A month after Bexar County found itself in the middle of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s crusade to find and prosecute voter fraud, Democrats are turning the issue into a rallying point for their supporters ahead of the November election.
On Monday, roughly 500 people crammed into the gymnasium at San Antonio College to see Doug Emhoff, the Second Gentleman of the United States, who blamed former President Donald Trump for “infecting the Democratic process” when he refused to accept that he’d lost the 2020 election.
“Because of the ‘Big Lie’, states like Texas and Georgia and elsewhere, under the guise of election integrity, they have made it harder to vote,” Emhoff said. “They have thrown up barriers to vote, and they’re already trying to sow distrust in the 2024 election.”
“They know they only way they’re going to win is if fewer people vote,” he continued. “So that’s what they’re trying to do here in Texas.”
Since the 2020 election, Texas approved a sweeping overhaul of its election laws, which Gov. Greg Abbott announced last month has resulted in the removal of roughly a million people from the state’s voter rolls.
At the same time, Bexar County, which has largely stayed out of the fray when it comes to the state’s election integrity efforts, found itself in the middle of a voter fraud probe last month in which search warrants were executed on several local political organizers.
Other Democratic officials and speakers at Monday’s “Freedom to Vote” rally drew cheers for criticizing the state’s voter integrity efforts, with one celebrity guest calling on Texans to oust Paxton in 2026.
Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) invoked 87-year-old LULAC volunteer Lydia Martinez, whose home was raided as part of Paxton’s voter fraud investigation, saying she “was made to stand outside in her nightgown, ashamed in front of all of her neighbors, simply because she tried to help people register to vote.”
“We are so grateful for the Second Gentleman lifting our spirits in hope today, because those of us who live in Texas are so badly oppressed by Pharaoh Paxton,” Calvert said to applause.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg used his speech to tell the crowd: “Don’t kid yourselves, Democracy is on the ballot this November.”
Elsewhere during his roughly 30 minute speech, the beaming Emhoff drew cheers for bragging on his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris.
When President Joe Biden dropped out of the race this summer, he said, “we needed a leader to step up … and that person happened to be my wife.”
He took joy in rehashing highlights of Harris’ first and only debate against Trump, noting, “she smells fear… and she knows how to stand up to a coward.”
