He should be a good candidate.
Sen. Nathan Johnson
State Sen. Nathan Johnson is running for Texas attorney general, the three-term Dallas Democrat announced Tuesday.
He told The Texas Tribune that, if elected, he would look to restore “faith and confidence” in an agency he believes has been stained by scandal and spectacle.
“It’s been so long since people, broadly speaking, thought of the attorney general’s office as a place where they have an attorney, an elected official on their side,” he said. “And that’s wrong.”
Johnson, a business litigator at Thompson Coburn in Dallas, is the first major Democrat to enter the race. Two other state senators, Joan Huffman of Houston and Mayes Middleton of Galveston, are running in the Republican primary, alongside former Department of Justice lawyer Aaron Reitz.
The position is open for the first time in more than a decade after Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s GOP primary.
Johnson faces strong headwinds: No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994, and whoever wins the Democratic nomination will likely face a formidable GOP opponent. Middleton is well-funded, Huffman has a long legislative record and Reitz has already garnered significant backing from allies in conservative legal circles.
But Johnson has experience winning tough races. As a political newcomer in 2018, he unseated Republican incumbent Don Huffines, becoming the first Democrat to win the North Dallas district in three decades. That was also a midterm year, where discontent over President Donald Trump’s policies pushed Democrats to turn out at the polls and made mainstream Democrats like Johnson seem more palatable to independents and moderate Republicans.
Johnson is hopeful that a similar midterm environment — and a campaign focused on fundamental shifts to the rule of law, weakening of the separation of powers and undermining of Texas’ independence by the federal government — will lead some right-leaning voters to consider a Democrat.
“I’m not going to use the office to do what the Biden administration says or what the Trump administration says,” Johnson said in an interview. “I’m going to use the office to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to make sure that everybody knows the rules and that everybody follows the rules, and then if you don’t follow the rules, there’s consequences.”
Over the last 20 years, the Texas Office of the Attorney General has led the charge among red states to aggressively litigate against Democratic presidents’ agendas. Paxton’s predecessor, now-Gov. Greg Abbott, started this trend, famously saying, “I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” Paxton went even further, bragging about suing the Biden administration more than 100 times in four years.
Johnson criticized Paxton for not bringing similar lawsuits against Trump, even when it might benefit Texas. He pointed to the 24 states that recently sued to release close to $7 billion in education funding.
“Why didn’t we join that suit? Because [Paxton] doesn’t want to challenge the Trump administration,” Johnson said. “And that goes to the independence I think this office needs.”
See here for the background. Johnson as noted is not giving up his seat to run for AG, as he is not otherwise on the ballot next year. He raised a bunch of money in that 2018 campaign, and if he can do some of that he’ll be better positioned to bring a message that I think will have broad appeal to the voters. Obviously, a lot of things would have to break right for him, or any Dem, to win, given the track record. All I’m asking is that he and his future ballot-mates put themselves in the best possible position to take advantage if that does happen. The Dallas Observer has more.
Some more sleaze from Ken Paxton’s office. One of his top deputies spilled on how they forced Wells Fargo and other banks to exit the Net Zero Banking Alliance. Another example of how Republicans resort to cheating to win, and why we need Democrats.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/texas-bullied-big-banks-climate-pledges-net-zero-bonds-1235385960/
I was thinking his name sounded familiar, but I was thinking of Navin Johnson.