Joe Jaworski Announces Second Run for Texas Attorney General

Former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski on Thursday launched a bid for Texas attorney general, setting up a Democratic primary race against state Sen. Nathan Johnson to replace Ken Paxton in the 2026 election.

Jaworski, who came up short in the 2022 primary against former ACLU attorney Rochelle Garza, announced his second run with a video highlighting his career as an attorney "fighting crime and corporate greed."

That includes a case highlighted in the ad in which Jaworski represented the family of a crewmember on a ship that sank off the coast of Texas. Jaworski said the corporation that owned the vessel ordered it to return home in dangerous conditions. He said the case shows the stakes for Texas.

"We have a long history of preventable catastrophes taking innocent lives," Jaworski says in the video over footage of electric equipment and a Uvalde sign. "Will we have an attorney general who fights to protect Texans, or one who follows in the footsteps of Ken Paxton?"

Jaworski enters the race just two days after Johnson, a lawyer and mediator who was elected to the state Senate in 2018 when he flipped a Republican-held seat in Dallas. Johnson said he is running because Texas needs an attorney general who will be a lawyer for all citizens, "irrespective of their ideology."

Paxton, who has been attorney general for 10 years, is leaving the post to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary. Several Republicans have joined the race to replace Paxton. They include state Sens. Mayes Middleton, of Galveston; and Joan Huffman, of Houston; and former U.S. Department of Justice official Aaron Reitz.