About this office
The Attorney General is the state's lawyer — defending Texas laws in court and representing the state in lawsuits. The same office collects child support for Texas parents, which is the part of the job most families actually touch.
Candidates
Mayes MiddletonHe didn't run for office for years. He just wrote checks — quietly funding the rise of Texas's hardline conservative movement from behind the scenes. Then he decided to run himself.
About Mayes
A Wallisville native who inherited his father's oil company, Middleton became one of the biggest financial architects of the Texas House Freedom Caucus before entering politics himself. He put $16 million of his own money into the 2026 AG race and beat Chip Roy in the Republican runoff.
Nathan JohnsonJohnson is a physics major turned lawyer who flipped a Dallas Senate seat from a Tea Party Republican in 2018 — and now he's running for the office Ken Paxton ran for a decade.
About Nathan
In the Senate he pushed to widen Medicaid coverage, worked on shoring up the power grid after the 2021 freeze, and took on big businesses on behalf of taxpayers; before politics he was a business and bankruptcy lawyer who did pro bono work for immigrants' rights. The Attorney General is the state's lawyer — child support, consumer fraud, defending Texas laws in court — and Johnson's pitch is to run it as a law office again, not a political one.
Tom OxfordA trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Texas Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, now running for attorney general.
About Tom
Oxford earned a government degree from the University of Texas in 1979 and a law degree from the University of Houston in 1982. He has practiced as a trial lawyer for more than twenty years, arguing cases before the Texas Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He's a frequent Libertarian candidate, now running for attorney general against Republican Mayes Middleton and Democrat Nathan Johnson.