Attorney General Ken Paxton tapped some unexpected names to introduce him at his packed campaign rally at the Angry Elephant on Saturday.
Bexar County Commissioner Grant Moody and San Antonio Councilwoman Misty Spears took the stage asking the roughly 200 Republicans in attendance to rally their friends and neighbors around Paxton’s U.S. Senate bid this November.
The move comes just months after the two were stumping for Paxton’s primary opponent, the more moderate U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who they said was the best candidate to hold off Democrat James Talarico in a tough race this November.
San Antonio has long been a last bastion of GOP moderates.
But Paxton went on to trounce Cornyn in the primary runoff, and his party is now scrambling to unite voters around a candidate with baggage from a high-profile affair, personal legal troubles and years of disagreements with other Texas GOP leaders.
Despite those weaknesses, nearly all of San Antonio’s elected Republicans were in attendance Saturday, urging voters rally their friends and neighbors against sitting out this election.
“What we stand for is on the line here, and what we have before us is Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is ready to deliver that Texas promise up to the U.S. government,” said Spears, a longtime GOP activist before she was elected to City Council last year.
“So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit out? Are you going to say ‘Ah, it’s fine’? Yell at the TV, at Fox News, and be upset? No, you’re going to get out there. You’re going to vote.”
Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), state Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) and TX23 congressional candidate Brandon Herrera were also in attendance.
Voter apathy headed into the midterm election is a real concern for Republicans, who already control every lever of power in Washington, and at the state level too, in Texas.
Texas Democrats already outvoted their Republican counterparts in the March primary election this year. And in San Antonio, where interest in this year’s state GOP convention dropped off after Paxton’s victory, some say the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate is alienating even party faithful headed into November.
Against that backdrop, Texas GOP leaders who don’t typically spend much time campaigning in this area are suddenly working to unite conservatives with whatever leverage they can.
Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott, who is also on the ballot in November, called a news conference taking aim at San Antonio’s city-owned energy company, which he said was taxing residents in the rural outskirts to fund progressive programs like Zumba classes.
On Saturday, Spears also pointed to local politics as a reason for Republicans to get out and vote, urging the audience to make sure their friends “know how crazy these progressives can get — and what they’re going to do to our state if we let them [into leadership].”
Paxton, for his part, spent most of his 15-minute speech talking about Talarico, a 37-year-old state lawmaker who taught school in San Antonio before his career in politics, and is now vastly outraising him in the U.S. Senate race.
Paxton called him a vegan who hates cattle and Texas barbecue, gets paid to advise schools on “woke” policies, and hates the oil and gas industry — all characterizations Talarico has sought to rebut.
The Republican also thanked from the stage the local GOP officials he’d invited, who he said were “heroes” in a fight to “save your area, your local government” from progressive rule.
To some degree, the strategy appeared to be working.
After the event one attendee, Daniel Alvarado, said the Paxton rally was his first ever political gathering — spurred in large part by his concerns about San Antonio’s progressive leaders.
“It kind of worries me about San Antonio because the mayor, city manager, the sheriffs, and everybody that’s in charge are Democrats,” said Alvarado, who lives in the North San Antonio Hills neighborhood. “They’re taking over city by city, and I think we need to start waking up and start taking our cities back.”
