With the primary runoff election only weeks away, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sat down with Texas Scorecard to discuss his campaign and answer questions from readers. Paxton is running for re-election against current Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush.
In his interview, Paxton condemned a 2012 Supreme Court decision that struck down an Arizona immigration bill for conflicting with federal law. Arizona’s bill would have criminalized living or working in the state without proper documentation, in addition to allowing law enforcement to make arrests without a warrant if they suspected an individual was in the state illegally.
“The court, the Supreme Court of the United States, has said … that Arizona could not pass laws to protect their citizens. I think that is … the wrong answer,” said Paxton. “What I’m looking for, to deal with that particular issue, is a case where the Legislature directly does something like that. They take some action, or the governor does some issue, some executive order, that challenges what the status quo is on that case.”
Paxton again highlighted the need for a case the attorney general’s office could bring to the Supreme Court that would potentially overturn Arizona V. United States.
“It cannot be the law that the Texas governor, the Arizona governor, or any governor can sit by while crimes are being committed, while their states are being pillaged,” said Paxton. “I just don’t think they got it right. And we need to have the right case. But I need that law or that action that gives us the ability to be sued so we can go fight that fight.”
In addition to criticizing the Supreme Court, Paxton called out the Biden administration for disregarding federal law and failing to follow proper legislative channels.
“What’s going on here is this president is ignoring what federal law says,” said Paxton, “which means the branch of government that creates the law is being ignored. … And then we have this issue of the Biden administration potentially ignoring court orders. It is up to the states, and particularly Texas, to fight that fight or we will lose if we let him get away with it.”
Paxton stressed the importance of election integrity and condemned the Court of Criminal Appeals for limiting his ability to fight voter fraud.
“The reality is, right now, supposedly the Court of Criminal Appeals has said I can’t prosecute voter fraud,” said Paxton. “And that means that these Soros-funded [district attorneys] control that. And we’re going to lose the state, I think, in a relatively short period of time because they’ll be able to do whatever they want. And you know the Travis County DA [and] the Bexar County DA are not going to prosecute this. So, if we don’t fix that, nothing else matters.”
When asked why he was running for re-election, Paxton expressed his belief that Texas plays an important role in protecting and furthering freedom throughout the nation.
“I didn’t see anybody else that would step up at a time in our history where we have to preserve freedom or we will not have it,” said Paxton. “What we do in Texas will be written about someday … and I think Texas is going to be viewed one of two ways. We’re going to be viewed as the state that stepped up and saved the nation, or we’re going to be viewed as the state that didn’t accomplish anything that mattered.”
George P. Bush declined to participate in Texas Scorecard’s interview.
