James Talarico Insults Military Families With ‘California Transplant’ Attack, Ken Paxton Says
"Don't California my Texas" is a popular saying that captures the wariness that many in the Lone Star State feel toward the coastal liberal bastion — and in its mudslinging Senate race both candidates are using "Californian" as a pejorative.
“Don’t California my Texas” is a popular saying that captures the wariness that many in the Lone Star State feel toward the coastal liberal bastion — and in its mudslinging Senate race both candidates are using “Californian” as a pejorative.
“ Ken Paxton clearly misses his old home in California,” an account linked to Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s campaign claimed in a Friday post to Facebook. However, the GOP upper chamber candidate is responding by casting his opponent’s attack on his childhood residence as an insult to his father’s military service.
The post features a clip of Paxton saying “I like places in California, even though I don’t like to admit that I go to California.”
The Austin Democrat also labeled Paxton a “California transplant” in his Texas Democratic National Convention speech on Saturday.
Paxton’s father, Warren Kenneth Paxton Sr., served in the United States Air Force as a B-52 pilot, Paxton shared in a Facebook post on Monday. The Paxtons, like many military families, moved often.
Their journey took them from an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, where Warren Kenneth “Ken” Paxton, Jr. was born, to Florida, to New York, to North Carolina, to California and to Oklahoma, according to a 2016 profile in the Houston Chronicle. The family’s temporary home and mode of transportation was a white and gold trailer that lacked air conditioning