Ken Paxton's personal wealth and campaign donors

Thank you. Good morning. It is Thursday, August 13th, and you are listening to North Texas Now. I'm Ron Corning. And I'm Miranda Suarez. How you doing? Oh, I'm doing good. How are you, Ron? I'm all right. We are getting ready for the State Fair of Texas. Even though it's over a month away. Well, we are here in the center of Fair Park. That's where we broadcast from. And it's already underway. It's happening. They're bringing in the coupon booths. They're blocking Bill Gates. I mean, things are happening. It will impact our lives in a number of ways. It will impact our parking situation. The arrival of the state fair for us who work in fair park is perhaps not like a, yay, it's state fair time. So we are going to have to kind of repress that bummer energy when the state fair actually comes. There is something, though, I think that's afoot here that you will appreciate as it relates to the state fair. I'm sort of hearing buzz, and I haven't shared this with you yet. they're going to send us out onto the fairgrounds for some of their social media antics. And I'm just so excited. You do enjoy that, don't you? Anyway. Anyway. On to the other news of the day. Speaking of which, we have got, I think, a pretty packed showday. I mean, we always have a full hour. But in terms of the number of people who are coming in studio, joining us live, all of that, we have a lot happening here this morning on North Texas now. And we're going to start talking about Ken Paxton. Of course, he is the Republican U.S. candidate for Texas. He has operated under a cloud of financial scandal. for a long time. He's been investigated for bribery. He's been indicted for securities fraud, among other things. Though, of course, all those cases were closed or settled without a conviction or admission of wrongdoing. One question his opponents still have, though, is where does all of his wealth come from? His salary, as the Texas Attorney General, was about $150,000 annually, but he has amassed a huge real estate portfolio. Lauren McGahe of the New York Times formerly. Our reporter with the Texas Newsroom, she's been covering Ken Paxton for years, and she has a new story where she identifies one unusual source of income for Ken Paxton that raises some more ethical questions. Hey, Lauren. Hey, how you doing? Doing good. Tell us about this cell phone tower that is making Ken Paxton a lot of money. Sure. You know, I was curious about this because I knew about this company for a while. He's disclosed it on his state ethics forms for more than 10 years, but I didn't know how important it was to his total asset pool until he ran for Senate. He had to file more detailed disclosures with the federal government, and that showed that he was making between $100,000 and a million dollars from this single company that was involved.

somehow with cell towers. And so I decided to look into it a little bit more. That's a widespread from 100,000 to a million. Yes. In your reporting, were you able to determine more specifically what he has amassed over the last 20 years or so? I guess this deal was signed in 2005. Yeah, I wasn't able to find that out. This information is private. So unless Mr. Ken Paxton wants to share it with us, we're going to kind of remain in the dark about it. Unfortunately, oops, I'm getting text. Sorry about that. You're a busy reporter, Lauren. They're hearing you on the radio, Lauren. That's what that is, right? But I talked to some experts, and they said they wouldn't be surprised if he makes, you know, $150 to $200,000 a year around there from this single tower. Now, this is a tower company that we were able to find one. tower in Frisco, but he might have more towers. We don't know that either, and he didn't tell us. What, so you mentioned that the towers in Frisco, it's on the grounds of a hospital in Frisco. Tell us what is maybe concerning about the location of the tower. So, you know, it took us a while to find this tower because, again, he didn't disclose where it was. There's not like a centralized database of every cell tower in the country. This is a really sorry. I'm so sorry about the text guys. So once we found it, we were able to look into that information a little bit more closely. We found deed records. And these were agreements made between the cell tower company, Ken Paxton's company, and. T-Mobile, Verizon, you know, the companies that connect us all through our cell phones. And it had the land, the piece of land that the tower sat on as a hospital. And we looked up that land and Paxson actually sat on the board of that hospital around the time or at the time when this deal went with T-Mobile was made. And then for another 10 years. So he was affiliated with the hospital as a board member when... when this deal was being made. A board member who potentially would have had to approve the cell tower? Again. Yeah. So the hospital now is Baylor Scott and White Centennial. It's it is a nonprofit. And so now we have access to 990s and some other information and their spokespeople have responding to our. questions about this. But at the time, it was a private for-profit hospital. And so there aren't public meetings, minutes, you know, it was even difficult for us to identify board members, fellow board members at the time. So a private hospital for profit, he forms the company premier vertical properties with Richard's sign in 2005. And we know generally what the income might be from this tower. Does it get a little murkier in 2015 when he's sworn in as attorney general but continues to receive income on this? Again, talking about the ethics of being a board member and doing a deal for a cell phone tower is different than whether it was legal or illegal. We're saying there's an ethics question here given his role. Does it get murkier after 2015 because he's in a position of influence and power?

Not necessarily because at the time of the initial agreement back in 2006, he was already an elected official. He was a state house. Have we lost Lauren? It looks like we lost Lauren McGahey, but thank you so much for your time, Lauren, and for breaking down that story. You can read more on the New York Times website. No, I think it's an important distinction that, yes, he was serving in a different capacity in public office before he was in a position of making decisions that might include regulation, as you suggested, of cell phone towers as an attorney general. But Lauren McGahe is reporting very important on that. And we're going to continue the Ken Paxton story this morning, but we want to talk about... campaign finance in a more broad sense. Reporting from the digital news outlet notice, which covers government and politics, it found that data center industry, the industry, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his... current Senate campaign. That's right. The money is flowing in as Ken Paxton's office is in charge of deciding whether Hood County can put a data center moratorium in place. KERA's calling county reporter, like Lauren McGaugh, has covered Ken Paxton four years and she joins us now. Hey, Caroline. Hey, it's the Ken Paxton show today. It really is the Ken Paxton show today and the data center show as it often is because these are just such massive news stories. Tell me again, we're talking about... potential discussion of conflict of interest here. Ken Paxton is getting a lot of campaign financing from the data center industry. He's also in charge of deciding how data centers can be regulated in some cases. Do people think this is a conflict of interest? So Hood County asked for the attorney general to weigh in on, you know, do they have the authority to decide on this moratorium back in February? And, you know, it's August now and his office still hasn't weighed in yet. And I talked to Brian Crawford about this. He is a resident in Hood County who lives near a couple of data centers that are being built. And he said that he wasn't surprised that Ken Paxton had accepted this money and that. he himself had suspected that this was why Ken Paxton hadn't weighed in yet. And no response from Ken Paxton's campaign on this to speak of at this point? How are they addressing it? So I did reach out to Ken Paxton's campaign and I did hear back. They said that they are releasing a policy plan about data centers soon. And his spokesperson Madison Searcy told me that he is laser focused on protecting Texas families, water, and the grid. So it sounds like we don't know Ken Paxton's specific views on data centers yet. However, there is some question about how the Republican Party had responding to them. Republican Governor Greg Abbott has called for a data center audit that has essentially paused. All data center development. How do you think data centers could kind of become a sticking point for the Republican Party?

So what's interesting is that President Donald Trump was asked about, you know, the Texas response to data centers in an interview with Punch Bowl News. And he said that he thought it was a mistake. Governor Greg Abbott responded that he has the support of the data center industry and that... You know, they're looking at Texas energy, Texas water, you know, things that are important to residents. And I will say that Ken Paxton did do an interview back in May with a podcast called Valuetainment, where he talked a little bit about data centers. And he said he understands why local communities may not want it in their backyard. But he said, you know, we're in a race with China when it comes to AI and that we don't want to lose that race. For James Talarico's part, his side of this, what are they saying about either data centers, what their stance are? And have they responded to this notion that data center dollars are funding Ken Paxton's campaign? So I did reach out to the James Talarico campaign and they did not have a comment about the money that Ken Paxton got for his campaign. But I will say James Talarico has been outspoken against data centers. He has talked about it in his stump speeches at his rallies. He said that there needs to be more regulation. And he's also proposed an AI dividend, which that basically means that. you know, the average American citizen would be getting some of the profits from all of these data centers in their neighborhoods. Has James Talarico faced any criticism at all? And of course, we're talking about Ken Paxton's Democratic opponent, James Talarico. Has James Talarico gotten any criticism? from the funding coming into his campaign as it regards to data centers. So there is a pro-James Talarico super PAC that got $10 million from Reid Hoffman. That's the co-founder of the social media networking site, LinkedIn, you know, for people looking for jobs. And... Reid Hoffman has been outspoken in favor of data centers. But I will say, you know, a note about super PACs is that, you know, the federal law forbids campaigns and PACs from coordinating. And James Talarico himself has been outspoken against PACs and has said that he would ban them if elected. This is really turning out to shape this race in a really distinct way, not just here in Texas, but all over the country, that we have said that the. resistance against data centers is quite bipartisan. And in many cases, it may be the single issue that a voter might pin their vote on. And some moderate Republicans might vote for James Talarico because they like his stance on data centers better. Are you hearing that anecdotally among the people you speak with?

So I have heard from, you know, the people that I spoke with in Hood County who live, you know, in Hood County, which is a more rural, more Republican area, who didn't have much to say on whether or not they supported Tatar Rico or Ken Paxton, but they are against data centers. And then I think another issue that I've been reporting on that will be a big factor in this race is affordability. Yeah. Like Brian Crawford, I was curious to know. Do we know he's in Hood County? He's near this Comanche Circle project. He said he's not surprised by the influence of data center money on the Ken Paxton campaign necessarily. Do we know who he voted for or what his politics are and if it will be shaped at all by this issue? So I did ask, you know, him and his wife what their thoughts were about James Talarico and his anti-Data Center stance. And they didn't have much to say about that yet. They said, you know, that's something to consider. It is really interesting to see, I mean, as we've talked about many times on the show, data centers aren't like a new thing. There have been data centers here for a long time, but the boom that we're seeing now. And their development becoming really obvious, particularly in rural communities. where a lot of residents maybe want to keep it feeling really rural, how it has become such a massive issue in this past year. I saw some irony, too. I see some irony in the fact that we just covered Ken Paxton's attachment, potential attachment, to a cell phone tower and the income is generating. We remember when that was the issue that people didn't want a single cell phone tower near their homes, right? They didn't want the aesthetics of it. They were concerned about some of the health concerns at the time that were being bandied about. They masked some of them with fake tree limbs. This is the same thing but different on a much larger scale happening more quickly with far more potential for fallout for the environment, the economy, and all those things. You're listening to North Texas Now.