The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas is trying to turn a key talking point of his Republican opponent against him — alleging Attorney General Ken Paxton is guilty of the same type of voter fraud he has spent years trying to eliminate.
“As our state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt,” state Rep. James Talarico, who is challenging Paxton in the race to replace U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, said during a campaign event in Houston. “Turns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time, voting illegally in six elections in a row from the wrong address.”
Talarico’s comments come after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed that Paxton moved out of the home he shared with his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, in 2024 but continued to vote using that address, including during the March Republican primary in which he beat Cornyn. Three election experts told the news organizations that Paxton may have broken state law.
Last week, the Collin County Democratic Party filed a complaint with the Texas secretary of state, urging that office to investigate Paxton for election fraud.
Paxton has repeatedly declined to answer the newsrooms’ questions about his voter registration and residency. On Tuesday, he held a rare news conference to tout the endorsement of nearly two dozen sheriffs and attacked Talarico as soft on crime. Talarico denied the charge at his own news conference Wednesday, saying he’d voted for billions of dollars in law enforcement funding as a member of the Legislature.
When a Dallas Morning News political writer asked Paxton why he voted in Collin County, the attorney general shook his head as a campaign aide interceded.
“We’re just going to answer questions on law enforcement today,” the aide said.
Paxton’s office and campaign did not respond to similar questions on Thursday from ProPublica and the Tribune. They also did not answer questions about Talarico’s comments.
The fact that Paxton voted in six elections from an address at which he appears not to live may resonate with voters because it reinforces longstanding accusations by critics that he has used his office for personal gain, said Southern Methodist University political science professor Cal Jillson. That was the central theme of the Texas Legislature’s impeachment of Paxton in 2023 on charges of bribery and corruption. The state Senate voted to acquit Paxton.
“There’s been a whole series of legal challenges he’s been able to slip out of, but voters are at least vaguely aware of them,” Jillson said. The latest reporting about his voting practices “is just another example of playing fast and loose with a law you must be familiar with as attorney general,” Jillson said.
Texas law permits voters to temporarily cast ballots using an address where they do not reside, so long as they intend to return. Election lawyers told the newsrooms that it is unlikely Paxton could make such an argument given his ongoing public and acrimonious divorce. (Examples of reasons considered valid include attending an out-of-area college or serving in the military.)
It is unclear what will happen with the complaint filed against Paxton.
State law requires the secretary to “promptly” refer complaints to the attorney general if “there is reasonable cause to suspect that criminal conduct occurred.”
Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s last day in office was Friday, three days after the complaint was filed. Gov. Greg Abbott appointed one of his senior advisers, Robert Howden, to replace her. The office continues to decline to answer questions from reporters, but Collin County Democratic Party Vice Chair Mary Higbe said the secretary of state told her in an email Thursday that the complaint “remains under review by one of our staff attorneys.”
The attorney general’s office has not responded to questions about whether it received the complaint or whether it would hire a special prosecutor to investigate it, given that it involves the attorney general himself.
The silence from the Republican-led state government suggests an effort to slow-walk investigating Paxton, said Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He said that’s difficult to square with rhetoric by Paxton and the secretary of state’s office that securing Texas elections is a top priority.
“You push the idea that you’re going to be really tough on election wrongdoing, and yet here you are with allegations in which you seem to be uninterested in pursuing,” Taylor said. “That smacks of rank hypocrisy.”
