Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson announces run for attorney general

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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.”

He also hopes to win over voters by promising a scandal-free tenure. During his time as Texas’ top lawyer, Paxton was indicted for fraud, investigated by the FBI and impeached by the GOP-controlled state House. The Senate acquitted him; Johnson, along with every other Democrat in the chamber and two Republicans, was part of the outnumbered minority that voted to convict Paxton.

Virtually all of those legal woes have been resolved in recent months, but the allegations — and Paxton’s personal life — have been a cloud over the agency.

Johnson said, among other priorities, he would focus on restoring some of the agency’s less flashy obligations, like investigating Medicaid fraud and enforcing consumer protection laws.

“There’s always good people there doing some good work, but the priorities have not always been good,” he said. “I think we are talking about a fundamental shift in priorities in that office, that much is for sure.”

Johnson has worked closely with Middleton and Huffman in the 31-member Senate and said he respected them personally. But he said voters could expect to get “essentially a fourth-term Ken Paxton” if they elect any of the Republican candidates.

“The office is going to be used for political ends and not directed to the benefit of the people,” he said. “Paxton has stained the office and I don’t think the other people running are the right people to clean it up.”

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