A Muzzle to Ken Paxton for targeting a Mass. company in his Texas Senate campaign against James Talarico

If you lean left and have ever “liked” a liberal social media post, you and your email inbox are probably familiar — oh, so familiar — with ActBlue, a platform that serves as a fundraising platform for Democratic candidates. And it’s only worse if you’ve actually donated to a candidate — something I don’t do because I’m a journalist.

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But if you’ve wished that ActBlue would just go away, be careful. Ken Paxton, the floridly corrupt Republican Senate candidate from Texas, wants you to believe that he’s coming to your rescue. Acting in his capacity as his state’s attorney general, he sued ActBlue in December 2023. Now he’s trying to use that suit as a cudgel in his campaign to defeat his Democratic opponent, James Talarico. So far, that suit isn’t going anywhere.

According to Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Stearns put a halt to Paxton’s suit last week, ruling that it is nothing more than an act of political gamesmanship designed to deprive Talarico of the money he needs to pursue his campaign.

“The truth is plain and captured in Paxton’s own declarations: The lawsuit was filed in retaliation for (and in an attempt to suppress) ActBlue’s efforts to fund Talarico’s campaign,” Stearns wrote.

Until Gaffin reported on the suit, I didn’t realize that ActBlue is based in Somerville, Massachusetts. That means Paxton is eligible for a New England Muzzle Award. I hope he’ll put it up on his mantle alongside his impeachment, suspension, indictment and divorce documents filed by his wife on what she calls “biblical grounds.” Here is some of what Judge Stearns has to say about Paxton’s lawsuit against ActBlue, summarized by Gaffin:

Paxton’s public statements in the wake of filing the case against ActBlue reveal his true motivation. While a prosecutor is entitled to a large degree of prosecutorial discretion and has a right to make a considered public accounting of his actions, Paxton did not hesitate in drawing a connection between the lawsuit and his candidacy for Senate.  … On a podcast appearance [with the then still living Charlie Kirk] the day he filed the action, for example, Paxton responded to a question about whether, “as part of this lawsuit,” he could “collect information [from ActBlue] that applies to the whole country” with the statement, “I love that question because I am running for U.S. Senate. When in in [sic] the U.S. Senate, I’ll be all over this.” The next day, on a different podcast, he noted that ActBlue’s funds “are largely going to liberal Democrats, and it’s always been a mystery how they raised this much money.”

Paxton tried to argue that the Boston-based Stearns had no business acting on the suit in Massachusetts, but Stearns wasn’t having any of that, either, writing, “As the Texas action is undoubtedly related to these activities in Massachusetts, the  exercise of jurisdiction is both reasonable and constitutional.”

Talarico faces an uphill battle in Deep Red Texas, but he is thought to have a fighting chance given Paxton’s well-documented controversies and his own success in fundraising. Reporting for the Austin American-Statesman, John C. Moritz writes that Talarico raised $2.2 million in a single day through ActBlue this past February.

Overall, ActBlue has been so successful (if annoying) that Republicans in Congress are trying to shut it down. Moritz reports:

Meanwhile, three top congressional Democrats have asked Paxton’s office to turn over documents in a related matter.

U.S. Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California and Joseph Morelle of New York are questioning why Paxton has targeted ActBlue but has not followed up on consumers’ complaints about the Republican platform, WinRed.

Hearst Newspapers found that Paxton’s office had received dozens of complaints from Texans who complained that WinRed had siphoned money from their bank accounts after they unknowingly signed up to make their donations ongoing.

So if you’re sick of ActBlue, remember: If we’re going to defeat right-wing extremism and MAGA authoritarianism, we need organizations like ActBlue. Of course, what we really need is to overturn the Supreme Court’s corrupt Citizens United decision, followed by strict campaign-finance reform. But until then, this is what we’ve got.