My Texas
What Ken Paxton's nomination means to a native son who never stopped caring
Some of you may know that I’m a native Texan. In 1979 I left for a theatre career in NYC when I was 25 but always proudly wore my Texas roots on my sleeve. That mentality existed for almost 20 years until I ended up in VA where I simultaneously embraced my new adopted home and watched the increasing dumbfuckery consume my birth state.
With Ken Paxton’s ascension in the MAGA Party, that dumbfuckery has reached its zenith—or nadir as the case may be. I look at that train wreck and wonder how that many people can get behind a scoundrel so vile he gives Trump a close race to the bottom. Yet, like Trump, the faithful don’t care how vile he is or what he can offer these losers. As one man at a Paxton rally told a reporter, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Whatever the hell that means.
They just know that Paxton isn’t a “girly man” like James Talarico. Or transgender. Or vegan (wrong, but that doesn’t stop them from claiming he hates the national food of Texas—BBQ.)
Talarico is the model of what a politician should be. He’s not the W. Bush “compassionate conservative,” but he’s compassionate. He’s not AOC either, but that’s how Texas MAGAts paint him. He freely criticizes his own party for the “utter chaos” along the border “because the Biden administration, despite some good accomplishments, failed us when it came to border security.”
But even many in Paxton’s own party hate him. Here’s what newly freed Thom Tillis, senator of North Carolina, said on CNN: “To call Paxton ‘ethically challenged’ is to call Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder.”
This race has a different dynamic than the Beto or Colin Allred debacles. Both ran against Ted Cruz — and whatever you think of Cruz, and I think plenty, he’s a saint compared to Paxton. Paxton is damaged in ways that even Texas Republicans can’t fully stomach. Karl Rove went on Fox News and warned that a Paxton nomination could deliver Texas to Democrats for the first time since 1994. Republicans nominated him anyway.
So why does any of this matter to me, beyond the obvious satisfaction of watching a corrupt bully finally face a real fight?
