Congressman from E. Texas will enter race for AG’s seat
Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert says he met his $1 million fundraising goal and will be challenging the legally entangled Attorney General Ken Paxton in the March GOP primary, stretching the field to four.
Gohmert, R-Tyler, on Nov. 9 first expressed interest in the seat, when he made a proposition to supporters in a news conference: If he could raise $1 million in 10 days, he would run for Texas attorney general instead of re-election to Congress. The nine-term congressman, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, had not raised that much money in a year since 2006.
Monday’s announcement, which he made on the conservative news channel Newsmax, came after his self-imposed Nov. 19 fundraising deadline passed without an update.
As he introduced his campaign, he kept in step with other competitors, putting an emphasis on criminal allegations hanging over twoterm incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton’s head that could jeopardize the Republican-held seat.
“If you allow me, I will not wait to be my busiest until there’s some bad press about legal improprieties,” he said in a two-minute campaign announcement video posted to YouTube late Monday. “I’ll start boldly protecting your rights on day one.”
Paxton has been under indictment since 2015 on felony securities fraud charges and is facing an FBI probe after being accused last October of corruption by his top aides. He has maintained his innocence in both cases.
Paxton’s campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Monday night.
Gohmert, who has been in Congress since 2005, is known for being one of the body’s most conservative members. The former state appeals court judge has a reputation for espousing conspiracy theories and making outlandish, sometimes homophobic statements, including comparing homosexuality to bestiality, likening Black Lives Matter protests across the country to “the Bolshevik Revolution, the Mao revolution” and warning about socalled “terror babies” being raised to harm Americans.
He joins Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman in challenging the two-term incumbent. All have warned that Paxton’s legal issues create a vulnerability that could allow Democrats to win their first statewide election since 1994. State Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, has dropped out of the contest to run for Tarrant County district attorney after the incumbent in that race, Sharon Wilson, announced she will retire.
Gohmert’s campaign priorities include addressing the border, election integrity, “unconstitutional” coronavirus-related mandates and parental consent over school content.
In particular, he harped on Paxton for not doing enough to fight the 2020 election results. Paxton in December had filed a suit, pushed by attorneys for former President Donald Trump, that sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s win in four battleground states. The filing, peppered with unsubstantiated voter fraud claims, was almost immediately shot down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The suit was one that Gohmert said he would have filed, but Texas was not the right state to carry it, he said.
One of the central arguments of the suit was that the four states had made changes to their election laws because of COVID-19, which Paxton claimed, without evidence, made way for a “massive opportunity for fraud.” But some Texas counties had also made changes to election policies, such as Harris County, which implemented drive-thru voting for the first time ever.
“He failed to ensure Texas abided by the same constitutional provisions that he was suing the other states for violating,” Gohmert said.
In the Democratic primary, three candidates will vie for the nomination: Rochelle Garza, a former ACLU attorney; Joe Jaworski, a Galveston mediator and former Galveston mayor; and Lee Merritt, the nationally known civil rights attorney from the Dallas area.