In all the back and forth in the thick of the campaign, I figured a listing of my Republican bonafides are in order.

My first political memory is that my parents took me at age 7 to a Barry Goldwater rally.

My first vote at age 19 while I was a student at Texas A&M was in the Republican primary in the spring of 1976.  If you know anything about Texas political history, that was a rare event in those days.

As a student at Texas A&M, I urged my fellow students to vote for Bill Clements to make him the first Republican governor in Texas in over 100 years.

As a student at Harvard Business School, I voted in the Republican primary for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

I held the first of several fund raisers for Republicans in my Piney Point Village home in early 1996, the same year the incumbent I challenge turned 10 years old.

That same year, I wrote and got my first plank in the Republican Party of Texas Platform at the state convention in San Antonio.  I have been instrumental in drafting, editing, or influencing 16 others since. I served on the RPT Platform Committee in 2022.

I got a Republican House and Republican State Senator to introduce legislation that I wrote in 1997.

I have attended so many Republican state conventions, that I do not remember how many I have attended.

I have contributed to more Republican candidates than I can know.

I have block walked and stood at the polls for many Republican candidates.

In 2019, because the then Speaker of the Texas House was bashing those who were pushing for the top two priorities of the RPT (constitutional carry and right to life), I organized a group that held a rally against him and block walked against him in his district.  I was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, but he did not return to the Texas legislature in 2021.

I have been honored to receive three statewide conservative awards in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

I have never had a problem with the grassroots I met and worked with in the Republican Party of Texas or the platform of the RPT.  I have had a BIG problem with the elected officials of the Party that betray the RPT principles, platform, and priorities.

The people attacking me in my House race LIKE the establishment, swamp control over the elected Republicans and HATE the idea of the grassroots controlling elected Republicans.  They also HATE the few wealthy individuals who go against the swamp and support grassroots.

This primary is about whether the swamp gets to keep control of the Texas elected Republicans or whether that crony system is smashed and we get a conservative Texas House.

TOM GLASS SAYS TEXAS HOUSE DISTRICT 17 INCUMBENT IS THE NIKKI HALEY IN THE RACE

The incumbent I am challenging in Texas House District 17 has received half his funding from lobbyists and PACs and less than 15% from the district, according to the last three Texas Ethics Commission (TEC) special session reports on file.

"In the most recent report, the incumbent's largest donor ($2,500) was a Koch Industries PAC. Voters in the district should know that a Koch Industries PAC is supporting and endorsing Nikki Haley in her bid to defeat President Trump for the Republican presidential nomination," Tom Glass said.

"I am the grassroots constitutional conservative in the race, running against a swamp-installed, Paxton-impeaching puppet." Tom Glass said. "The TEC reports are strong evidence of what differentiates us."

"Although I welcome contributions from PACs that support conservative principles, so far in this campaign, I have received neither lobbyist nor PAC contributions. In the same three TEC reports, I received over 30% funding from the district, with the rest coming from the conservative grassroots friends I have developed in the last decade of volunteer work at the Texas Capitol," Glass said.

In the three special session TEC reports, Tom Glass had 128 donors versus 86 for the incumbent. The in-district donors were 37 for Glass and 16 for the incumbent.

“The district needs a representative to Austin, NOT a representative from the Austin swamp to the district," Glass said.

"To defeat the war on Texas and everything we hold dear by DC and globalists, we must drain the Austin Swamp," Glass said. "This is not business as usual time in Texas or the US!"

Tom Glass narrowly missed making it into the GOP runoff in a 5-way, open seat in 2022. The HD 17 GOP primary race in 2024 will be a 2-way race between Tom Glass and the freshman incumbent. HD 17 consists of Bastrop, Burleson, Caldwell, Lee, and Milam Counties in Central Texas.

Wishing you and yours a harmonious, prosperous, and happy new year.

The Chinese curse is, "May you live in interesting times." And, from that perspective I think a lot of us are thinking that 2024 is going to be VERY interesting.

The likelihood of dark events like war, economic collapse, terrorist attacks, another engineered "pandemic," as well as out and out lawless activity during, before, and after our general elections seems higher than at any time in our lifetime. For those inclined to worry, there is more to worry about than ever in our lifetimes.

But I enter 2024 prepared, determined, and calm. There are several reasons for this.

First, if you, as the Bible tells us, fear God, you have nothing else to fear. You know that it all works out OK in the end, no matter what will happen that we don't like in the short term. Second, the message of Mordecai to Esther has great meaning to me. In asking Esther to risk her life to save her people, one variant of Mordecai's message was, "Consider that you were born for such a time as this."

I believe 2024 will be an inflection point in Texas and American history. I cannot guarantee that those who stole the federal government in 2020 can be stopped from doing so again in 2024. They may try some of what worked before, but we know for sure that they have new tricks up their sleeves.

One of the main reasons I am running for Texas House is that I am firmly convinced that we must have a second line of defense against the powerful forces who want to take everything we in Texas hold dear.

One year from now, we may be facing a situation where the federal government is still in the hands of those who seek to enslave and destroy us. That means having a Texas government in 2025 that will protect us from the globalist and federal assaults will be more important than ever.

Because I know that war has been declared on us by our wannabe globalist and woke masters, I know that we must have a warrior mindset. This is NOT business or politics as usual time! We need our Texas government to understand that and to courageously act on that understanding. To be a warrior, you cannot be a worrier. Warriors have to accept that they are likely dead and calmly execute their mission. If you are prayed up, you can reach that mental state. If the Republicans of HD 17 pick me on March 5, I will go focused on the mission, not on re-election.

I consider myself politically dead. I have had a career - thank you very much! I don't need one in politics. I just need to make sure that we turn back the assault and that my grand daughter can grow up in a free country the way we did.

So my resolutions for 2024 are to: 1) make sure I am right with my maker. 2) make sure my family is prepared for a wide range of cataclysmic events. 3) calmly, resolutely, and courageously work to organize Texas to resist the storm that is very likely coming.

I hope you will too. And one year from now, I hope we will be celebrating together the incredible victories for liberty and Texas we have won.

Toward liberty, Tom Glass

A I write this on December 5, 2023, we sit 3 months (91 days) away from March 5, 2024, Republican primary election day where not only my race for Texas House will be decided, but the nominations for US Senate, Texas choice for President, justices for both the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Supreme Court, appellate justices, and multiple local judges, as well as multiple county races for sheriff, constable, district attorney, county commissioner, justice of peace.

Early voting starts on Tuesday, February 20, 2024, the day after President’s Day.  February 20, the real start of the election, is only 77 days and 11 weekends away.  One of those weekends, of course, includes Christmas Eve and cannot be used for campaigning.

We find out for sure Monday evening, December 11, but it looks like this will be a two-way race between the Paxton-impeaching freshman incumbent who I faced in 2022 and the grassroots challenger, me, Tom Glass.

At this moment in the campaign, volunteers and I have knocked over 1,000 doors, we have built a lot of infrastructure for the campaign like signs, flyers, door hangers, websites, social media, etc., and we slogging our way in raising the money that every campaign needs to get the message out.

What is this campaign’s message?  It is that everything Texans hold dear, from our oil and gas livelihoods, our agricultural livelihoods, our economy, our children, our guns, our medical freedom, the value of our dollar, liberty, and our Constitutions is under assault from a stolen, corrupt federal government, globalists, and Marxists.  It is NOT business as usual time in Texas or America!

Texas can withstand this war on us if our state legislature, our governor, our attorney general, and our counties will unite to fight it.  The problem is that to resist the DC swamp attacking us, we have to clean up the Austin swamp.  The current Texas House and its leadership acts like it is business as usual time when it is not.

I am running against a young freshman incumbent who was installed by the establishment to follow that complacent, clueless House leadership.  There are multiple proofs of that statement.  The most substantive of which is that he followed the establishment attack on our most effective champion defending Texas from the DC war on us, our Attorney General Ken Paxton. You read that right, Stan Gerdes voted to impeach Ken Paxton.

When I deliver that message at the door in HD 17, it is overwhelmingly well received.  By that I mean that 98% react positively.  You call that a winning message.

The challenge of my campaign is to deliver that message to the GOP primary voters in HD 17 who are conservative, but do not hear or pay attention to news about what happens at the Texas legislature.

Business as usual for the establishment is to use big establishment money to build name ID with repetitive, comprehensive advertising.  The incumbent’s campaign at this early stage has already sent 2 glossy mailers and has had paid block walkers deliver flyers and knock doors all over the district.  The embattled establishment-backed Speaker Phelan that my incumbent follows has sent a mailer for him.  And using Texas tax dollars and the power of the incumbency, he has sent a legislative report using the standard franking privileges of the office.

In short, I am going to be way outspent in this campaign.  But all we need to do together to go the distance is get the winning message above to the voters via boots on the ground block walking, word of mouth networking, and a smaller-but-sufficient amount of advertising using funds raised.

You can take independent action to spread the word to your networks.  Let me know via tomglass.org website or [email protected] if you are ready to help in that effort with volunteer effort or with a donation no matter how large or small.  (We are currently in the middle of a match of $25 donations to the campaign, so please make that small donation, today at tomglass.org/donate.)

When I thought of “running” for office, I figured this picture of me running for Texas A&M at age 20 would capture the spirit of my campaign.  Will you go the distance with me?

After all, we have a state, a country, and the liberty of our posterity to save!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Those two words are inseparably linked. You cannot be happy unless you are grateful for the good things in life.

Going further, the source of most of the current unhappiness that is ripping our state and union apart is that so many people focus on their grievances, instead of their blessings.

The framers wrote in the Declaration about certain unalienable rights among which was the pursuit of happiness. It is not an accident that George Washington who was out fighting in the field while the Declaration was being written and signed, proclaimed the first Thanksgiving in his first year in the office of president.

George Washington understood that the key to the pursuit of happiness is an attitude of gratitude. In other words, the successful way to pursue happiness is to focus on your blessings, not your grievances.

The root cause of most of our political problems, today, is that broken, miserable, lost people that have fallen into a downward spiral of always focusing on the negative are trying to bring the rest of us into their misery.

These people are on a mission to make sure that those of us who focus on and work toward the positives in life are stopped by psychological manipulation using the tools of fear and guilt, or if necessary brute force to keep us from exercising our natural, unalienable rights to pursue happiness.

I am grateful for much. In the political realm, I am grateful for our heritage of liberty and the example of the framers who had the courage to change the things they could, the patience to accept the things they couldn’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. I am grateful for their attitude of gratitude.

I am grateful to them for writing the Declaration of Independence, thereby giving us a document that tells us the mission and moral grounding of our governments. I am grateful for written constitutions that that they created at the state and federal level that sought to bind governments down to secure our rights.

And I am grateful that, although the window is rapidly contracting, we still have the freedom and power to stop those unhappy people who are using all their power and skill to try to ruin the happiness of the rest of us.

The Establishment Lashes Out

Has it only been 5 days since my last report?  It seems like an eternity because so much has happened.

The big news is that the establishment is in a full court press against the grassroots in HD 17.  Let me count the ways.

• The Gerdes Campaign has delivered its second glossy mailer in so many weeks, this one bashing Biden for a “failure” at the border. (The one before that had Stan taking credit for the property tax cut finally passed in the second special session.)
• A mailer from Dade Phelan for Gerdes has hit the mailboxes of many in the district.
• I discovered while block walking myself this weekend that Gerdes has paid block walkers out for him.
• And the Gerdes campaign has launched two direct assaults on my candidacy in a one-two punch on Monday and Tuesday. I will talk about the Monday assault later after I know more.  The second assault was a doozy.  Most of this email will be about the second assault.

Early Tuesday evening, I saw a tweet by Patrick Svitek summarizing a Stan Gerdes press release criticizing a PAC that donated $10,000 to my campaign in the 2022 campaign and challenging me not to take any more money from them.

The Texas Tribune had dropped a Sunday evening October 8 story about an antisemite agent provocateur named Nick Fuentes having visited the office complex where the president of Defend Texas Liberty PAC (DTL), Jonathan Stickland, has his office.  A number of other conservative organizations office there, too.

Continuing the open warfare between Dan Patrick and Dade Phelan over the Paxton impeachment, Phelan jumped on the story Monday as the special session was starting and called out Patrick for taking money from Defend Texas Liberty PAC during the Paxton impeachment.  Patrick responded with his own flaming response the same day.

By Tuesday afternoon, Gerdes had issued a press release and placed it on his campaign Facebook page with the headline, “Conservative Stan Gerdes Statement on Tom Glass and Neo-Nazis.”  Here is the image of that release:

Stan also sent out an email to his supporters launching the assault.

Thanks to all of you who gave me the heads up on what Stan was doing.  Such updates are invaluable.  And thanks for the conversations and advice I got from you on how to handle.

I got an email from Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune around 2 pm this afternoon asking if I wanted to respond by his 4 pm deadline.  This is the reply I gave him:

Sunday morning, I, like other Americans, heard the dreadful news of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.  Our hearts break for those killed, wounded, harmed, or held hostage, and their families.

But the news I heard the next day was almost as terrible.  I heard that Nick Fuentes had to come to Texas to meet with someone – I don’t know who – to discuss something – I don’t know what.

I first heard about Nick Fuentes when he tried to set up President Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year.  Due to that event, I learned that Fuentes is a craven, despicable, and vile human being. I condemn him and his toxic, antisemitic ideas and anyone associated with him.

I also condemn attempts by Dade Phelan and Stan Gerdes to exploit this tragedy for political gain.  Their pathetic attempts are nothing less than an attempt to distract the voters’ attention from the baseless, failed Ken Paxton impeachment debacle.

My campaign will stay focused on what the GOP voters of HD 17 want which the House leadership and Gerdes failed to deliver – border security, election integrity, a path to eliminating property tax, stopping our groundwater from being drained, dealing with rapid growth, monetary freedom, and a pushback against globalist destruction of the Texas economy.

I welcome a comparison of the grassroots funding of my campaign and the establishment elitest funding of Gerdes’ campaign.

After I sent this in, I saw a tweet by Brad Johnson of The Texan who said that Dan Patrick has also released this about Tim Dunn, the largest contributor to DTL:

I spoke with Tim Dunn, a principal funder of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, and he has told me unequivocally that it was a serious blunder for PAC President Jonathan Stickland to meet with white supremist Nick Fuentes. He has further assured me that he is certain that Mr. Stickland and all PAC personnel will not have any future contact with Mr. Fuentes. He stated emphatically that everyone at the PAC understands that mistakes were made and are being corrected.

And there you have it.  They say that If you are catching flak, you are over the target.

The actions of Gerdes show that he has solidly linked his fate with the fate of Dade Phelan and the Austin swamp. Most of you, of course, are not surprised by this because you know the backers, money and endorsements that installed him in 2022 to do just that. The Paxton impeachment told us this, too.

Gerdes is a representative NOT of us to Austin, but of the Austin swamp to us.

And he has the substantial financial resources of the swamp to send lots of glossy mailers, have his attack-dog consultants devise and launch attacks, and to blanket the district with business-as-usual advertising to the low attention GOP primary voters claiming that he is a conservative on multiple issues.

Buckle up, grassroots!  It’s going to be a vicious bumpy ride!

Thomas Paine said in The American Crisis:

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: — ’Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

For the grassroots to regain control of the Texas House from the swamp, we must all contribute a lot of effort and financial resources.

Because the financial resources we need to get the word out to counter the big-buck establishment money machine are limited, we are going to step up in numbers to do organized outreach to our neighbors.  I plan to fire up that volunteer leader organization soon.

If you want to help coordinate an activity or your neck of the woods on a volunteer basis in this campaign, please let me know.  I hope to be setting up an organizational meeting soon to get that effort launched.

And of course, if you have not done so, chip in a few bucks to tomglass.org/donate.

And BTW, if you can’t correctly diagnose the problem, you can’t solve it.  Gerdes’ business-as-usual formulation that Biden “failed” on the border is wrong for two reasons.  First, Biden hasn’t failed because he has never tried to secure the border.  Biden and his Deep State handlers started from the beginning to deliberately violate federal law and open the border, subsidizing the cartels in the human, sex, child, and drug trafficking business.

Second, the failure is that Texas leadership has not stepped up to have Texas secure the border – even if necessary, in opposition to the federal lawbreaking and interference with our operations.  Dade Phelan killed the best border bill this session by agreeing to a ridiculous point of order by open borders Democrat Rafael Anchia. A Dade Phelan follower is not going to get the job done at the border to protect Texans.

This is a report on my campaign for Texas House in District 17.  The 2024 primary vote on March 5, 2024 is shaping up to be a historic showdown between the grassroots and the establishment for control of the Texas House.  Now is the time for the grassroots to step up in larger numbers and efforts than ever before.

The Paxton Impeachment Transformed the '24 Texas GOP Primary

The Paxton impeachment has placed a spotlight on the deficiencies of the toxic Texas House culture and there is likely to be a record number of challengers to Republican House members in 2024.  That is a good thing for Texas, but it presents a challenge to my campaign.

The key to winning on March 5 is to work as a team with the grassroots to insure that the voters in HD 17 who focus more on the presidential race know my name and have a positive impression of my campaign for Texas House when show up at the polls.  That takes three things:

• Grassroots in-district actively engaging their neighbors and friends about my candidacy
• Gaining endorsements of well-known, higher-level officials and candidates that will catch the attention and persuade the voters to vote for me
• Having the financial resources to advertise my name and endorsements to the voters who normally don’t research their Texas House candidate choices before voting

Because of the number of House challengers across Texas in 2024, more financial resources across the state are going to be needed than ever before.  This means that the grassroots who want a conservative Texas House are going to have to step up with both more financial donations and volunteer effort than ever before.

I am asking those with means around the state who support grassroots candidates for resources, but there is a very real competition for those limited resources.  By necessity, those much-appreciated liberty-loving Texans are having to make hard decisions about how to allocate their resources across the state.  And to a large extent they are going to make those decisions based on how much energy and effective action they see from each candidate and the support they see for that candidate from the grassroots both across the state and especially in-district.

That is why I am asking for you to do three things:

• Donate something you can afford, no matter how small, today, to my campaign! Donate at tomglass.org/donate  If you prefer, mail a check payable to Tom Glass Campaign to P.O. Box 720, McDade, TX 78650, including with your donation this form filled out.  (Thanks to all of you who have already done so!)

• Ask friends you know to do send a donation, too.

• If you live in Bastrop, Lee, Caldwell, Burleson, or Milam Counties or close by, volunteer for my campaign. I need volunteers to coordinate volunteer block walkers, texters, sign placers, and phone bankers.  Reply to this email if you want to coordinate volunteers and/or volunteer.

Pilots talk about the power curve.  If you get ahead of the power curve, each action feeds on itself in a positive direction.  The opposite is also true.  In a very real sense, if I gain large numbers of small donations and show action on the ground in district, I am much more likely to get not only larger statewide financial contributions, I am more likely to gain the big endorsements I need to build positive name ID with the bulk of the GOP voters in my district who pay more attention to the presidential race than Texas House races.

Speaking in Rockdale Next Thursday, Oct 12

I will be speaking to the Milam County Constitutional Conservatives next Thursday, October 12 at the American Legion Hall north of Rockdale at:

2542 FM 487, Rockdale, Texas 76567

We gather at 5 pm to eat and I will start speaking around 6 pm or so.  Hope to see you there!

Grassroots America We the People Endorsement Endorsement

I was honored two weeks ago to receive the Grassroots America We the People Endorsement in my race.  This follows on that group’s honoring me earlier this year with one of two 2023 “Ross Kecseg” Fearless Conservative Awards.

Conclusion

Because others like Grassroots America We the People have said they think that my experience, approach of prioritizing issues, and respectfully engaging others on the issues can make an impact in Austin that many others cannot, I do not think it presumptuous to urge you to prioritize support for my campaign this election.

Please donate today to my campaign!  Please think about how you can talk to others about helping with my campaign.  Please think about how you can influence the GOP primary voters of HD 17 by organized volunteer effort during this campaign and reply to me that you want to help.

We have a state to save and a reformed Texas House is the way to save it.

Toward liberty,

Tom Glass

tomglass.org

I am making it official.  I am running again for the Texas House in District 17, which includes Bastrop, Milam, Caldwell, Burleson, and Lee Counties.

Last time, the race was a 5-way race for an open seat.  I have talked to the others who ran and fell short in 2022 and they tell me they do not plan to run again, so the GOP primary race on March 5, 2024 will probably be a 2-way race between the incumbent and me.

WHY I AM RUNNING

Why would I embark once again on a labor-intensive and costly effort to become the champion of the people of HD 17?  After all, I just finished my fifth full time session at the Texas legislature pushing for the bills that will protect Texans from the daggers pointed at our heart.  And I probably had more impact from the outside this last session than I have ever had before.

My answer is that I do not believe the current Texas House or the current incumbent in HD 17 understands the urgency of the multiple dangers that face Texas at this moment.  Everything Texas holds dear is under attack by globalists and Marxists along multiple fronts.  At its core, I understand the danger, am more motivated, and better prepared to join the fight than the current occupant of the office.

I understand that war has been declared on Texans and our values.  And I am ready to step up to defend us in that war.  In other words, I understand what time it is in Texas, and know how much we have to get done to save Texas.

PAXTON IMPEACHMENT WAS CRYSTALIZING EVENT

Given that I had had my best batting average of bill passage this last session than ever before, I had almost decided not to run again as the session started winding down the week before Memorial Day.  But then, I heard shocking news.  What?  What?!?  They are going to try to impeach Attorney General Paxton, one of the most effective champions against the war on Texas that we have?  The very people engaging in the attacks on Texas are going after Paxton?

Then, my wife Kathie and I went to the Capitol and watched the sham that was the impeachment and watched the HD 17 incumbent look up at how the votes were going before casting his vote to impeach Ken Paxton.  Next, my phone started ringing from friends in the district.  To a person, they were furious at the impeachment and furious at the incumbent who voted with the Austin swamp for it, asking me to run.

My wife and I did legal research on the law and precedents relating to impeachment.  I filed a brief with the Senate, detailing the reasons why the impeachment was illegally done and a violation of the will of the voters and the provision of the Texas Constitution that says “all political power is inherent in the people.”

It is not lost on the conservative voters of Texas that the same forces are using lawfare against Paxton for the same reason they are doing so against Trump – both stand in the way of the Deep State running the lives of Texans.  No matter what the Senate does, I think the conservative voters who will vote in the Republican primary in HD 17 next March want a fighter against the swamp, not someone funded by it, beholden to it, and willing to go along with it.

THE PATH TO VICTORY

If you are reading this, you are someone who likely pays attention to what goes on at the Texas Legislature.  The problem is that most voters who vote in the Republican primary do not do their homework on the candidates and their approach to the issues before they walk into the voting booth.

The GOP primary voters are conservative.  We know this based on how they vote on the issue resolutions placed on the GOP primary ballot in Texas.  But too many do not take the effort to find out which of their choices for state rep in the Republican primary will better champion their values.  They vote based on name ID.  And it takes money to build name ID.  Usually – as it was in HD 17 in 2022 -- the special interest money to candidates helps purchase that name ID with repetitive glossy mailers and other advertising.

The key to a grassroots victory over the establishment-controlled candidate in HD 17 is to figure out a way to cost-effectively get the attention of the voters who normally don’t pay attention to state rep races.  I have some ideas about how to do that this time.  One of them involves using the impeachment vote to differentiate between the incumbent and myself.

But to win, I must have the resources to deliver the message to the low-attention voters of my district.  The grassroots did a decent job of funding my campaign last time around.  I think we should get more small donations from more people this time around.  And even though we had an active volunteer effort last time, I think we will get even more this time, too.

You can help me fight for you by making a donation, today, no matter how small the amount.

WE HAVE A STATE TO SAVE!

Because Texas is under attack, we do indeed have Texas, America, our Constitutions, and liberty to save.  I look forward to embarking with you on the mission to save them.

Toward liberty,

Tom Glass

I wrote and filed on August 23, 2023 for Texas Constitutional Enforcement a friend of the Senate brief in the Paxton impeachment trial, today, by mailing it to Patsy Spaw, the Secretary of the Senate, who for the Paxton impeachment trial is also Clerk of the Court of Impeachment.

The Texas Supreme Court accepts friend of the court briefs (Such briefs are also called amicus curiae briefs because amicus curiae is Latin for friend of the court.  Since the Senate sits as a court during impeachments, I figure they should also accept amicus briefs.  I called my brief amicus senatus, Latin for friend of the Senate.

At this writing, we have not heard back as to whether the brief will be formally accepted and will become a formal record of the trial.

To read the brief in PDF form and with legal formatting, table of contents, list of authorities, etc., click here.

I knew that most of the Texas Senate are not attorneys, so I attempted to write the brief in understandable English, not only for them, but for the people of Texas.

Here the text of the heart of the brief:

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

One of the pillars of a republican form of government is found in the Texas Constitution, art. 1, § 2, reading in part:

All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit.

The “prior-term doctrine” rests on this bedrock principle of the Texas Republic.  The doctrine is often referred to as the “forgiveness doctrine,” but is better described as the “voter-sovereignty doctrine.”  Because the doctrine implements a fundamental principle of our republic and our Bill of Rights, it should be applied to reject 19 of the 20 counts against Attorney General Paxton.

Nothing is more important in impeachment proceedings than following the rule of law.  Because the Texas House violated two procedural statutes in impeaching Ken Paxton, all of the impeachment articles are null and void and should be rejected by the Texas Senate.

No law is any good if not enforced, and the proper enforcer of the law violated in the impeachment of Ken Paxton is the Texas Senate, sitting as an impeachment court.

Specifically, the Texas House violated two statutes in their impeachment:

• The Texas impeachment proceeding statute specifying the steps in impeachment. Gov’t Code §665.001.
• The Texas statute requiring that all testimony in Texas House committees be sworn. Gov’t Code § 301.022.

The steps in an impeachment proceeding are to 1) file articles, 2) investigate, then 3) act.  The very word, “proceeding” implies a proper order to impeachment.  The Texas House violated that order by 1) investigating (in secret), 2) filing articles, then 3) acting.  This is not merely an aspirational goal.  Failure to follow the proper order of things is an injustice, just as a hanging first and then a trial would be.

ARGUMENT

I. “PRIOR-TERM DOCTRINE” RESTS ON TEXAS BILL OF RIGHTS

The attorneys for Attorney General Paxton wrote a powerful brief in support of what they call the “prior-term doctrine,” calling for rejection of 19 of the 20 articles because the doctrine applies.

The purpose of this amicus is to point out that the prior-term doctrine is solidly based in Texas Constitution, art. 1, § 2, which says in part:

All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit.

This principle is one of the two columns upon which the republic that is Texas is based.  In Texas, the voters are the boss.  The voters are sovereign.  That is why the doctrine should better be known as the “voter-sovereignty doctrine.”

The Paxton brief on the doctrine established the following about the doctrine:

1.  The doctrine is codified in original form in statute (Tex. Gov’t Code §665.081):

NO REMOVAL FOR ACTS COMMITTED BEFORE ELECTION TO OFFICE.  (a) An officer in this state may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer’s election to office.

2.  The Texas Supreme Court held regarding impeachment of a sheriff that the predecessor statute meant that the official “could not be removed from office during his second term for offenses committed during his first term.” Reeves v. State, 267 S.W. 666, 669 (Tex. 1924).

3.  The Supreme Court further opined that the statute did not apply to constitutional impeachments such as the one in question, but rather applied a modified version of the doctrine, i.e., “when such acts were a matter of public record or otherwise known to the electors and were sanctioned and approved or forgiven by them at the election.” In re Laughlin, 265 S.W.2d 805, 808 (Tex. 1954).

4.  The Supreme Court applied the doctrine twice again after that in constitutional judicial removal cases, once in In re Brown, 512 S.W.2d 317 (Tex. 1974) and again in In re Carillo, 542 S.W.2d 105 (Tex. 1976). While applying the doctrine to Judge Carillo, the Court recognized that the acts before his current term were not known to the public, and therefore acted to remove him.  In Brown, the Court said, “The rationale for the doctrine is the sound reason that the public, as the ultimate judge and jury in a democratic society, can choose to forgive the misconduct of an elected official.” Id. at 321 (emphasis added).

5.  As set forth in the Paxton brief, the Texas Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment has applied the doctrine three times, once to the impeachment of a statewide officer, a Land Commissioner.

The bottom line is that the voter-sovereignty/prior-term doctrine has been implemented multiple times by the Texas Senate and the Texas Supreme Court.  Their actions are anchored in one of the core principles of our republic and articulated in the Texas Bill of Rights.

We urge this Court to follow precedent, republican principles, and the Texas Bill of Rights by applying the voter-sovereignty/prior-term doctrine in this case.

II. THE TEXAS HOUSE VIOLATED THE STATUTORY ORDER OF IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDING

The very first section of the Texas Government Code Chapter 665 called IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL, lays out the proper order for an impeachment proceeding:

Sec. 665.001.  IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDING.  In this subchapter, “impeachment proceeding” includes:

(1)  presenting an article of impeachment;

(2)  investigating a matter relating to a contemplated impeachment; and

(3)  acting on an article of impeachment.

            The very word, “proceeding” implies a proper order:  1) Present, 2) Investigate, 3) Act.

            The Texas House violated the statutory order of impeachment.  Its order was 1) Investigate (in secret), 2) Present, 3) Act.

Ready, aim, fire is very different from fire, ready, aim.  There are essential governmental reasons why a prior Texas Legislature wrote the statute to proceed in a certain order.  The order adds transparency.  The order provides due process.  The order insures that mistakes are not made.  And, the proper order results in a product worthy of consideration by the Texas Senate.

The Texas House violated the Texas statute on impeachment proceeding.  No law is any good without enforcement.  The proper enforcer of that statute on the Texas House is the Texas Senate.

The Texas Senate should find all articles of impeachment produced contrary to law and therefore null and void.

III. THE TEXAS HOUSE VIOLATED THE STATUTE REQUIRING SWORN TESTIMONY IN THE GENERAL INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE

In the impeachment debate on the Texas House floor on Saturday, May 27, 2023, Representative Matthew Schaefer asked Representative Andrew Murr, Chairman of the General Investigating Committee, the following question:

Chairman Murr, do you know whether any witnesses that spoke to the investigators hired by the committee were placed under oath?

Chairman Murr replied:

No witnesses were placed under oath . . .  (emphasis added)

In the Texas Government Code Chapter 301. LEGISLATIVE ORGANIZATION., §301.022. TESTIOMONY UNDER OATH says:

   (a) All legislative committees shall require witnesses to give testimony under oath, subject to the penalties of perjury.

   (b) The oath required by this section may be waived by any committee except a general investigating committee. (emphasis added).

Those who try to remove the top law enforcement official in Texas from office after sovereign voters have put him in that office, should follow Texas law in doing so, basing its actions only on sworn testimony.

The Texas House violated a statute governing its own behavior, and the only body to enforce Texas law against this House lawbreaking is the Texas Senate.

All the articles of impeachment should be dismissed because they are null and void for lack of sworn testimony as required by Texas law.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, this Texas Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment should dismiss all articles of impeachment against Ken Paxton.

My wife, Kathie Glass, and I drove to the Texas Capitol Saturday, May 27, 2023, and stood in a long line to sit in the House Gallery to witness the historic impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

I definitely have my own world view, values, and take on what happened, but given the importance of the event, I figured that an account and perspective of one Lee County resident who was there would be of interest to my Lee County neighbors.

The Texas Capitol was very crowded on this Saturday afternoon on Memorial Day weekend. Many Texans and other tourists were there just to see the Capitol. Families were there to celebrate quinceaneras and other family get togethers.

My estimate of who filled the gallery is about 25% in favor of impeachment and 75% against. To my knowledge, the impeachment was sprung so fast on Texans that there was no organized call for different camps to show up. Rather, the attendance was spontaneous on both sides. I saw many grassroots activists in the crowd that had visited the Capitol all session advocating for conservative issues.

I sat next to an older woman I had never met who spoke with an accent. She was there with her family who was opposed to the impeachment. She told me that she had grown up in a Communist country and knew what tyranny looked like, and that this impeachment looked like that to her.

National and state media reporters and camera crews were out in force. Kathie Glass was videotaped and snippets were shown on KXAN news, and she was quoted in multiple news sources. I was interviewed live on MSNBC and quoted by two different reporters in the New York Times and Dallas Morning News.

The impeachment layout, debate, and vote lasted a bit over 3 hours. After a long, boring, eye-glazing read of the articles of impeachment by a clerk, the five members of the House General Investigating Committee Chair laid out the case. In the first statement by the Committee, Republican member Charles Geren opened by saying that the reason the investigation happened was because Paxton asked for money from the legislature. (See comment below.)

Then the elder statesman and attorney from the Panhandle — courtly, reserved Rep John Smithee — rose to oppose impeachment. He calmly laid out his knowledge of the two other impeachments that resulted in removal in Texas history and how different the process was in those cases from the process being used against Paxton.

He pointed out that because impeachment was so important and rare, the Texas House had traditionally offered due process and the courtesy to be heard to the accused and that Texas Rules of Evidence were followed. He talked about how transparent and lengthy the previous impeachments had been and contrasted that with what he called “triple hearsay” that produced no evidence that could be used in any court of law in Texas. It was a devastating critique of the non-transparent, blitzkrieg, and due-process absent process being foisted on the people of Texas.

Despite previous admonitions from the Speaker and pages in the Gallery to the crowd against making any noise in the gallery, Smithee was given loud, sustained applause from the Gallery, causing Speaker Phelan to slam his gavel in attempt to stop it. No other statement of the day got such a response.

Then a succession of members rose to oppose the impeachment. Notably, elder Democrat statesman and Houston defense attorney, Harold Dutton rose to say that not long ago in our history, blacks had been routinely denied due process, and that his life as a defense attorney was dedicated to insuring that all Texans received due process. He said that his displeasure with the lack of such in this impeachment would lead him to “cast a white light” in his vote and urged his fellow members to do the same. He meant he was going to cast his vote as present, not voting (PNV). Since to prevail, a majority of the vote needed to be in favor, a PNV vote by a significant number of members would cause the impeachment to fail.

Other Republican representatives weighed in against impeachment, notably attorneys Michael Schofield of Katy and moderate Nacogdoches defense attorney Travis Clardy. Both attorneys embellished the discussion of how the current impeachment violates the history and traditions of the Texas House. Clardy warned the body that history would judge this House harshly for its “rush to judgment,” arguing that there is no evidence on the record because of lack of sworn testimony and cross examination. Representatives Richard Hayes, Tony Tinderholt, and Steve Toth weighed in against as well. Tinderholt said that Pelosi gave more due process to Trump in his impeachments than the Texas House was giving Paxton.

The leading advocates of impeachment appeared to get nervous. The proponents brought out Republican Jeff Leach of Paxton’s home Collin County and Edinburg Democrat Terry Canales. Both claimed that they had not planned to speak, but felt compelled to respond. Canales, the most skilled orator of the day, argued that since impeachment was somewhat like a grand jury, and that our grand jury practice has sunk to the improper practice of allowing grand juries to “indict a ham sandwich,” that the Texas House could, too. No need to do a lot of work in the House, he argued. Give the hard job to the Senate.

In the end, the vote on HR 2377 was 121 for impeachment, 23 against, and two Present, Not Voting. Stan Gerdes, the State Representative from HD 17 that includes Lee County, voted for impeachment. The issue will now go to the Senate for a trial. Because the Texas Constitution in Article 15, Section 5 requires it, Ken Paxton was immediately suspended from office, pending resolution of the matter in the Senate.

I have several observations and opinions on this matter. First, to add insult to injury in the rushed, non-transparent, sham, politically-weaponized impeachment process in the Texas House, the vote was on all 20 articles at once. Every impeachment I have ever seen in U.S. and Texas history used a process that had the body vote separately on each article.

Second, not a single representative raised this issue, but had I been a representative in that body, I would have made a point of order to squash the entire proceeding because it violates Texas law. In Texas chapter 665 of the Government Code governing Impeachment and Removal we find this: “Sec. 665.081. NO REMOVAL FOR ACTS COMMITTED BEFORE ELECTION TO OFFICE. (a) An officer in this state may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer’s election to office.”

All of the articles brought against Paxton were for acts alleged to have been committed before the November 2022 election. The Texas Supreme Court expanded on the meaning and applicability of the words of this statute in the case of In re Brown in 1974, saying, “The rationale for the doctrine is the sound reason that the public, as the ultimate judge and jury in a democratic society, can choose to forgive the misconduct of an elected official . . . The underlying basis for the principle is that the public can knowingly return one to office in spite of charges of misconduct. Public access to full information was the basis . . .”

I call this statute and doctrine the non-disenfranchisement doctrine. It is based on Article I, Sec. 2 of the Texas Bill of Rights, which says that “All political power is inherent in the people . . .” The opponents of Ken Paxton in both the Republican primary and general elections in 2022 spent millions raising the issues raised by the impeachment and were rejected by the voters. This act of impeachment violates Texas law and the spirit of the Texas Constitution which says the people are in charge.

As the Dallas Morning News quoted me, “This is disenfranchisement.”

Another outrage of the impeachment is the blatant misrepresentation, politicization, and weaponization of the Attorney General’s request to the legislature for an appropriation to settle a lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General (OAG). Whenever a state agency is sued, it is usually sued in its official capacity, and if the defendant loses, the state legislature is asked to fund the judgment. Had the OAG spend hundreds of thousands or millions to defend the case and lose, the plaintiffs would have asked the legislature to fund the judgment. The OAG was ordered by the court to mediate a settlement, and the terms of the settlement were that the OAG ask the legislature to fund it.

The fact that the OAG engaged in the normal practices of government in this situation, only to have attorney and former county judge Andrew Murr make this the most important reason for the impeachment is outrageous proof of the political and personal nature of the impeachment.

Tom Glass lives in Lee County, Texas.  He spends lots of his time focused on persuading the Texas legislature to pass strategic liberty-oriented legislation. He leads Texas Constitutional Enforcement, was a 2022 Republican Candidate for Texas House District 17, and served on the 2022 RPT Platform Committee from SD 18.

A variant of this article can be found by its subscribers at the Lexington Leader.

Today’s featured Republican State Rep nominee who has the chance of replacing a Democrat in the 2022 general election is Michelle Lopez of Kyle in HD 45.  HD 45 covers the eastern half of Hays County and includes the cities of San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, Niederwald, and Uhland.  After redistricting, HD 45 is only D+5, making it theoretically one of the easiest current Dem districts to flip.

Michelle Lopez has served for three terms on the Kyle City Council, including service as Mayor Pro Tem and a long history of Hays County community involvement.  She has three degrees, including a bachelor’s from what used to be called Texas Women’s University, a master’s degree in education from Texas State, which is in HD 45, and a PhD in educational administration from Texas A&M University.  She runs a consulting company that focuses on executive and team coaching, personal branding and career development.

The Dem two-term incumbent in HD 45 is Erin Zweiner, who has posted about how much she admires Massachusetts U.S. Senator and abuser of affirmative action for Native Americans, Elizabeth Warren.

Michelle Lopez does not focus much on issues on her website or Facebook page, so I don’t know how committed she is to the RPT Legislative Priorities.  She is an active member of her Catholic Church and is married with one son, so she is presumably committed to traditional family values.  I know that she would be better on that score than Erin Zweiner!

You can donate and volunteer to help Michelle Lopez at:  https://www.lopezforhd45.com/

If Michelle has an active personal account on Facebook, I can’t find it.  She does have a Facebook campaign page.

This picture is of Michelle Lopez on our left, standing with State Senator Donna Campbell, whose SD 25 includes a small part of HD 45.  (The bulk of HD 45 is now in SD 21 currently being served by Dem Judith Zaffarini.  The active GOP challenger in SD 21 is Julie Dahlberg.)