change.