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Democrat Rochelle Garza banks on anti-Paxton sentiment in Texas attorney general’s race

Recent polls show her within striking distance, but can she sway the GOP and independent voters she needs to score an upset?

Rochelle Garza talks on the campaign trail about her experience as a civil rights lawyer in South Texas, about advocating for a brother with disabilities, about fighting the Trump administration for abortion rights.

But what really gets the Democratic crowd revved is when Garza lights into her GOP opponent: Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“Paxton has never seen a crime he doesn’t want to commit,” she said during a recent luncheon at the Arts District Mansion in Dallas, drawing a chorus of laughter.

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Yet what began with a joke ended with a dire warning as Garza ticked off the ways she said Paxton has failed Texans in the wake of last year’s deadly winter blackouts, the Uvalde school massacre and the state’s near-total ban on abortions.

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“Unless we vote him out,” she said, pausing to look at the audience, “people will die.”

Garza is banking on voters being turned off by Paxton’s mounting scandals to help propel her into the powerful office Democrats haven’t won since 1994.

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A sea change at the attorney general’s office would dramatically shift Texas politics by giving Democrats a check on Republican policies. Recent polls show Garza within striking distance, but analysts say peeling off the GOP and independent voters she needs to score an upset will be a tall task.

Big-name Republicans who challenged Paxton in this year’s primary and a well-funded Democrat who ran in 2018 failed to get enough voters to turn on Paxton. The McKinney Republican has managed to hold his base despite 7-year-old felony securities fraud charges and a more recent FBI investigation into accusations of corruption made by top aides.

Garza says Paxton is weaker than ever and the race offers Democrats their best chance to flip a statewide seat in nearly 30 years.

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“I want to remind folks,” she said, enunciating her words carefully: “We can win this race.”

Democrats say no candidate is better positioned than Garza to motivate voters who disagree with the state’s abortion ban and the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs. Wade.

The civil rights attorney drew national attention in 2017 when she successfully represented a teenage migrant whom the Trump administration tried to block from leaving a federal detention facility to get an abortion.

Democratic attorney general candidate Rochelle Garza on the campaign trail in Dallas on...
Democratic attorney general candidate Rochelle Garza on the campaign trail in Dallas on Friday, Sept. 16, 2022.(Lola Gomez / Staff Photographer)

Garza, who was pregnant when she decided to run for attorney general last year, said she doesn’t want her 6-month-old daughter to grow up in a state where she can’t make reproductive choices.

If elected, Garza said she would create a new civil rights office and a workers protection bureau. She accuses Paxton of failing to hold energy companies accountable after the 2021 winter blackouts and promises aggressive enforcement of consumer protection laws. And she wants to withdraw his controversial legal opinion that paved the way for the state to investigate parents of transgender children for abuse.

At the Arts District Mansion, Garza received a standing ovation from the roughly 75 battle-tested lawyers, activists and union members. A car waited outside to whisk her to her next event — a listening session in Oak Cliff — but she made a beeline for the trunk.

“I’m just putting my milk in the Yeti,” she shouted to a campaign worker in the front seat.

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The yellow cooler holds the breast milk Garza pumps in between stops of a busy campaign schedule. On the road, she, her husband and daughter stay at supporters’ homes.

The daughter of school teachers who grew up in Brownsville, Garza left the Rio Grande Valley for college and law school but returned to work as a civil rights attorney. If elected, she would be the state’s first Latina attorney general.

“What really speaks to me, and what I think speaks to a lot of Latinos I’ve talked to recently, is that she’s one of us,” said Rojo Meixueiro, a community organizer in North Texas. “We often don’t get to see a proud Tejana that is a recent mom running for state office.”

With a month until early voting starts, Garza is spending most of her time traveling the state to speak at events. She has yet to spread her message to a wider audience through television ads, mailers or a big digital ad buy — though the campaign says those investments are coming.

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Central to her strategy is winning over independent voters who may have supported Paxton in previous elections.

“Once they know about the problems,” Garza said, “they’re not going to vote for him.”

Paxton has been under indictment for securities fraud for almost his entire tenure, but a trial has been delayed by wrangling over where to hold it, how much to pay prosecutors and by unforeseen events, such as Hurricane Harvey and the COVID-19 pandemic. In late 2020, the FBI began investigating Paxton after former aides accused him of illegally using his office to benefit a campaign donor. No federal charges have been filed. Paxton denies wrongdoing.

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Rice political scientist Mark Jones called Paxton the “weakest member of the GOP herd,” but said many voters simply don’t know about his legal baggage. Even if they did, he said, Texas remains a “pink state,” and polling shows that Garza has been unable to sway a big enough share of Republican voters.

One of Garza’s biggest challenges is getting her message out and name recognition up in time for the Nov. 8 election, said Sharon A. Navarro, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In midterm elections, which draw lower turnout than presidential contests, it’s about mobilizing the base, she said.

“She’s got to be very strategic with the time she has remaining,” Navarro said.

Longtime Democratic strategist Colin Strother said the party should be doing more to boost Garza in a race he sees as the most competitive statewide.

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“Everybody needs to get an oar in the water and start paddling,” he said. “There’s still plenty of time, but things have to start happening very soon in order for us to have a real solid shot.”

Some outside groups, including the Democratic Attorneys General Association, have put money into the contest, but there hasn’t been a flood of national funding for Garza as the party focuses on holding its majority in Congress.

Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who has raised millions of dollars and drawn big crowds in his bid to oust Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has campaigned alongside Garza several times since the primary.

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While Garza outraised Paxton over the summer, as of July her campaign had less than $500,000 to spend in a statewide race that strategists say requires a multimillion-dollar investment. At that time, Paxton was sitting on a $3.5 million campaign war chest. The next campaign finance reports come out in October.

Democrat Justin Nelson, who largely self-funded his campaign, spent more than $6 million in his 2018 bid to oust Paxton, much of it on ads highlighting the attorney’s general indictment. He ultimately fell short by 3.6%.

Three Republicans, including Land Commissioner George P. Bush, tried last spring to convince their own party to fire Paxton over his legal troubles. Though they forced the two-term attorney general into a runoff, he went on to easily clinch the GOP nomination.

Paxton has held the support of his base voters by using the office to advance a conservative agenda, filing lawsuits against the Biden administration’s immigration plans and local leaders’ pandemic restrictions. A close ally of former President Donald Trump, Paxton also tried to challenge the 2020 presidential election results before the U.S. Supreme Court.

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In a recent attack ad, his campaign cast Garza as a “liberal extremist” and pointed to some of her past tweets, including one that called for a single-payer health care system. Paxton’s team is not publicizing his campaign events and did not respond to a request for a schedule or an interview.

Garza would function as the “people’s lawyer,” in her vision of the office, she says.

“We deserve to have an attorney general that’s going to fight to defend the rights of all Texans,” she said. “That’s what I promise you all that I will deliver.”

Early voting begins Oct. 24.