How the Texas Attorney General Got This Way

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. In most ways, the year 1998 doesn’t seem like the distant past. Christopher Nolan released a movie. Willie Nelson became a senior citizen. You could visit Google.com and search the internet. But when a little-known 46-year-old Texas Supreme Court justice named John Cornyn ran for state attorney general that year, he might as well have been campaigning in prehistoric times. The origins of our current era were faintly discernible, like aurochs painted in the Lascaux caves, but, in a fundamental way, the job that Cornyn sought would be almost unrecognizable to a Texan today. The most consequential difference was the position’s partisan goals. Cornyn was a lifelong…

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