State Rep. Matt Krause drops out of AG race to run for Tarrant District Attorney (original) (raw)
Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, speaks to the media about the Religious Freedom Reform Act bill he is sponsoring in the House, Tuesday, April 7, 2015, at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas. Texas lawmakers and top business leaders vowed Tuesday to kill two proposed constitutional amendments, one by Krause, they say will promote anti-gay discrimination and could lead to backlash similar to recent reactions in Indiana and Arkansas. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Rodolfo Gonzalez)
Rodolfo Gonzalez, MBO / Associated Press
State Rep. Matt Krause is dropping out of the GOP primary for Texas attorney general to instead run to be district attorney of his hometown of Tarrant County after the incumbent there, Sharen Wilson, said she would retire.
“I started getting a lot of calls from people in Tarrant County,” Krause, R-Fort Worth, told Hearst Newspapers. “The more we looked at it, the opportunities, the possibilities, the importance of the position, it seemed to make a lot of sense.”
“It would be located in Tarrant County, much better situation for the family as well, so that certainly went into the calculus. So after lots of thinking about it and talking to a bunch of folks in Tarrant County about the need and excitement for me to get in the race, we felt like, ‘You know what, that’s something we ought to do.’”
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The announcement, first reported by WFAA, came within hours of U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert officially announcing he will jump into the race to unseat two-term incumbent Attorney General Ken Paxton. He joins Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman.
Krause and Gohmert, both members of the Freedom Caucus in their respective chambers, share many of the same supporters, and Krause told Hearst Newspapers on Monday that he will support Gohmert going forward.
“He’s kind of getting into that conservative lane that I’d been running in,” Krause said. “I think he’s articulated all the reasons I was getting in as well, so it didn’t make much sense for me to think about staying in the race either if he was going to run, occupying that same lane.”
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Krause, a five-term state representative and adjunct professor at Liberty University Online, has made headlines in recent months for an inquiry he launched as chair of the House’s General Investigating Committee, requesting Texas school districts provide a report on whether they carry certain books that touch on matters of race and gender that could potentially violate new state restrictions.
The majority of the books on his more than 800-book list, the origins of which he has declined to disclose, relate to LGBT issues. Krause has authored many anti-LGBT bills, including one this year, a priority of Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that never came to pass, that would have banned gender-affirming healthcare for minors.
Democrats had accused Krause of using the book investigation as a campaigning tool and harming already marginalized groups of children in the process. Krause has denied that was his goal.
In an interview Monday, he said many of the issues he emphasized in his attorney general campaign will remain central to his pitch to voters in Tarrant County.
“What’s in the libraries, the books, the curriculum, all of that will continue to be a very prominent topic in the primary, so that along with border security,” he said. “We’ll continue to touch on those and show why we’re the best candidate when those issues come up.”
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Note: A previous version of this story misspelled Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson's name.
Nov 22, 2021|Updated Nov 23, 2021 3:34 p.m.
Taylor Goldenstein is a state bureau reporter covering the Attorney General and federal courts among other topics. She can be reached at taylor.goldenstein@houstonchronicle.com. She's previously written for the Austin-American Statesman, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Tampa Bay Times. She hails from the suburbs of Chicago and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2014, she was a visiting fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.