Attorney General Ken Paxton made his case for Senate on Tuesday in Fort Worth before a room full of reporters, flanked by a large group of sheriffs and law enforcement officers, noting that the race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico is a clear choice between a candidate who backs the police and one who does not.
Two state leaders introduced Paxton before he took the podium: Fort Worth Sheriff Bill Waybourne and state Rep. A.J. Lauderback, a retired Texas sheriff now representing House District 30. Lauderback praised Paxton for fighting what he called the “open borders ideology” and credited him with funding Operation Lone Star, the state’s border security strategy fighting illegal immigration and the influx of drugs like fentanyl, launched during the Biden administration.
Once at the microphone, Paxton thanked the sheriffs in attendance and pledged loyalty to police departments across the Lone Star State, telling the crowd that officers “need to know that their elected officials have their back.” He pointed to his office’s record defending officers in court, prosecuting violent crime referred by local agencies, and building new units – including a human trafficking and transnational organized crime section and a cold case and missing persons unit – as evidence of his commitment to the police…