Texas' Right-Wing Leaders Are Going To ‘Scary’ Lengths To Intimidate Political Rivals

Cecilia Castellano is a small-business owner and a relative political newcomer in South Texas.

A Democratic candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in a toss-up district, Castellano spends her days making the case for sending an outsider to Austin — and against her Republican opponent, Don McLaughlin Jr., who was endorsed by Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even before his primary election.

Then, two weeks ago, law enforcement agents from Paxton’s office showed up around dawn at Castellano’s home outside San Antonio, armed with a search warrant and a flashlight they shined into her front window. She had answered the door in pajamas, and in the days since, she has found herself constantly checking the door.

“My son’s room was just a few feet away,” Castellano told HuffPost, still shaken two weeks after the visit from law enforcement. “Why, why, why did the peace of my home get disturbed?”

The agents were investigating supposed “vote harvesting” committed by someone else, part of a probe that began months before Castellano had even announced her candidacy. They eventually left, taking her work cell phone with them.

Castellano wasn’t alone. Across the greater San Antonio area, a local mayor, a political consultant and several elderly members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, a century-old civil rights group, were served similar search warrants last month, all the result of what Paxton’s office said is a 2-year-old “election fraud” investigation.

Voting rights advocates and civil rights leaders believe this is the latest chapter in a yearslong pattern of Paxton and other state officials wielding their law enforcement powers to target racial