The new Texas House District 61 includes several Collin County boomtowns that have seen an influx of Californians and other newcomers in recent years. Now one of those North Texas transplants, Navy reservist and businessman Paul Chabot, is running in the Republican primary for the seat against two native Texans.
Chabot had two failed bids for Congress in California before moving to Texas and founding a moving company to help fellow conservatives seek political refuge away from liberal states and cities.
Chabot has since expanded what the company, Conservative Move, offers: Instead of helping folks flock to Texas, he now generally helps people move from blue states to red states.
He’s in the race with former McKinney City Council member and U.S. Marshal Frederick Frazier, who received an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, and accountant and former Richardson ISD trustee James Herblin.
The winner will face businesswoman Sheena King, who’s unopposed in the Democratic primary.
The district has no incumbent because it’s a new district created by the Legislature last fall.
Frazier and Herblin have emphasized their local ties and conservative bona fides in the district, while criticizing Chabot as an outsider and opportunist.
“I think he brings the wrong kind of California politics to Texas,” Herblin said. “There’s people that … they’re just dying to be a politician, and I think he fits that bill.”
Chabot said he’s sad to hear those words from a fellow Republican.
“Little does he know that those Republicans that moved to Texas are here to keep this great state red as the 2018 Beto-Cruz exit polling shows,” Chabot wrote in an email, referring to polling that showed transplants were more likely to vote for Texas Sen. Cruz while native Texans were more likely to vote for his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke.
Frazier said Chabot’s candidacy doesn’t make a difference to him. It’s not Chabot’s first time running for office, and Frazier says “it is what it is.”
Most of the population in District 61 lives in some of Collin County’s — and the country’s — fastest-growing cities: McKinney, Frisco, Celina and Anna. The area also includes unincorporated areas and the towns of Weston and Chambersville.
‘Don’t California my Texas’
Some conservatives worry about West Coast liberals flooding in and transforming the local political landscape.
This fear is, at least partially, reflected in the state’s new redistricting maps.
Many of Texas’ new political districts have cemented the GOP’s grip on power for the next decade, while reducing the voting strength of nonwhite voters who fueled Texas’ population boom.
People of color accounted for 95% of the state’s population increase over the past decade, with much of the growth concentrated in cities and suburban areas, census data shows.
Collin County is no exception: The region became 17% more racially diverse in the past decade — though King is the only person of color vying for the seat.
But Chabot’s candidacy flips a popular narrative about the West Coast migration trend on its head: He doesn’t want to turn Texas into California.
“Leaving California and moving to Texas is like getting out of a bad relationship,” Chabot said after relocating here.
To the former White House adviser and frequent Fox and NewsMax contributor, Collin County is the last bastion of America: “If we lose Texas, we lose America. It is really that simple,” he said.
Conservatives are still king in Collin County for now, but recent voting trends and a diversifying population could spell future changes.
Trump won Collin County’s 3rd Congressional District by just one percentage point in 2020. In 2018, then-Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke finished 6.12 percentage points behind Ted Cruz in Collin County.
Local voters’ decisions to back President Joe Biden and O’Rourke took the GOP by surprise. But any significant changes to the county’s political landscape will likely still take another decade or longer, says Mark Owens, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Tyler who directs The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler poll.
“While Collin County might not be as strong of a Republican stronghold as it was before its population growth occurred, it is still the strongest Republican county in North Texas,” Owens said. “It’s unlikely that a Republican candidate will lose in Collin County unless they turn off independents and moderate Republicans.”
Tuesday’s primary may be a showdown for candidates to signal who is the most conservative, who is the most committed to the culture wars — and even whether Texas should secede from the union.
All three Republican candidates are trying to outdo the others in their own way: Herblin spoke at two McKinney ISD meetings this year, urging trustees to “do the right thing” and take books “filled with filth” off the district’s shelves.
“What I want to encourage you guys to do is to inhale God and exhale fear,” Herblin said at a January board meeting. “I heard you guys pray tonight — you’re praying in the name of Christ. And you either believe that or you don’t, but you have to take a stand. You guys are our leaders. And you’re either going to say you’re OK with the LGBTQ stuff and the pornography in the books, or you’re not.”
The House District 61 race is also of great consequence, Herblin says: “This is God vs. the devil.”
Herblin also told The News that elementary school is too early for students to learn about slavery. High school is more appropriate, he said.
“I don’t think it needs to be pushed down 8-year-olds’ throats. I think that’s way too early,” he said.
In a recent candidate forum hosted by Constitutional Texans, Chabot called mask mandates, vaccine passports and COVID-19 stay-at-home orders a “slippery slope” and compared them to Nazi Germany. “Nazi Germany was no different. It’s called groupthink,” he said.
In the same forum, Frazier said the James W. Throckmorton Confederate statue — which sits in front of the former Collin County Courthouse turned McKinney Performing Arts Center — was his passion project. The statue’s finger points toward east McKinney, which has historically had more residents of color than other parts of the city.
“And you know how much hate mail and emails and messages I got from people from all over the country about that statue? And you know how much I care? Not one damn — because that statue belongs to you,” Frazier said.
Some in conservative Collin County circles have called Frazier a “RINO,” or a “Republican in name only.”
“I think it’s a pathetic choice for them to use that as an attack. I’ve been a Republican my entire life,” Frazier said.
He also leaned on Trump’s endorsement: “I really doubt that he would pick a RINO to endorse, or a person that served on his crime commission.”
Candidates’ quest to prove who is the most conservative isn’t unusual because there’s no incumbent, University of North Texas political science professor Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha said.
“That inflammatory rhetoric is not uncommon in an open-seat race where it’s a free-for-all,” he said.
But that could come at a cost, he says.
In the long term, if GOP candidates take far-right stances on social issues that executives deem bad for business, the party could lose support in fast-growing boomtowns like McKinney, Frisco and Celina.
“If you push too hard on social issues — like with the so-called bathroom bill a few years ago — you can have backlash that might push those businesses away,” Eshbaugh-Soha said.
Frazier, Chabot and Herblin also say they’d support a referendum to let Texans vote on whether the state should leave the U.S. and become an independent republic.
But all three candidates say they want to keep Texas the way it is.
“We have a state to save and our country depends on us,” Chabot said at a candidate forum. “If we lose Collin County … we will lose.”
Austin correspondent Sami Sparber contributed to this report.
