This is one of four profiles the Tribune is writing about the Republican candidates for attorney general. Read about Sen. Joan Huffman here. For more information on the primaries and the voting process, check out our guides and news coverage here.

In December, a group of trans people showed up at the Texas Capitol, determined to test a new law restricting what restroom they can use. They carried signs declaring state Sen. Mayes Middleton, the bill’s author, the “bathroom bigot.”

For Middleton, the event was a gift-wrapped campaign opportunity.

“I’m the only one in this attorney general’s race that’s been protested this year at the Texas Capitol,” Middleton declared in a campaign ad that ends with the tagline, “Mayes Middleton: Kicking perverted men out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms.”

Middleton’s record of spearheading fringe conservative bills, pushing them until they reach the GOP mainstream and proudly courting the resultant outrage, is a cornerstone of his campaign to be Texas’ next top lawyer. The Galveston Republican has vowed to bring that same hunger for culture war fights to the attorney general’s office, casting himself as the ideological successor to conservative darling Ken Paxton, who is running for U.S. Senate.

A prolific GOP donor who has used his oil and gas fortune to build alliances throughout the party, Middleton has poured $11 million into his campaign, garnered a slew of key endorsements and is tying himself closely to President Donald Trump in a deluge of television ads, mailers and text messages declaring himself “MAGA Mayes.”

But Middleton is taking heat from GOP opponents who assail his limited legal record. Two of the candidates served at the highest levels of the agency they seek to run, while a third was a prosecutor and judge. They have not been shy about contrasting their experience with Middleton, a licensed attorney who has worked exclusively within his family’s oil and gas company.

“We can’t have some child who’s never practiced law before in his life and is pretending to be a lawyer for the first time ever, who inherited his dad’s oil company, be the next attorney general,” former Texas deputy attorney general Aaron Reitz, who is running against Middleton, told The Texas Tribune.

Middleton did not respond to requests for comment. But his supporters — a wide swath of right-wing elected officials, activists and advocacy groups — say his history of delivering wins for the conservative movement, in any venue, is enough to earn their vote.

“We’ve been able to count on him to pass laws that have strong enforcement mechanisms,” said Jonathan Saenz, with the conservative group, Texas Values Action. “That tells us that we can count on him to follow through and enforce these type of laws and others that are passed when he gets elected Attorney General.”

A conservative record

For the first part of his professional life, Middleton’s main focus was his family’s highly profitable Gulf Coast oil and gas company. But fatherhood caused his “perspective on life [to] change,” his wife, Macy, said in a 2018 video.

“He stopped thinking so much about the present and he started thinking more about the future,” she said. “And that’s when he really became involved in conservative reforms.”

Middleton began donating to candidates, joined the boards of conservative advocacy groups like Empower Texans and Texas Public Policy Foundation, and was elected secretary of the Chambers County GOP.

In 2018, he decided to run for the Texas House against fellow Republican Wayne Faircloth, who had gotten in hot water for criticizing Gov. Greg Abbott for appointing donors to boards and commissions. Middleton ran as a businessman, oil and gas executive and rancher, emphasizing his Christian faith and commitment to “fiscal responsibility and free enterprise. He vowed to join the uncompromisingly conservative House Freedom Caucus if elected. With backing from Abbott and Empower Texans, and $1 million of his own money, Middleton won.

He quickly filed a bill to bar cities, counties and school districts from using public funds to hire lobbyists. Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican from The Woodlands and fellow Freedom Caucus member, remembers being impressed.

“The very first thing he did was take a shot at the swamp,” Toth said. “Mayes was willing, first thing, to stick his finger in the eye of the lobbyists.”

That proposal failed amid criticism that it would silence small, rural governments and school districts who wanted to advocate for and against bills that impact them. But Middleton kept trying, filing it every session since, along with bills, many of which repeatedly failed, to push Christianity into public spaces, remove restrictions on carrying guns, zero out property taxes and tighten voting access.

Middleton’s personal wealth and partisan crusading helped make him a powerful player in an increasingly right-wing party, and in 2022, after two terms in the House, he decided to run for the Senate.

Incumbent Republican Larry Taylor, a longtime legislator and advocate for public education funding, was planning to run again when he learned of Middleton’s interest in his seat.

“I tried to tell him, I’m just going to go one more time, why don’t you wait?” Taylor told a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. “But he’s ready to go and wanting to spend a lot of money.”

Taylor dropped out, and Middleton sailed to an easy win. He quickly positioned himself on the far right edge of the more conservative Senate, at a moment when many of the issues he’d been advocating for began gaining steam. He passed high-profile bills banning trans athletes from high school and college sports, and allowing chaplains to serve as school guidance counselors.

Last session, Middleton re-upped a bill that would allow schools to set aside class time for prayer and Bible study. On the floor of the Senate in March, he proudly waved a letter sent to him by the American Atheists condemning the legislation, as Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, pressed him on the legality of mixing public school and prayer.

“You don’t think that’s a violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution?” Eckhardt, draped in an American flag scarf, said with exasperation.

“No,” Middleton replied coolly. “Because there’s no such thing as separation of church and state.”

The bill passed both chambers, over loud objections from Democrats and religious freedom groups.

“I want more conservative policy. I want to move the ball down the field for our great state,” Middleton said in an interview with Texas Scorecard last year. “Sometimes you have to challenge those … that are in the way of it. And I have done that over and over.”

For conservative groups who had been slowly watching their stars rise in the Capitol, Middleton was the champion they’d been needing, funding conservative candidates and causes, offering public support and leading from the floor of the Legislature.

“It’s not just his willingness to have a strong voting record and vote the right way, but to prioritize the issues that matter the most to us, file legislation and be a leader on it,” Saenz said. “And not just, ‘I’m filing because I care about it,’ but ‘I’m putting all my effort into getting it done.’”

Opponents question legal experience

Soon after Paxton announced his Senate run, Middleton charged into the attorney general’s race, with the gale force winds of a $10 million self-investment at his back. It was a gamble, as Middleton had to forgo reelection to the Senate to run for this new role, but quickly a flock of legislators, party leaders and grassroots organizations lined up to endorse him.

While U.S. Rep. Chip Roy has dominated the field on name recognition, Middleton is hoping his advertising blitz will force a run-off.

The other two candidates, Reitz and fellow Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, are trying to muscle him out of the running, and they’ve homed in on his lack of legal experience. When Huffman entered the race, she said voters want an experienced attorney, “not someone who’s never seen the inside of a courtroom.” At a recent campaign forum, Reitz, who most recently worked at the Department of Justice, noted that attorney general is a legal, executive branch job.

“So if you hear candidates up here today talking about a legislative record, ask them if they’re running for reelection to the Legislature,” he said. “Me, I’m running on my legal record.”

The Texas Constitution does not require the attorney general to be a lawyer, although they all have been going back more than 100 years. The role has attracted some legal luminaries — the two before Paxton were state Supreme Court justices — who wanted to argue high-profile cases and take a leading role in drafting briefs. But other attorneys general over the years have been politicians who primarily put their law degrees to use on the floor of the Legislature.

Middleton meets the accepted requirement to run — he graduated from University of Texas law school and is registered with the State Bar of Texas. But his opponents say their resumes are a closer match to the job that awaits.

Roy served as Paxton’s former right-hand man, helping build out the office after Paxton was elected. Reitz, Paxton’s former deputy attorney general, led the charge to challenge the Biden administration close to 50 times. Huffman is a former prosecutor and judge.

Reitz, in particular, has taken great pleasure in displaying Middleton’s relative lack of knowledge about the inner workings of the agency. At a campaign forum, Middleton said he would modernize child support enforcement systems and move those jobs outside of Austin, where “there’s about an 80% chance [employees] voted for Kamala Harris for president.”

Reitz pointed out that the agency is currently transitioning to a cloud-based system, and half the staff already works outside the state’s capital. He also derided Middleton’s proposal to create an anti-corruption division within the attorney general’s office.

“That’s an applause line,” Reitz told the audience. “These divisions exist, and I’m the only one who has supervised them [and] led them into legal combat.”

But Middleton’s inexperience with the agency hasn’t discouraged his supporters. In an interview that landed him an endorsement from the True Texas Project, a leading grassroots conservative political group, Middleton said it was a “lie” to say he didn’t have legal experience. But he primarily touted his experience running a company — and his conservative bonafides.

“The reason we supported [Paxton] when he was running for attorney general is because he had that proven conservative record,” Middleton said. “It’s about who has that proven conservative record, which is what I have.”

 Learn about The Texas Tribune’s policies, including our partnership with The Trust Project to increase transparency in news.