Texas Republican Mayes Middleton ran for attorney general as “MAGA Mayes,” which was sort of like running as “Tommy the Asbestos King” circa 1980. After years of success, the brand no longer held much appeal. Having pitched voters that he would “use every resource and tool to back up President Trump,” the people of Texas — Texas! — told him to take a hike. State Sen. Nathan Johnson beat Middleton 52.4 percent to 45.9 percent by most recent tally, becoming the first Democratic attorney general in Texas this millennium.
And Texas wasn’t alone in telling right-wing AG candidates to pound sand. Former federal prosecutor Tanya Miller beat State Sen. Brian Strickland in Georgia. Iowa’s Brenna Bird has conceded to Nate Willems. The Ohio race hasn’t been called yet, but Republican Keith Faber called John Kulewicz to concede, and in Kansas, Chris Mann has declared victory over Kris Kobach based on Mann’s nearly 13,000 vote lead.
Voters don’t necessarily get into the weeds when it comes to an AG race, but these losses have major implications for the legal system. Because Republicans had transformed state AGs — in particular the Texas office — into activist litigation shops at taxpayer expense.
Cynics may claim that every elected AG is political. Democratic AGs have filed over 100 lawsuits against the second Trump administration. But it’s one thing to assert the state’s rights against the federal government, and another to manufacture opportunities to rewrite national constitutional law from Amarillo.
The urtext of activist AG action is Texas v. Pennsylvania, where former Texas AG and now-thoroughly defeated Ken Paxton sued Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin directly in the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2020 election. The Court wouldn’t even let him file, seeing as Texas has no judicially cognizable interest in how other states run their elections. But winning wasn’t so much the point — throwing a performative tantrum that Paxton could convert into fundraising and notoriety was.
Paxton used the office and taxpayer funds to harass out-of-state medical providers to bolster culture war credibility. He defended the “abortion vigilante” law. And he took routine advantage of judge shopping opportunities to seek nationwide injunctions on everything from border policy to Title IX protections from the only judge in Amarillo. Bemoaning this turn of events, Professor Josh Blackman writes:
I would suspect that all of the conservative strategic litigation cases brought by Attorney General Paxton will be dismissed. Indeed, it is conceivable that the new Texas Attorney General would not defend the Texas Ten Commandments Law if cert is granted. (The BIO will be filed soon.) The Texas Attorney General will also not bring original jurisdiction actions before the Supreme Court of Texas. Going forward, all of the strategic forums in Texas will be severely underutilized. The only court where the Texas Attorney General might file cases will be in Austin. I should note that one seat on the Western District of Texas remained vacant for two years, and will likely remain vacant. But beyond the strategic litigation, the Texas Attorney General will now be able to investigate all of the corporations that moved to Texas. There are a lot of them.
That’s probably right. And with this switch in Texas, there won’t be nearly as many batshit setups for the loons on the Fifth Circuit to capitalize upon. Blackman laments, “the Fifth Circuit will likely be a lot quieter, given the lack of Texas Attorney General cases.”
In Iowa, Bird had come to office by promising to take Joe Biden to court. Some of her suits against the federal government involved real, honest-to-Iowa fights, like the battle over biofuel sales. But she also joined a 22-state brief in the mifepristone fight despite having no connection to Iowa law and the state having no cognizable interest beyond Bird’s political agenda.
The incoming AG Willems said over the summer that he wanted “the office a bit more focused on Iowa, on Iowa law.” That really is the distinction between Republican and Democratic AGs at this point.
Meanwhile, Kris Kobach has been a recurring character on this site for so long he has his own genre. As Secretary of State, Kobach defended Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship voting law and made such a terrible hash of it the court ordered him to take remedial CLE. His shenanigans left the state owing $1.9 million to the lawyers who beat him. Sadly, Kansas voters responded to this epic display of legal incompetence by making him the state’s top lawyer.
Mann, a former cop turned prosecutor, pitched an office focused on the work instead of “theatrics,” per the Kansas News Service. Notice a trend here?
Ohio’s Dave Yost left the AG’s office in June to become a vice president at Alliance Defending Freedom, an SPLC-recognized hate group, which praised him for “leading one of the most active and consequential state AG offices in the nation.” Title IX suits, the gender-affirming care bans, a six-week abortion ban, a campaign against the 2023 reproductive rights amendment… Yost inserted the Ohio AG’s office into every culture war grievance. Now he’s joining an outside conservative activist group, which is basically the exact same job but without taxpayer funding.
So across the board, change is coming to a number of states, but it won’t be easy. Nathan Johnson, asked what he’d do with the Texas office, offered: “There is some damage to undo.” Indeed.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post Republican Attorneys General Crash And Burn appeared first on Above the Law.
Texas Republican Mayes Middleton ran for attorney general as “MAGA Mayes,” which was sort of like running as “Tommy the Asbestos King” circa 1980. After years of success, the brand no longer held much appeal. Having pitched voters that he would “use every resource and tool to back up President Trump,” the people of Texas — Texas! — told him to take a hike. State Sen. Nathan Johnson beat Middleton 52.4 percent to 45.9 percent by most recent tally, becoming the first Democratic attorney general in Texas this millennium.
And Texas wasn’t alone in telling right-wing AG candidates to pound sand. Former federal prosecutor Tanya Miller beat State Sen. Brian Strickland in Georgia. Iowa’s Brenna Bird has conceded to Nate Willems. The Ohio race hasn’t been called yet, but Republican Keith Faber called John Kulewicz to concede, and in Kansas, Chris Mann has declared victory over Kris Kobach based on Mann’s nearly 13,000 vote lead.
Voters don’t necessarily get into the weeds when it comes to an AG race, but these losses have major implications for the legal system. Because Republicans had transformed state AGs — in particular the Texas office — into activist litigation shops at taxpayer expense.
Cynics may claim that every elected AG is political. Democratic AGs have filed over 100 lawsuits against the second Trump administration. But it’s one thing to assert the state’s rights against the federal government, and another to manufacture opportunities to rewrite national constitutional law from Amarillo.
The urtext of activist AG action is Texas v. Pennsylvania, where former Texas AG and now-thoroughly defeated Ken Paxton sued Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin directly in the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2020 election. The Court wouldn’t even let him file, seeing as Texas has no judicially cognizable interest in how other states run their elections. But winning wasn’t so much the point — throwing a performative tantrum that Paxton could convert into fundraising and notoriety was.
Paxton used the office and taxpayer funds to harass out-of-state medical providers to bolster culture war credibility. He defended the “abortion vigilante” law. And he took routine advantage of judge shopping opportunities to seek nationwide injunctions on everything from border policy to Title IX protections from the only judge in Amarillo. Bemoaning this turn of events, Professor Josh Blackman writes:
I would suspect that all of the conservative strategic litigation cases brought by Attorney General Paxton will be dismissed. Indeed, it is conceivable that the new Texas Attorney General would not defend the Texas Ten Commandments Law if cert is granted. (The BIO will be filed soon.) The Texas Attorney General will also not bring original jurisdiction actions before the Supreme Court of Texas. Going forward, all of the strategic forums in Texas will be severely underutilized. The only court where the Texas Attorney General might file cases will be in Austin. I should note that one seat on the Western District of Texas remained vacant for two years, and will likely remain vacant. But beyond the strategic litigation, the Texas Attorney General will now be able to investigate all of the corporations that moved to Texas. There are a lot of them.
That’s probably right. And with this switch in Texas, there won’t be nearly as many batshit setups for the loons on the Fifth Circuit to capitalize upon. Blackman laments, “the Fifth Circuit will likely be a lot quieter, given the lack of Texas Attorney General cases.”
In Iowa, Bird had come to office by promising to take Joe Biden to court. Some of her suits against the federal government involved real, honest-to-Iowa fights, like the battle over biofuel sales. But she also joined a 22-state brief in the mifepristone fight despite having no connection to Iowa law and the state having no cognizable interest beyond Bird’s political agenda.
The incoming AG Willems said over the summer that he wanted “the office a bit more focused on Iowa, on Iowa law.” That really is the distinction between Republican and Democratic AGs at this point.
Meanwhile, Kris Kobach has been a recurring character on this site for so long he has his own genre. As Secretary of State, Kobach defended Kansas’s proof-of-citizenship voting law and made such a terrible hash of it the court ordered him to take remedial CLE. His shenanigans left the state owing $1.9 million to the lawyers who beat him. Sadly, Kansas voters responded to this epic display of legal incompetence by making him the state’s top lawyer.
Mann, a former cop turned prosecutor, pitched an office focused on the work instead of “theatrics,” per the Kansas News Service. Notice a trend here?
Ohio’s Dave Yost left the AG’s office in June to become a vice president at Alliance Defending Freedom, an SPLC-recognized hate group, which praised him for “leading one of the most active and consequential state AG offices in the nation.” Title IX suits, the gender-affirming care bans, a six-week abortion ban, a campaign against the 2023 reproductive rights amendment… Yost inserted the Ohio AG’s office into every culture war grievance. Now he’s joining an outside conservative activist group, which is basically the exact same job but without taxpayer funding.
So across the board, change is coming to a number of states, but it won’t be easy. Nathan Johnson, asked what he’d do with the Texas office, offered: “There is some damage to undo.” Indeed.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post Republican Attorneys General Crash And Burn appeared first on Above the Law.
