Who is Tom Pauken?

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is still sitting on the fence about exactly which state office he is raising money to run for in 2014. But he had 18 million at the end of 2012.

The man with the itchy trigger finger on the Voter I.D. law is already on Twitter crowing about the prospect of his 28th lawsuit.

Yeah, he calls it “my 28th lawsuit”. Abbott is taking another brave stand against the United Nations.

My 28th lawsuit against #Obama if he signs UN Gun Treaty & Senate Ratifies it. http://t.co/aU98FFHANS #txlege #tcot #txgop #nra #guns #UN

But it’s on behalf of the good citizens of Texas and certainly couldn’t be an attempt to pander to his Tea Party base.

Tom Pauken doesn’t pussyfoot around. He’s running for governor. He’ll even admit it.

As conservative as it gets. He was the “Goldwater” flavor of it back in the old days. A Reagan White House staffer later. He looks like he could be Newt Gingrich’s brother.

Most recently Pauken has served as Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission. And he wrote a book about how the Republican Party went wrong and squandered the Reagan legacy. Yeah, he blames Dubya.

I have known Greg Abbott for many years and have always thought very highly of him, but having been very involved in this last legislative session where not many bills of importance were passed, I started wondering about him and his record. While in Austin, there were so many bills that he could have made an impact on just by speaking about them, but what did we hear? Silence..... What happened with the 2nd amendment bills? Nothing..... What did his grandstanding about the 2nd amendment bills cause to happen? Nothing..... Let’s not forget Obamacare...... There were several bills introduce to try to save Texans from this horrible legislation, but none were championed by Abbott. Again, it was silence..... After witnessing this type of behavior first hand, it made me start looking into his record and past more closely and this is what I found. First, Abbot made his fortune by filing a lawsuit against the landowner of the property and the arborist company that where a tree was that to fall on him while he jogged under it. It is reported that he cleared in excess of $10,000,000. Once he got into office, he fought for tort reform which became law that would not allow others to do as he did? That is hypocritical and gives us a mirror into his character. Secondly, over the last 4 years, Mr. Abbott has filed 27 lawsuits on behalf of the state of Texas. Of these he has only won 5—4 of which were against the EPA and 1 which was against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. 9 are in progress, 8 he lost, 4 dismissals and 1 which could be called a partial win because it would give the states money for medicaid expansion but said it was illegal to tax individuals without healthcare. These lawsuits cost the citizens of our great state $23.8 million dollars. If I had a lawyer on retainer and this was his record, I’d be finding a new one. Rhetoric is what is making Abbott well liked because it’s sure not his record. It’s time for Texans to stand up to this type of political smoke and mirrors and say enough is enough. We have to stop the madness.

Thanks for your post. Pauken may have his flaws, such as playing the underdog, not too friendly to the establishment folks, and not going on the campaign stump wearing a cowboy hat while holding a gun and a Bible at the same time, but when it comes to Pauken, what you see is what you get. Your explanation is exactly one of the reasons I have a problem with Abbott. He’s a show horse, but when it’s time for him to act like a work horse, he announces that he’s filing another frivolous lawsuit against the UN, and at 5 pm he “goes home.”

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