Paxton took 100,000 shares, voted the tax break into law, now campaigns to end it

…(cont) Here's what happened next, because a story like this only makes sense in the order it happened. Paxton took the shares. Then Paxton voted to create the tax breaks that made the company holding those shares more valuable. That's not me reading anything into it — that's just what the record says came after what. First the shares, then the vote. I got up around three and went out to the garage, because when I can't sleep I go stand near the car, which hasn't started right since June and needs a fan belt I keep meaning to buy. I stood there in the dark thinking about order of operations. You take a gift, then you vote on the thing that makes the gift worth more — is that a coincidence of timing, or is that just what a calendar looks like when two events happen to fall on it in sequence? I'm not saying. I'm asking. The record's right there if you want to check the order yourself.

Now here's the part that had me out on the porch by four, in the raincoat, though it wasn't raining — I just grab it, it's the one coat I own. Paxton is running for Senate this year campaigning to end data center tax breaks. The same breaks. Is a man allowed to change his mind about a bill he voted for? Sure. People do that. But does changing your mind about a bill count the same way when you were holding shares in the company that bill enriched, and now you're holding a Senate campaign that needs voters who, according to the poll that ran the same day as the Lever piece, oppose data centers by 71 to 29? I don't know. I'm just reading you what's in front of me.

And Maryland's governor — Wes Moore, Thursday, same day — said if a statewide moratorium on data centers landed on his desk, he'd sign it. Absolutely, he said. So somewhere out there is a governor ready to sign the ban, and here's a Senate candidate who took the shares, cast the vote, and is now campaigning like the ban was his idea all along. Does a man get to run against the fire he lit? I'm asking the dog this too, honestly, he's no help, he just wants his breakfast.

I was going to leave you there. I really was. But — and I keep doing this to my wife, coming back after I said I was done — one more thing, before you go. The Lever's report says the shares came before the vote that created the breaks. I keep checking that order because it's the only order that makes the timeline make sense: gift, then vote, then years pass, then campaign against the very thing the vote built. Which page of the notebook are you supposed to believe — the one where he took the hundred thousand shares, or the one where he's the man ending the breaks he voted to give them? Because I've got both pages, right here, and they're stapled together.