In 2015, as well as 2016, and 2017, that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Mark Reed, who on three occasions has failed to get elected to U.S. Congress to represent California’s 30th Congressional District, having gone down in defeat to Rep. Mark Sherman all three times. And we don’t mean he lost, as much as got crushed. Reed, for whatever reason in his debate against Sherman, tried attacking him and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of not being supportive enough of Israel, which is amazing in that both not only have records that show they are supportive of Israel, but they’re also both coincidentally Jewish, to boot. Reed has a website loaded with misleading information about the Affordable Care Act, his opposition to same-sex marriage, as well as climate change denial. Perhaps the best reason to not elect him to office is his long police record featuring two arrests for narcotics possession. His 2016 campaign website featured an inspirational quote from Founding Father John Adams regarding debt, that is not, in fact, something that Adams has ever actually been recorded saying. And while Reed failed in his fourth attempt at getting elected to Congress in 2018. We don’t know when he’s finally going to take a hint.
It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who prior to winning that office in the 2014 elections, was a member of the Texas state legislature for over a decade. And while there’s no shortage of Texas Republicans for CSGOPOTD to have profiled through the past few years, Ken Paxton earned our notice not just for the usual Fundamentalism you see from members of the Lone Star State GOP, but for the fact that while he was tasked with enforcing the law in Texas, he was simultaneously fighting an extended legal battle while being accused of committing securities fraud. But that’s really not all, as Paxton’s alleged illegal activity and all his chicanery to avoid ever going to go to trial for it until after the 2018 elections, if at all, (the indictments for white collar crime are almost three years old now) have cost a small fortune in legal fees. Legal fees which were paid for by campaign donors of Paxton, so he’s had to report “gifts” he’s received totaling over $84,000 to keep himself out of court. Again, this is the guy responsible with the law being enforced in Texas. Although, his interest in what the law actually is seems hyper-focused on partisan politics, as Paxton has encouraged state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, chastised school districts for respecting the gender identity of students trying to use the bathroom, and Paxton sent a “cease and desist” letter to Texas public schools for busing students eligible to vote to the polls, which has been encouraged previously in Texas since the Civil Rights movement passed over half a century ago. It seems Paxton is terrified of the thought of young people having access to our democracy.
But Paxton is threatened by a great many things, and will flat out make things up to feign outrage over, like the time he accused a Texas school district of creating a “Muslim-only prayer room”, which was in no way a part of reality. Or it could be just that Ken doesn’t see that well out of his droopy eye, or something.
Maybe none of this should come as much of a surprise, because when you look at Paxton’s career in the Texas state legislature, there were signs he was a fanatic, like when he co-sponsored HB 3678, a bill aimed at allowing students greater expression of their religious beliefs in public schools, like say, when a teacher dared to mention that evolution is a thing. He also co-sponsored SB 14, a bill to suppress the vote in Texas via stricter Voter ID laws, voted for bills that attempted to nullify federal firearm regulations, co-sponsored legislation that would enact the failure of a conservative policy of drug testing welfare recipients, voted against HB 950, which would have guaranteed equal pay for women in Texas, and was a co-sponsor ofTexas’ HB 2 law, which was aimed at closing down all the abortion clinics in the state by creating stricter requirements for them.
In spite of all the indictments that have held against him for years now, as well as his long track record of extremist lunacy, Ken Paxton decided not to bow out of the 2018 elections, and only narrowly won re-election, barely cracking the 50% threshhold. His trial for securities fraud has yet to begin, and his wife, Angela Paxton, is now a Texas State Senator trying to draft legislation that would exempt her husband from facing jail time for the crimes he’s committed (really). He has taken his second term in office to do such effective things such as launch an investigation into the city of San Antonio for refusing to open a Chik-Fil-A in their airport because of the company’s history of anti-LGBTQ activities, because Paxton feels they may have rejected the chicken franchise due to “religious discrimination”. (Remember Texas, he’s spending taxpayer dollars on that investigation.)