Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton enters the May 26 Republican primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with a fundraising gap that could prove fatal to his campaign. And unusually for a race of this size, Paxton allies are pointing the finger at a single donor: Leonard Leo, the conservative powerbroker sitting atop a reported $1 billion-plus war chest, large portions of which he had previously deployed to make Paxton the GOP political force he is today, but which are now parked safely on the sidelines as Paxton faces the toughest fight of his political life.Leo is not a household name in Texas, but his fingerprints are on a substantial portion of the conservative legal infrastructure that defines modern Republican politics. He helped build the Federalist Society into the primary pipeline for conservative judicial nominees. Every Supreme Court justice appointed by Donald Trump was recommended by the Federalist Society. The same network that shaped the federal judiciary also spent a decade shaping Paxton.
KEN PAXTON SUES NETFLIX FOR ‘SPYING’ ON USERS AND TRACKING DATA
When Paxton won his first attorney general race in 2014, Leo joined his transition team, an unusual commitment for a Washington operative in a Texas statehouse race. Over the following decade, Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network, later renamed the Concord Fund, funneled $20.3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association. In 2018 alone, RAGA gave Paxton $650,000 plus $21,500 in in-kind contributions. RAGA once called Paxton its “greatest champion,” a line that has since been quietly removed from its website.
