We recommend Joe Jaworski for Texas attorney general in the Democratic runoff
If it were up to Democratic voters alone to pick the next Texas attorney general, they couldn’t go wrong.
Both candidates in the Democratic runoff this month, Rochelle Garza and Joe Jaworski, are qualified, passionate and, as far as we know, they’re law-abiding citizens without any criminal indictments, pending State Bar lawsuits or ongoing FBI probes.
In other words, they’re eminently better suited to serve as the people’s lawyer than Republican incumbent Ken Paxton, who seems to collect scandals like standing water draws mosquitoes.
Paxton’s relative vulnerability — relative because Republicans haven’t lost a statewide race since the mid-1990s — makes the attorney general’s race the Democrats’ best hope of an upset in the November.
As such, the stakes for Democratic primary voters couldn’t be higher. There’s only one way to rid Texas of the worst attorney general in living history: give voters a strong alternative in the fall.
We believe that alternative on the Democratic side is 60-year-old former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski, whose commitments to accessibility, transparency and ethics are exactly what Texas needs.
His runoff opponent, 37-year-old former ACLU attorney Rochelle Garza, has a fighting spirit and actually led the primary field in March, emerging with 43 percent while Jaworski squeaked by with 20 percent.
Garza, a Rio Grande Valley native whose bilingual campaign endeavors to make her Texas’ first Latina attorney general, also vows to fight for Texas working families, including immigrant victims of wage theft.
Her appeal is obvious to anyone who’s heard her behind a megaphone. A clip of her speaking just after a leaked Supreme Court draft suggested the imminent overturn of abortion rights under Roe v. Wade, shows her animated and drawing applause as she tells a crowd she just gave birth six weeks earlier.
“I will be damned if my daughter grows up in a state where she cannot control her own body,” she says to cheers.
Garza touts her successful defense of a 17-year-old immigration detainee’s right to access abortion after fleeing to the U.S. to escape abuse in her home country. The case, which saw her face off against Paxton and even a meddling President Trump, had a lasting impact: teens in immigration custody are now given the “Garza Notice,” informing them of their abortion rights.
For many Democrats, her commitment to reproductive choice and women’s health care is admirable and arguably never more relevant.
But for many Republicans, and even some pro-life Democrats she’d need to win in the fall, it could be a deal-breaker. Garza also lacks elected experience.
Jaworski, meanwhile, is a mediator and former three-term city councilman who knows how to build consensus to solve problems. His positions and priorities, including legalizing cannabis, protecting reproductive rights and expanding health care, have much in common with Garza’s. Jaworski says he’ll quickly dispatch with “Paxton’s voter fraud division” and open “Jaworski’s voter access division.”
He was our pick in March and we’re sticking with the affable third-generation lawyer, also known as the grandson of Texas’ legendary Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Handpicked by President Nixon, Jaworski followed the facts and ended up arguing for the release of damning tapes that exposed Nixon’s involvement in the scandal.
Voters who aren’t content with Jaworski’s assurances that his grandfather’s integrity “is in my DNA” can look to his own record. As Galveston mayor, he insisted not only on restoring public housing lost to Hurricane Ike — a move many had fought — but replacing it with permanent, higher-quality, multi-family developments rather than handing out vouchers for far-flung, often-substandard apartments.
That principled stance may have lost Jaworski re-election in Galveston but it wins our confidence and our endorsement of him for attorney general.
We urge Democrats to give themselves the best possible shot at winning statewide in November by backing Jaworski in the runoff.
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