Leach told Spectrum News<\/a> he had \u201cno regrets\u201d about impeaching him.<\/p>\n\u201cI believed with all my heart in May when I voted for impeachment that General Paxton was corrupt,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, several months later, I believe without question, he\u2019s a sophisticated criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He now says he wishes he\u2019d said things differently. Despite past disagreements, he said he shares common ground with Paxton on core political beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how he\u2019s going to vote when he\u2019s our next United States senator. I also know how James Talarico would vote,\u201d Leach said. \u201cThis is a binary choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leach said Talarico is trying to pass himself off as a \u201cmoderate\u201d to voters who do not know his politics, but his voting record is more akin to a \u201cprogressive radical.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe very strongly that the Democrat Socialists of America, their golden boy, their rock star, their superhero is not Mayor [Zohran] Mamdani in New York,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s James Talarico here in Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leach said there are still Republican voters who, like him, supported Cornyn in the primary and are apprehensive about Paxton. But he said that those voters can\u2019t stay on the sidelines during what he considers a close race in November \u2014 which is why he\u2019s backing Paxton.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think it\u2019s going to be a close race and Republicans should not stay home,\u201d he said. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t just expect the state of Texas to save itself. We\u2019ve got to go to the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 Three years ago, state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, was part of the team of lawmakers that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6329,1657,1658,2160,132,6328,1570,102,6288,56,62638,223,287,82,27,29,28,2053,835],"class_list":["post-400283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-austin","tag-capital-tonight","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-decision-2026","tag-houston","tag-james-barragan","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}