Texas GOP doubles down on fraud claims as Trump, Cruz leads shrink

AUSTIN – Texas Republicans are doubling down on claims that Democrats in the state’s biggest cities are attempting to steal the 2024 election – a contest in which the GOP’s leads in the Senate and presidential races are increasingly narrowing. 

State GOP leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton have made the state’s large urban counties a focus of allegations of a grand Democratic conspiracy to steal the 2024 election.

On Tuesday, Abbott announced that his office had removed more than 1 million “ineligible” voters from state rolls, including “more than 6,500 noncitizens,” of which the governor’s office claimed that “almost 2,000 have cast votes.” 

Abbott added that those cases would be referred to prosecution to Paxton’s office — which has been on its own campaign against alleged voter fraud as of late.

Paxton falsely told right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck last Thursday that President Biden and Vice President Harris, now at the top of the ticket, had worked to move masses of undocumented voters into critical states to vote illegally — claims he did not back up with any basis.

“This was the plan, tell the cartels, ‘Get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible, we’re not going to make them hide anymore — we’ll get them placed in the right states,’” Paxton said. “They want to fix the election so that we have a one party country that we can’t fix.”

“No one anticipated the federal govt would work around laws to try to get illegals to vote. But here we are,” Paxton added, in a grab from the interview he posted on the social platform X. 

“That’s why we have to send a message out from the states: ‘Hey illegals, this is not a free ride. If we catch you, we’re going to prosecute you.’”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 23, 2024. (Greg Nash)

State Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa on Monday, meanwhile, charged Republican leadership with “fear tactics and misinformation to suppress voter turnout and cling to power, knowing that our movement for a blue Texas is gaining momentum every day.”

Paxton’s interview with Beck was a sign of several distinct campaign tactics that appear to be coming together as the November election nears. 

Last Tuesday, Paxton announced investigations into debunked claims that nonprofit groups were “illegally registering noncitizens to vote in our elections” — a talking point that appears to have come from a friend-of-a-friend story from Fox host Maria Bartiromo.

Then on Wednesday, Paxton authorized searches of the homes and offices of Democratic Party officials and campaign workers in three Texas counties, including Bexar, the home of San Antonio, the state’s second-largest city. 

And on Friday, Paxton sued the Biden administration over a new Department of Homeland rule that would allow some U.S. citizens’ spouses who lack permanent legal status to apply for legal status without leaving the country.

Texas is also sending election monitors to oversee elections in Harris County — the state’s most populous county, home of Houston and a repeated site of state audits that have sought, and continuously failed, to overturn evidence of widespread fraud — The Texas Tribune reported last week.

Harris is a longtime focus of Paxton’s — in 2021, he told Trump strategist Steve Bannon that if not for his legal campaign to block vote-by-mail efforts in the county, Trump would have lost Texas.

Those comments are of particular note in light of national polling that reveals the state’s Senate race is now within the margin of error — and that Vice President Harris has cut Trump’s lead in half, per The Texas Tribune. 

A survey in early August of 1,365 state residents by the University of Houston’s School of Public Affairs found that Harris was within 5 points of Trump — with 4 percentage points more voters energized to vote for her than had been for Biden. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R) is also just more than 2 points ahead of challenger Rep. Colin Allred (D), with more than 6 percent undecided.

In a sign of the state’s changing political landscape, Trump slightly leads Harris among Latino voters, though Cruz trails Allred among that cadre. Both Democrats lead Trump among Texas women by more than 6 points.

On a national level, Republicans and major donors have repeatedly cited immigration as a top campaign issue.

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley — whose senior adviser on Wednesday touted election lawsuits in four battleground states — posted on X last week in support of Paxton’s investigation of alleged voting by non-citizens. 

In a post retweeted by Paxton, Trump donor and Texas transplant Elon Musk wrote on X that “As I’ve said before, the Dems are importing voters.” And Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller on Monday told Paxton on X that he was “honored to work with you in defense of America.’

Within the state, Abbott last Thursday explicitly called out the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which in 2021 ruled that Paxton could not investigate election fraud in a county without the assistance of a local district attorney — which Paxton has argued would bar him from access to the state’s large urban Democratic counties.

“Listen, it’s been long true that an executive in the state of Texas can have roles in more than one of the three different bodies of power,” Abbott said in response to the appeals ruling.

In Texas, this dynamic is playing out most vividly in the context of a single state representative race in District 80, which includes Uvalde, site of a mass shooting at an elementary school in 2022 — the site of Paxton’s raids, and where Democrats are alleging a campaign of intimidation.

In the race to replace retiring Democrat Tracy King, Republican former Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin faces Democrat Cecilia Castellano — who was one of the party members raided by Texas agents as part of Paxton’s investigation.

In a statement to The Hill on Monday, McLaughlin’s campaign condemned “opponent Cecilia Castellano for dodging responsibility and playing political games as she faces a voter fraud investigation.” 

Castellano, McLaughlin told The Hill, “is clearly focused on her own political agenda and saving her own hide instead of the issues that matter to Texans.”

In his statement on Monday, state Democratic party chair Hinojosa condemned the state GOP’s us of “secret police-like tactics to raid the homes of the elderly and Democratic strategists, while ignoring their own Secretary of State’s claims of ‘clean voter rolls.’”

He encouraged “Texans to check their registration, ensure eligible friends and family are registered, and double-check vote-by-mail applications before submitting them to their local elections office.”

Updated 3:11 p.m.