Texas attorney general race: Underdog Rochelle Garza trying to unseat Ken Paxton

“I keep telling folks this is our race to lose,” Garza said in early October. “This is the closest we have come in almost 30 years …”

AUSTIN, Texas — As a newcomer in Texas politics, Democratic attorney general candidate Rochelle Garza has faced an uphill battle in her efforts to unseat Republican Ken Paxton.

She’s an underdog who’s underfunded, but recent polls showed Garza is within single digits of Paxton, the Texas Tribune reported.

“I keep telling folks this is our race to lose,” Garza said in early October. “This is the closest we have come in almost 30 years and it’s time we elect a Democrat to this office.”

While time and money aren’t on Garza’s side, Paxton’s history of legal troubles, including a federal indictment, make him vulnerable, experts say.  

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“Garza is clearly competitive in this race, but she’s competitive based on Paxton’s weaknesses because she’s not well known,” Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, told the Tribune.

Garza, 37, grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, and she currently lives in Brownsville with husband Adam and their 7-month-old daughter. The daughter of a state district judge and a teacher, Garza was a tomboy who played with snakes and tarantulas with her brother and learned to hunt with her dad. 

“I grew up hunting, and I know how to use guns safely,” Garza told MSNBC after the Uvalde school shooting. “We need to do better. We need to have better policies that are here to protect communities because we can’t go on like this.”

As a new mom, Garza said she’s running to make Texas better for her baby daughter’s future.

“This is for my daughter. This is for our children,” she said of her campaign. “I’m not going to let her grow up in a state where she cannot decide her own future and what happens to her,” said Garza, who has not yet released her daughter’s name to the public.

Garza is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Houston law school. 

In 2014, she joined the American Bar Association to represent unaccompanied minor children in immigration removal proceedings. In one of those cases, she took on Paxton and the Trump administration. 

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A 17-year-old Central American who asked for asylum was placed in an immigration detention center where a routine health screening determined she was pregnant, the Texas Tribune reported. 

“She immediately knew she didn’t want to become a parent in that situation, especially because she was fleeing from abuse,” Garza said. After a legal battle that wound up in federal court, the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Garza’s client and she was allowed to have an abortion.

She said the high-profile case inspired her to run against Paxton.

“Abortion is the biggest issue for all voters in this country. For women especially, it’s the biggest issue,” she said. “It’s more than a choice. It’s health care. And it’s more than health care, it’s your life. And I hear that on the campaign trail every day.’’

Now she hopes it motivates Texans to vote against Paxton.

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