Rinos and their hunters: Texas row highlights party divisions

Some had driven in the predawn hours across Texas to queue in Austin for what were expected to be highly-coveted tickets for the biggest political show in years.

About 100 supporters of Ken Paxton took up position in the public gallery of the state Senate – many of them wearing red shirts urging opposition to a process they denounced as a “sham”. Some proclaimed themselves as “Rino hunters”, a term of abuse for moderates they consider to be Republicans in name only.

Paxton, the elected attorney general, is one of the most senior political figures in Texas. A firebrand conservative in a deeply Republican state, he is fighting for his political life. Having been impeached by the Texas House of Representatives on corruption charges, he now faces a trial in the Senate. If convicted, he will be removed from office.

In a country as partisan as the United States, the extraordinary scenario in Texas is that those seeking to oust him are fellow Republicans.

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The Paxton case has caused splits in the Republican Party, which dominates Texas politics at virtually all levels.

Some see the process as a reckoning for a man who has been under one form of investigation or another for years. Others, such as those in the red shirts at the Senate building, consider it a witch hunt; a move by politicians to remove someone elected by the people.

The Senate building has effectively been made out as a court to hear 16 articles of impeachment against Paxton. On the first day, fewer members of the public than expected turned up.

The jury is composed of 31 senators who, unlike in a criminal trial, are very familiar with the man whose fate they will be determining. Paxton is a former senator himself. One of the senators who will hear evidence is his wife, although she will not be permitted to vote.

There are other links that would be unlikely to be allowed in a criminal trial.

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Presiding over the process – effectively serving as judge – is the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick.

Patrick loaned Paxton’s 2022 re-election campaign $125,000 (about €115,000). This year, Patrick received $3 million in campaign donations and loans from a pro-Paxton political action committee.

There are also outside efforts to influence the outcome. Conservative activists have funded TV airtime and advertising billboards to encourage senators to acquit the attorney general.

Paxton is a strong supporter of Donald Trump – he attended the political rally in Washington on January 6th, 2021, that preceded the attack on the Capitol by supporters of the former president and played a role in the legal challenge by Texas to Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

Paxton has also received backing from senior figures associated with the former president, including his son Donald Jnr and Steve Bannon.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Irish Times that Paxton was “one of the stalwarts of the right wing of the Republican Party”.

“In some ways, it’s kind of an avatar of the way that right wing has developed over time. I mean, he was a favourite of the Tea Party activists. And he rode the Trump wave.

“Once Trump took over the national Republican Party, Ken Paxton was very comfortable with that takeover and he has exploited it.”

Paxton has been suspended since the Texas House of Representatives impeached him on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust. He has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

At the centre of the case is his relationship with wealthy property developer Nate Paul.

In 2020, a number of Paxton’s aides accused him of abuse of office, bribery and improper influence relating to his links with the donor.

Four staff members later sued the attorney general’s office, claiming they had been sacked in violation of whistleblower law.

In February, Paxton agreed a $3.3 million settlement without admitting any fault, which he asked Texas politicians to fund.

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Critics allege he used his office in an attempt to shield Paul, who was indicted in June on federal charges that he made false statements to banks to get more than $170 million in loans, from legal difficulties. He has pleaded not guilty.

Paul allegedly employed a woman with whom Paxton was having an affair. Impeachment prosecutors also maintain that Paul funded renovations to one of Paxton’s homes.

On Tuesday, the attorney general pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and bribery. “Those allegations are flat-out false,” his lawyer, Tony Buzbee, said.

Paxton’s team suggested the “rush” to impeach him stemmed from an accusation he made last May that the speaker of the Texas House had been drunk during a legislative session.

Andrew Murr, one of the impeachment managers who are acting as prosecutors, said Paxton had “turned the keys of the office of attorney general” over to his friend and donor, Paul.

Henson said it was fair to see one element of the Paxton controversy “as being the very familiar divide between the previous generation of more genteel Republicans, and the more radical wing that began with the Tea Party, and then metastasised under Donald Trump”.

He suggested the case was not just bringing out one divide among Texas Republicans but multiple divisions that had somewhat run rampant “as a result of there being little effective opposition”.

“If you’re a very motivated Republican official, a Republican elected official or an aspiring one, you really don’t have anybody to beat up on most of the time, other than other Republicans, because the Democrats are so out of the picture in terms of governance and elections.

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“A very basic part of it is the Republicans in the House versus the Republicans in the Senate. And part of that is ideological but part of that is just an institutional fight, a turf fight, and in some important ways, a fight among contending personalities and people that are in the same party but don’t like each other very much.”