(Just The News)—Four Republicans so far are running for Texas attorney general.
U.S. Chip Roy is the latest to announce he’s running for AG, joining state Sens. Joan Huffman and Mayes Middleton, and Aaron Reitz, a former Texas deputy attorney general.
They are vying to replace Attorney General Ken Paxton who is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
Middleton, a Republican from Galveston, first announced his bid in April. He’s the only candidate with no prosecutorial experience. President of Middleton Oil Company, he also runs ranching, cattle, and farming operations. Middleton has served in both the Texas House and Senate and consistently ranks as among the most conservative members. He has championed a partial ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, advocated for parental rights and school choice, authored bills to protect women’s and girls’ sports, bathrooms and locker rooms, and a ban on COVID vaccine mandates, among other legislation. He’s rejected a state pension and taxpayer-funded healthcare and donates his entire state salary to local charities.
Huffman is running to become the first female attorney general of Texas. A former Harris County prosecutor and Criminal District Court judge, Huffman is the only three-time recipient of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association’s Law and Order Award. In the Texas Senate, she’s authored numerous bills to strengthen the criminal justice system and bring transparency and accountability to the judiciary.
Huffman led the charge against the defund the police movement by authoring a new law, “Back the Blue Act,” which penalizes cities and counties that defund law enforcement. She authored critical bail reform legislation, leading a bipartisan movement in response to judges releasing violent criminals onto the streets only to keep committing violent crime. She authored new laws to enable the removal of prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law, to increase penalties for violent crimes, including for fentanyl trafficking involving murder, and several measures to protect victims, including human trafficking victims.
Reitz served in the AG’s office during the impeachment of Paxton, the only attorney general to be impeached in Texas history. Paxton was impeached by 60 House Republicans on 20 charges, including bribery. The Texas Senate acquitted him along party lines. During the impeachment trial, longtime Texas Ranger David Maxwell alleged female employes made sexual harassment complaints against Reitz. After the trial, additional lawsuits were filed by Paxton’s top deputies against each other alleging sexual harassment, falsifying documents and witness tampering, multiple news outlets reported.
Reitz next worked for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz while being called to testify in a federal bribery and extortion probe into Paxton. He then worked for the Trump Justice Department for three months.
More recently, Reitz came under fire for posting what appeared to be photo ops in Kerrville after the devastating Hill Country floods. Other criticism includes deleting more than 4,000 controversial tweets, including supporting arranged marriages, CBS News first reported.
Reitz, who ran for the Texas House District 47 seat in 2020 and lost, says he “embodies the Texas values of courage, perseverance, and a refusal to bend the knee” and will “defend law and order” and “fight woke ideology.”
Roy announced his AG bid on Thursday, roughly eight months after President Donald Trump encouraged Republicans to primary him. As Roy opposed increasing the national debt and spending, Trump called him, “The very unpopular ‘Congressman’ from Texas,” saying he was “getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory – All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself. Republican obstructionists have to be done away with,” multiple news outlets reported.
Roy says he delivered on Trump’s agenda and wanted to take his experience in Congress, as a federal prosecutor and a former First Assistant AG of Texas to “fight for Texas from Texas.”
Roy previously worked under Paxton and for Cruz, was senior counsel to former Gov. Rick Perry, served as counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and was the Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas. Serving four terms in Congress, Roy fought to reduce the size of government, reduce taxes, reduce government waste, fraud and abuse, strengthen border security, target foreign threats coming from cartels and the Chinese Communist Party, secure U.S. elections among other intiatives.
As attorney general, he says he’ll go after “Soros-funded judges and DA’s putting criminals on the streets,” as well as judicial mandates “that Texans pay for illegals in our public schools.”
It is unclear how Roy would do this in light of the Texas Constitution’s separation of powers. The Texas Constitution states that only the legislature and Texas Supreme Court can remove judges under specific circumstances. The Texas Constitution also requires that a free public education be provided to all children in Texas regardless of nationality.
The Republican primary election is March 3, 2026.
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