The Texas political map turned upside down from the top of the ballot to the bottom this week.
Consider Ken Paxton: Not only did he lose his bid for the U.S. Senate, but in pursuing that seat, he gave up control of an office he’d spent more than a decade shaping into a conservative legal force. Now, a Democrat is preparing to take the reins of what’s sometimes called the most powerful law firm in Texas.
Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson joined the Texas Standard to talk about his vision for his new job.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Be honest, how surprised are you to be speaking to us as the Attorney General-elect of Texas?
Nathan Johnson: Not at all. I got in this race a year and a half ago with every intention of winning it. I’ve been saying for a year-and-a-half, this is not even uphill, it’s downhill with potholes. And of course, I was a nervous wreck before the election. I could have lost.
But honestly, I saw this coming. I knew that the controlling faction of the Republican Party — not even the Republican Party, but the faction that was in control — had completely lost touch. And then if any kind of challenge arose, they wouldn’t even have the vocabulary to address it and the voters would revolt and elect people who are talking about more serious things and good government. And that’s exactly what happened.
I think it’s true that a lot of the attention was on the top of the ballot — Senate, maybe the governor. What do you think it was that kept folks clicking blue all the way down? Why did they click “Nathan Johnson”?
If you look at what happened nationally, this really was a wave. And for those of us who waged a really hard campaign, we kind of shrug and say, huh, maybe we could have just watched TV for a year.
There was a national revolt against meanness, against hateful speech and divisiveness. People indulge in those sorts of things when everything else is feeling great. But at a time when corruption is confronting us in the face and people are super anxious about their economic future, there was a whole-scale rejection of Republican leadership.
I’ve had people tell me, “I’m a Republican and I’m not voting for a single Republican.” It’s like a political market correction and I think it’s going to be good for the Republican Party, good for the Democratic Party, that we have had a rejection of something that had gone too far in the wrong direction.
Now that the job is about to be yours, what are one or two of the first things you want to accomplish?
The most important thing I can do is rebuild the office. Paxton’s ethos of corruption, that culture of corruption and favoritism and bias and political hyper-partisan warfare, it chased out a lot of good people. And I’m going to have to bring good people back in.
And I can tell you, 36 hours after the election, I’m inundated with people who want to wake up and care about what they do every morning and every night when they go to bed. So, I’m going to bring in quality people.
And we are going to rededicate the office to its constitutional, statutory, historical functions of consumer protection, of making sure that markets are competitive, of working with instead of against district attorneys…
There are good people at Paxton’s attorney general’s office, but a lot of the resources were diverted for the hyper-partisan theater that you referenced in the beginning of this interview. And that’s going to end when I’m attorney general.
How should — or should — the attorney general’s office be involved in things like immigration and border security issues, given that those are federal mandates?
That’s not a historical, statutory or constitutional role of the attorney general’s office. And frankly, no one there is trained in or qualified to be performing those services.
Now, the attorney general is involved in fighting crime and public safety to a limited extent. It’s generally a civil office. But to the extent I can coordinate with border patrol or with a more responsible version of ICE to combat human trafficking and drugs and cartels and gangs and that sort of violence, absolutely, I want to partner with the federal government.
But I am not there to carry out the ICE deportation terror campaign that we’ve witnessed in this country. And my job, to the contrary, is going to be to make sure that ICE and other agencies are not violating the rights of my citizens and residents here and of law enforcement here.
How do you see the office in terms of interactions with the federal government? Your two most recent predecessors defined the AG’s office in terms of suing when the Obama and Biden administrations were in office.
Like I said, there was a lot of theater going on. Everybody wanted to sue the Biden administration. I think Paxton sued him 106 times.
He sued the Trump administration zero times. If Donald Trump and his administration decide suddenly to start abiding by the law, I will sue him zero times. It is not my goal. I’ve got a lot of work to do.
But it is my goal to make sure that principles of federalism, state’s rights and individual rights are honored and that the administration does not impound a billion dollars of Texas’ money and does not illegally impose tariffs that hurts our businesses.
I very likely will be engaged in litigation with the Trump administration because they’re just not very fond of the rule of law and I am. But it’s not my goal. I would rather be and hope to be partnering with DOJ and the FTC making sure that consumers are protected and markets are competitive and rights are honored.
You mentioned consumer protection a couple of times. Ken Paxton did file some high-profile cases against tech companies, including Meta and Google. And against car companies, including Volkswagen, citing the need to protect kids and consumers.
Do you support any of those initiatives and plan to keep them going?
I do. I think in many ways, somebody in Paxton’s office, and perhaps to some extent, Ken Paxton himself, were national leaders in certain limited respects. And consumer protection and antitrust are areas where they do have some meritorious actions.
And I very much plan to continue those and hope to keep on board the very large Texas Office of Attorney General people who work on those kinds of cases. But I intend to do it without the bias that we’ve seen in the Paxton office.
You mentioned you’re already being inundated with resumes, it sounds like. The AG’s office consists of some 4,000 employees, including 750 attorneys.
Given your change in focus from Ken Paxton, who held that office for 12 years, what kinds of changes in staffing and organization are you considering?
Organizationally, I’m going to move slowly and cautiously, and I’m bringing in people who have served under past Attorneys General, dating back to the last Democratic Attorney General, John Cornyn, Greg Abbott, and Paxton himself, so we can really survey what works and what does not.
What I’m most concerned about is making sure that the good people in this office have the latitude that they need to pursue meritorious cases instead of political agendas. So, it’s really more about focusing the office on the work that we’re required to do, instead of being the largest law firm for the MAGA movement.
I think that was a betrayal of the office and a betrayal of the public. And we’re actually going to be the attorney general’s office that works for the interests of the people of the state.
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