Paxton's Voter Suppression

In a throwback to the Civil Rights era Texas Republicans are using the power of government to once again suppress the vote of minority Americans. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent armed teams to the homes of half a dozen Houston area members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Squads of armed officers banged on doors at 6 a.m. to execute search warrants and seize cell phones and other possessions at the homes of folks like 87-year-old Lidia Martinez, apparently for exercising her right register people to vote.

Voter suppression is a tried and true method for retaining power. Paxton’s actions are suspect given that the allegations are related to the 2022 election and it seems strange that after nearly two years his investigators suddenly got to the point where they are ready to seized “evidence” given that we’re ramping up for another election. We also know that while Paxton’s office has investigated hundreds of people for voter fraud and other election related crimes spending millions of dollars yet has only led to a handful of convictions. None of those alleged “crimes” involved enough voters to even change the election outcome of a city council member let alone a member of congress or the governor.

Paxton has proven time and again that he’s willing to use Texas taxpayer dollars to fund specious lawsuits and prosecutions if it means helping Republicans win elections. In 2020 he sued four other states claiming they didn’t run their elections properly. Needless to say all four were swing states where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump. All four lawsuits were laughed out of court, just like so many of his other stunts.

It’s important to remember that Paxton is so corrupt that he was impeached by the Texas House with plenty of Republicans supporting that vote last session.

Paxton is satisfied with just harassing a handful of voting rights activists, he is also threatening to sue Bexar, Travis, and Harris Counties, where Biden/Harris won by large margins, over their efforts to send voter registration cards to everyone. Apparently Paxton doesn’t want private groups to help people register to vote but he also does not want the government to people register to vote.

These tactics are the same sort that led to the Voting Rights Act and in fact were Section 4b of that legislation still in force today many of the Republican voter suppression tactics would be prohibited and the Department of Justice would have sued to enforce it. Unfortunately a decade ago the Supreme Court held that even states with a history of voter suppression can’t be pre-empted from doing it again.

Texas isn’t the only state where Republican voter suppression is going today, Ohio and Alabama are in the act along with several other southern states. Voter suppression can’t just be overwhelmed by getting out the vote, remember that Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes and still lost the election due to the electoral college.

It’s going to take patriotic Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney who has put aside his partisanship and endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to restore out democracy.

Proof Republicans Lack Moral Courage

It’s astonishing to me that contrary to what Republican legislators like Senator Bryan Hughes says about his 2021 anti-abortion bill SB8, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is dead set on proving that claims that Republican passed anti-abortion laws apply even when a woman’s life, health, and future ability to have a child is at risk.

This latest episode started with Kate Cox, a 31 year old Dallas mother of two, who was delighted to learn she was pregnant with her third child then months later learned that the fetus suffers a lethal anomaly which could cause it to be born only to die within hours at best and at worst die in her uterus and a cause fatal infection that even if treated could cause to be unable to ever have another child at worst. She wants to terminate her pregnancy and while Sen. Hughes and others claim the law allows that doctors and hospitals and their lawyers say that’s not what the law says. A Travis County district judge granted a temporary restraining order allowing Mrs. Cox to terminate her nonviable pregnancy.

A.G. Paxton then sent a letter to three hospitals, threatening legal action if they allowed the abortion to be performed at their facility. Next Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to intervene and they have issued a stay on the temporary restraining order, meaning the existing law remains in effect so no abortion for Mrs. Cox, she’ll just have to suffer the consequences of Republican over-zealousness.

Some months ago Hughes wrote a letter to the Texas Medical Board asking for an investigation into "disturbing allegations" that patients with serious pregnancy complications were being sent home from the hospital without care. Hughes wrote "Pregnancy complications such as these should be swiftly and reasonably treated to prevent or address a medical emergency determined by the physician," asking the Texas Medical Board to issue guidance on the issue.

Paxton is the state’s lawyer and he believes that there are no conditions under which terminating a pregnancy is not a violation of Texas law. This is the same Ken Paxton who has been impeached for accepting bribes and other crimes in order to cover up his adultery and provide his mistress with a job and home in Austin. Paxton has also been indicted for violations of federal securities laws.

About half the population of Guadalupe County is represented in the Texas Senate by Dr. Donna Campbell who talks about her career as an emergency room physician and her anti-abortion stance whenever she campaigns. You’d think that a physician, a career that most of us associate with extreme compassion, would be the first to recognize that sometimes terminating a pregnancy is medically necessary. Campbell has not once made an effort to amend the state’s anti-abortion legislation to make it possible to address the complexities of pregnancy that she must know full well exists. Of course, she’s also among the majority of Senate Republicans that voted to acquit Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial even after Paxton’s former chief assistant described his efforts to encourage Paxton to step back from his dishonorable actions and dismay at having to resign and report Paxton’s behavior.

There’s a reason that maternal mortality dropped over much of the last century but has been going back up here in Texas for the last few decades. How many women will have to die, how many will have to lose their ability to have children before these Republicans who lack empathy are forced to back off even a little on their zealous application of narrow-minded law?

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 13, 2023

Paxton Acquittal Proves Republicans Corrupt

Last Saturday proved that most of the Texas Senate’s Republican membership is just as corrupt as their federal counter-parts by acquitting Attorney General Ken Paxton of all 16 charges. Only two Republican senators, Kelly Hancock of Fort Worth and Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, had the integrity to vote for conviction.

The evidence presented of criminal wrong-doing, such as Article 10 accusing Paxton engaged in bribery in violation of the Texas Constitution when Paul provided extensive renovations to Paxton’s Austin home and in return, Paul received favorable legal help from Paxton’s agency, was overwhelming yet 16 of 18 Republican senators ignored the facts and testimony of former staff in order to fulfill an entirely partisan agenda. It’s not even like removing Paxton from office would have somehow placed a Democrat in the Attorney General’s office, after all an appointee of Gov. Abbott has been running the office since Paxton was suspended after the House impeached him months ago. Every senator who voted go acquit is now complicit in the Paxton’s crimes.

I’m no stranger to crooks holding high public office, I lived in Louisiana when Edward W.  Edwards served four terms as governor and the only time I voted for him was in 1991 when the Republican candidate was Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and even many Republicans voted for Edwards. At the time there was a bumper sticker that many Republicans put on their cars “Vote for the crook, it’s important”. Here in Texas we voters knew Paxton was dirty and we didn’t have such a poor choice in the last election and yet Paxton won handily.

As Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez pointed out after the acquittal, "During the course of this trial, corruption, bribery, abuse of office, and dereliction of duties were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In any impartial court in the country, the verdict would almost certainly have gone differently." Now that even more evidence of Paxton’s corruption has been presented to the public we can hope that real independents and the few Republicans with integrity will vote him out of office in 2026.

Every Democrat will have to talk to their friends and family about Paxton’s criminality and the complicity of Republican senators when they’re up for election again. We’ll have to be more persuasive than Republican cultist and Gazette columnist Terry Harper who was one of the leaders of the effort to censure Rep. John Kuempel for among other things not being sufficiently “conservative”.

As reported in the Texas Tribune Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican from the Woodlands and a member of the House’s Freedom Caucus stood outside the Senate chamber after the acquittal and stated “The Texas House owes all of Texas a big apology, this was a sham … This is terribly destructive to the Republican Party of Texas.” Toth said he expects there to be “retribution” by voters for his fellow Republicans who supported Paxton’s impeachment. And he agreed that the party’s internecine conflict has no end in sight. Since Rep. Kuempel voted in favor of impeachment I suspect he’ll find himself challenged in the primary. Conversely Senator Donna Campbell who voted to acquit probably won’t. The radical right truly does run the Republican Party of Texas.

Edwin W. Edwards finally went to federal prison in 2001, five years after leaving office. With the current federal criminal cases hanging over Paxton we can only hope justice is served quicker than in Edwards’ case.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - September 20, 2023

Paxton Impeachment

Last Saturday the Texas House voted 121-23 to impeach Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. The landslide bi-partisan vote shows this is not a political or a partisan matter. Ken Paxton has proven to be a liar, a fraud, and a criminal in multiple ways during his tenure as Attorney General. Texas citizens deserve accountability and our state representative, John Kuempel, did the right thing and voted to impeach unlike 20 other Republicans.

The House charged Paxton on 20 counts. Half of the charges are related to actions taken to benefit Nate Paul a wealthy Austin real estate developer who has made high dollar donations to Paxton’s political campaigns, rewards from Paul to Paxton, or to cover-up those actions, including the firing of whistleblowers.

In Article 1, Paxton is charged with failing to act as a public protector of charitable organizations by directing his employees in the attorney general’s office to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Roy F. & JoAnn Cole Mitte Foundation against entities controlled Paul, harming the Austin charity in an effort to benefit Paul.

Article 9 Alleges that Paxton benefited from Paul’s decision to hire the woman that Paxton has acknowledged having an affair with. In exchange, Paul allegedly received favorable legal assistance from, or specialized access to, the attorney general’s office.

Article 10 Alleges that in exchange for providing free renovations to Paxton’s home, Paul received favorable legal assistance from, or specialized access to, the attorney general’s office.

Other charges include Article 16 in which Paxton is accused of conspiring or attempting to conspire with others to commit acts described in one or more articles. Article 17 in which Paxton is accused of misusing his official powers by causing employees to perform services for his benefit and the benefit of others. Paxton is also charged with Dereliction of Duty, Unfitness for Office, and Abuse of Public Trust among other allegations.

The next step is a trial in the Texas Senate, in which Paxton’s wife Angela is a member. According to the Texas constitution the senate sets its own rules for the trial so at this time it is unknown whether Senator Paxton will be allowed to vote on the charges. Since the constitution requires that two thirds of the senate members present at the trial vote to convict in order to remove an official from office that means 20 or 21 must do so depending on whether or not his wife is allowed to participate.

The partisan split in the senate is 19 Republican and 12 Democrats. I think we can be assured of the all 12 Democrats voting to convict since Paxton’s mis-deeds have been in the public eye since well before the 2022 election. The real question in my mind is whether or not there are 8 or 9 Republican senators with the fortitude to do the right thing and remove the odious Paxton from office.

Republican Senator Donna Campbell represents a section of Guadalupe County north of I-10 and west of Highway 123, Democrats Judith Zaffirini and Roland Gutierrez represent the rest of the county. We’ll have to wait and see if Sen. Campbell has the integrity to vote for conviction or prefers to pander to the Republican base.

Published in the Seguin Gazette May 31, 2023

Voter Fraud Investigation is a Fraud

As reported in the Houston Chronicle; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s “office spent nearly twice as much time working on voter fraud cases this year as it did in 2018 — logging more than 22,000 staff hours — yet resolved just 16 prosecutions, half as many as two years ago.” That’s according to records obtained from the agency by nonprofit government watchdog American Oversight.

Everyone prosecuted were Harris County residents who supplied false addresses when they registered to vote. Not a single one served even a day in jail. There were over 11 million votes cast in the presidential election here in Texas so Paxton’s teams found that .00000145% of them were cast by voters registered at the wrong address. If shoplifting and speeding had rates that low we’d hardly ever assign officers to those crimes.

Paxton considers the voter fraud a top priority of his office. Between January and October of 2020 assigned eight additional law enforcement sergeants in addition to the nine already assigned to the election integrity unit and doubled the number of prosecutors to four. Given the pay rates of the attorneys and experienced investigators assigned a conservative estimate is that Paxton spent $750,000 to investigate and prosecute a bunch of nobodies for very minor violations of election law.  That’s like the city assigning a sizable fraction of police officers to catch people speeding less than 5 miles an hour over the posted limit. There is plenty of more important work to be done with that kind of expenditure of Texas taxpayer money.

Like the previous occupant of the White House, Paxton and Gov. Abbott continue to claim that organized voter fraud is rampant and even with massive expenditures of investigative resources they’re unable to provide any proof. Even if Paxton is honest and competent, and I’d argue he’s neither, numerous academic studies and journalistic reviews have also failed to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. Even a wide-ranging investigation of election fraud conducted by the U.S. Justice Department under former Attorney General William Barr in the 2020 elections found no evidence of such fraud. Prior to his resignation Barr publicly admitted that investigators had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

So to be clear, even the Republican attorney general who protected the former president from the Mueller investigation couldn’t gin up a shred of evidence for the big lie his boss and nearly every Republican in office today, except Liz Cheney and a handful of others, continue to extol and use as the excuse for making it harder for people to register to vote and cast their ballot.

If there is no organized voter fraud and elections aren’t being won with fraudulent votes then why is Gov. Abbott so upset that SB7, the omnibus election bill, failed to pass last month? He’s so upset he has threatened to veto the budget line that pays the salaries for the thousand staffers who work full time for our senators and representatives. Making government employees suffer because you don’t like the outcome of the legislative process is a whole new level of childish temper tantrum.

The real reason that Republican leaders like the former president, Gov. Abbott, Paxton and others claim widespread voter fraud is that it provides a fig leaf for their efforts to prevent the voters most likely to vote for Democrats from voting. They know that their policies aren’t popular and that they can’t win when more people vote so their strategy is simply don’t let them vote.

Published in the Seguin Gazette June 9, 2021

Texas Republicans Attempt Voter Suppression Again

When Governor Abbott designated “election integrity” an emergency item last month anyone who has paid attention to his rhetoric and that of the rest of the Republican Party knew it was a bad sign. Sure enough after weeks of rumors Senate Bill 7 was just introduced and it comes as no surprise that the 27 page bill contains a wide range of voter suppression and anti-democracy provisions.

SB 7 expands prosecutorial powers for the Attorney General over voter registration violations, whether intentional violations or accidental. Given Attorney General Ken Paxton’s predilection for using his office for purely political purposes; like trying to overturn the results of a presidential election, giving him expanded powers to prosecute voter registration mistakes is a profoundly bad idea.

The bill prohibits counties from proactively sending vote by mail applications which some counties did in the 2020 election cycle to encourage eligible voters to stay safe by voting by mail rather than risk infection from the coronavirus at a polling site.

SB 7 prohibits counties from operating early voting poll sites later than 7pm. Only a few counties offered later hours but it certainly helps people who work long hours to have an opportunity to vote.

The bill mandates anyone who wants to vote by mail because they are disabled must provide specific documentation. So now folks who already have a hard time getting along in life face another hurdle exercising their constitutional right to vote.

SB 7 requires that any person in the car with a voter who is voting curbside, including people who transported them there, shall officially be deemed an assistant under law who must sign the form documenting that they provided assistance. So if a disabled person takes a cab to the polls the cab driver must sign in as an assistant. How many cab drivers are going to find that acceptable?

Senate Bill 7 continues a pattern we’ve been seeing throughout the pandemic where county election workers do their best to find ways to let Texans vote safely and securely state officials do everything they can to stop them.

As Common Cause Texas Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez said recently “It’s already harder to vote in Texas than any other state and Senate Bill 7 would make it considerably harder.”

There is a reason we keep hearing so much talk from politicians in Texas about “election integrity”, without any basis in reality, it’s because they need to invent a justification for a bill that drastically limits voting rights. There is one and only one purpose to Senate Bill 7 and that is to help the politicians in charge stay in power. 

The real problem with elections in Texas that we should be addressing is too few people participating in our democratic process. We should be doing things like implementing online voter registration, improving civics education, and investing in our election infrastructure.

You have an opportunity to be a part of the process and stop this truly bad bill by contacting your state representative John Kuempel at (830) 379-8732 and depending on which part of the county you live in state senator Judith Zaffirini at (512) 463-0121 or Donna Campbell at (512) 463-0125. Both senators sit on the State Affairs committee to which SB7 is assigned.

Republican Plot to Kill Paid Sick Leave

How do you feel about going into a restaurant or fast food place and being served by someone who is obviously ill? How would you feel if they were sick but you couldn’t tell just by looking or their behavior? How do you feel about your child being served by someone sick? What if it is another kind of retailer or an office you work in?

It’s important to consider this because not every employer provides paid sick leave and that encourages people who are paid at or near minimum wage to work even when sick. We all understand that many illnesses like the flu are easily transmitted from one person to another and we even have a word for an action taken to stop the spread of especially virulent strains, that word is quarantine. If you’re ill and don’t have some overwhelming reason to be out and about most people will self-quarantine just because they don’t feel like doing anything other than staying home in bed or on the sofa.

Low income folks without paid sick leave often are compelled to work even when quite ill by the need to make the rent or buy groceries for their family. Instead of self-quarantining they then interact with dozens of people and run the risk of infecting some of them. Many businesses recognize that having sick people at work just makes it more likely for other members of the staff to become sick as well and therefore offer paid sick leave.

In an effort to address the health concerns of the public who may shop at or otherwise visit locations where the employer encourages ill staff to work the cities of Austin has passed a paid sick leave ordinance. In San Antonio citizens have gathered 140,000 signatures on a petition to get a proposition to create a paid sick leave ordinance on the November ballot.

So far this seems quite reasonable but our Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton (R), claims the Texas Minimum Wage Act preempts cities from enacting a paid sick leave ordinance. I’ve read the legislation, nowhere in it does it even mention sick leave. AG Paxton isn’t the only one on this crazy horse, our state senator, Donna Campbell (R), sent the mayor of San Antonio a letter urging him to block such an ordinance on the grounds that employers don’t like it. According to her letter some members of the business community have taken exception to the proposition on the grounds that it will cause them to lose business opportunities. This is typical Republican logic, make poor, sick people work until they drop and the heck with the health consequences for everyone else because “job creators” need every penny.

Sen. Campbell and AG Paxton just don’t get that employers aren’t job creators, customers are, and when you sicken your customers and your other employees you’re really just hurting your own bottom line. Worse they don’t care about the public health issues created by forcefully encouraging sick people to expose themselves to the general public. Given that Campbell is an emergency room doctor you’d think she’d know better but as in other cases in the past Campbell has let her raging right wing agenda override her professional judgement.

In about 90 days you and I will have an opportunity to send her a resounding message that her failure to look out for the health and well-being of the citizens of her district and all of Texas are unacceptable by electing Steve Kling as our new state senator for Senate District 25.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - August 10, 2018

Dan Patrick's $8.5 billion Bathroom Bill a Distraction

The Texas legislature is now in session and the first thing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants to talk about isn’t spurring the economy even though the state has fallen from third to twenty-first in economic strength since 2013. No, instead he wants to talk about his $8.5 billion bathroom bill that the cost the state 185,000 jobs according to a study by the Texas Association of Business.

The Bathroom Bill is a Republican distraction, Patrick and his followers are using fear to take the public’s eye off their record of incompetence. The Texas Comptroller announced that tax revenues are expected to fall during this two year budget period so there won’t be as much money available this legislative session.

We all know that Republicans never want to be seen raising taxes so that means there will be cuts; once again we’re likely to see public education take a hit. Consider that while the legislature did increase public school funding a little in the last cycle it has yet fully restore what it cut in 2011. Now they’re going to cut again, we could be back to a 2011 style budget where thousands of Texas teachers lost their jobs.

Senator Donna Campbell will once again push her school voucher bill in an effort to gut public education in Texas. No matter what she and voucher supporters say it’s really just a way to provide discounts to rich people who already send their kids to private schools and turn a public service in to profits for private businesses. Private schools aren’t required to provide bus service so not every child is able to attend them and they aren’t accountable for the quality of the education provided. Private school students don’t even have to take the standardized tests administered to public schools so their performance can’t even be compared.

Campbell is sure to claim once again that her bill will save the state money because it doesn’t use all the money allocated per child in the public system but that just means that it’s even less useful to middle class and low income parents who can’t afford to subsidize their children’s education. Will John Kuempel stand up for Seguin and the rest of Guadalupe county school children and say NO?

There will surely be cuts to other agencies that provide services the public relies on. The only question is which agencies will see budget cuts and how deep they will be?

Then there’s Out on Bond Ken Paxton, the man who is supposed to be the state’s chief law enforcement office but will spend the next few months preparing for a trial that could see him got jail for 99 years. He’ll be too busy fighting a legal battle to save his life to actually do the job for which he was elected. If the man had any character at all he’d resign so that the citizens of Texas could get the law enforcement services our tax dollars are paying for. Of course that would mean he’d no longer be able to take donations from rich people to pay for his legal defense. Or let me rephrase that he’d no longer get those donations because we wouldn’t be in a position to return the favor.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette January 20, 2017