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Early voting for the general election begins in less than seven weeks, and while the U.S. Senate fight has drawn national attention, there's another contest on the ballot that's at least as consequential for Texans: the race to succeed Republican incumbent Ken Paxton as state attorney general, featuring state Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, and state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas.
Texas' attorney general serves as the state's top law enforcement official. The attorney general's office oversees a range of critical programs affecting ordinary citizens, including child support collection and enforcement. However, the office is perhaps best known for its role in litigation involving the federal government, as well as lawsuits by the state of Texas against private industries.
"In strict political terms, attorneys general going back, particularly to Greg Abbott’s term as attorney general in the early 2010s, have become very active players in how states engage with national politics," said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "The attorney general’s office is also being used as a springboard for higher office by a couple of generations of Texas leaders."
The past two Texas attorneys general have mounted successful runs for higher office — John Cornyn for the U.S. Senate and Abbott for the governorship. Paxton is currently the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, having defeated Cornyn in a hard-fought primary runoff.
"A very dynamic race"
The latest snapshot of the race comes from a poll conducted by the Texas Politics Project, released last week. According to the poll, some 40% of registered voters said they plan to support Middleton, compared to 35% who said they will vote for Johnson and 3% who back Libertarian candidate Tom Oxford.
"This is a very dynamic race," Henson said. "At five points, it’s indicative of how the two parties are fairly competitive in this race and certainly more competitive than we usually expect them to be in Texas."
A five-point lead is uncomfortably close for a Republican running statewide in Texas. Henson said that, ordinarily, a Republican candidate for statewide office should be leading the Democrat by between nine to 12 points.
"I expect that this race will continue to poll pretty closely," Henson said. "And it’s a race that we’ll be watching as it unfolds, because we’ve got two very competitive candidates running for an office that's very important, and a lot of people that have not really started thinking about it yet, but they will have their attention drawn to it."
Perhaps just as significant as Middleton's relatively narrow lead is that the poll shows 22% of respondents have yet to decide which candidate they will support. That comes after Middleton, who is independently wealthy, put millions of dollars into his own campaign, in part to build statewide name recognition.
"Mayes Middleton is going to have a lot more money to spend than Nathan Johnson," Henson said. "But Nathan Johnson is a solid candidate, which has not always been the case in these down-ballot races for Democrats."
"A spiritual battle for the future of our state"
Middleton was not the automatic favorite to capture the Republican nomination for attorney general. He emerged from a field that included state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston — a former Harris County prosecutor and state district judge who most recently chaired the state Senate Committee on Finance — and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a hard-right congressman from Central Texas, who forced Middleton into a May 26 primary runoff.
Middleton defeated Roy in the runoff by more than 10 percentage points, but that victory didn't come cheaply. According to records from the Texas Ethics Commission, Middleton donated more than $3 million to his own campaign between late February and mid-May. He also loaned his campaign an additional $5,000,000 between mid-April and mid-May.
That money was almost all spent as of the end of June. The most recent campaign finance data showed Middleton had less than $118,000 in cash on hand. Johnson closed out the reporting period with more than $290,000 in the bank.
Middleton won the Republican nomination campaigning as "MAGA Mayes Middleton," arguing he was the most-conservative, most pro-Donald Trump candidate running. Middleton, who did not respond to multiple interview requests from Houston Public Media, indicated he would follow the same strategy in the general election during an interview with CBS News.
"We’re in a spiritual battle for the future of our state. They’re trying to destroy Texas. And I mean that they, the left," Middleton said. "They want to drag us down, like they’ve done in New York, California, all the others."
Middleton cast himself as the "law-and-order, tough-on-crime candidate," and he said he wants to expand the powers of the office.
"I also support adding powers to the attorney general’s office to prosecute any state crime. And the reason why that’s important, you've got to ask the question, are these things being enforced in blue counties?" Middleton said. "And the answer to that is, of course not."
Middleton repeatedly claimed his Democratic opponent, Dallas State Senator Nathan Johnson, would not enforce the law if elected. He pointed to Johnson's stance on a recent piece of legislation Middleton had authored, requiring that transgender individuals use the restrooms and locker rooms of their gender assigned at birth.
"He actually had a debate in his primary," Middleton said. "And he said the number one law he would not enforce and not follow is one I authored and passed, the Women’s Privacy law, which kicks men out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms. Right? This is common sense right here."
Johnson did say in a January debate with his Democratic primary opponent, former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski, that he considered the Texas Women's Privacy Act to be "a dumb law" and unenforceable. If he elected, Johnson said, the phone line the Attorney General's Office had set up to take tips from the public about alleged violations of the law "will not have anyone answering it."
"A check on the abuse of power"
However, Johnson, who spoke with Houston Public Media last month, turned Middleton's argument on its head. He said Middleton has given little if any indication that he's prepared to fulfill the responsibilities of the office of attorney general.
"I’m not hearing how he’s going to work with district attorneys instead of against them to make streets safer," Johnson said. "I’m not hearing how he’s going to investigate political corruption. I’m not hearing how he’s going to investigate the coziness with preferential contracts between [the government and] the private sector. I’m not hearing how he’s going to advise agencies. I’m not hearing how he’s going to keep the federal government from encroaching upon states’ rights or individual rights. I’m not hearing any of that stuff. And those are the things that you’d expect from an attorney general."
Johnson argued that Middleton's determination to target the left makes him unfit to be attorney general. He said that Paxton had deliberately polarized the office and that Middleton is promising more of the same.
"I want people to understand that that office was conceived of as a check on the abuse of power in the private sector and in the public sector," Johnson said. "And it has been used instead by Ken Paxton, and Mayes Middleton has pledged to use the office the same way, as a political tool, not as a check and a balance like our country was founded upon."
Paxton regularly sued the federal government during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden over a range of issues, not all exclusively related to Texas — something he has not done at all under President Trump. When Abbott was attorney general — and Barack Obama, also a Democrat, was president — Abbott described his workday as, "I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home."
All that raises the question of how Johnson, if elected, would do the same with President Trump during the last two years of his second term.
"If the Trump administration stops breaking the law, I will not have any need to sue the Trump administration," Johnson said. "It’s certainly not a goal. Since it seems to be a matter of routine in this White House, I expect I will be filing a considerable number of lawsuits against the federal government."
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