Abbott’s pick for Texas secretary of state is FW lawyer who worked on Trump’s election challenge

AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott has picked a new secretary of state to oversee elections: a Fort Worth attorney who represented the Trump campaign last November in its challenge to election results in Pennsylvania.

Abbott, a Republican, named John Scott to the high-profile job on Thursday.

Scott comes into the role as the secretary of state is poised to gain broad new powers from the divisive elections law that Republicans muscled in this year. Former President Donald Trump is also lobbying for more election audits in Texas — a state he carried last November in a contest a top state election official called “smooth and secure.”

While the state Senate must still confirm Scott, the Legislature is not set to meet again until 2023 — meaning Scott will hold the job through the upcoming midterm elections. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and all state legislators are on the ballot next year.

Scott didn’t return a request for comment.

Abbott cited Scott’s history of state service in his decision to appoint him to the role, which has been vacant for months. Scott worked under Abbott at the Texas attorney general’s office, and once Abbott became governor, he tapped Scott to help improve a contracting office at the Health and Human Services Commission.

“John Scott is a proven leader with a passion for public service, and his decades of experience in election law and litigation make him the ideal choice for the Texas Secretary of State,” Abbott said in a statement. “John understands the importance of protecting the integrity of our elections and building the Texas brand on an international stage.”

Left out of Abbott’s announcement was Scott’s role with the Trump campaign as it sought to fight the 2020 presidential election outcome.

Scott and state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, briefly represented the campaign in its legal battle to stop Pennsylvania from certifying its election results. Democrat Joe Biden carried the battleground state.

Scott and Hughes withdrew before a federal judge threw out the case in a scathing order that dismissed claims of large-scale irregularities with mail-in ballots.

Democrats criticized Abbott’s choice and its timing, given that lawmakers were meeting in special sessions over the last few months and could have vetted the nominee in a confirmation hearing.

“Abbott is appointing one of the architects of Republicans’ big lie that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election to oversee all electoral activity in our state,” said Grand Prairie Rep. Chris Turner, who chairs the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “The freedom to vote is a sacred right. Texans need a secretary of state that will fight for and protect that right — and not undermine it for political gain.”

While overseeing elections is just one of the secretary of state’s jobs — which include maintaining business records and acting as the state’s liaison to Mexico — it’s increasingly the most high profile.

Trump has fueled partisan fights over elections nationwide by calling the 2020 contest rigged, even after dozens of judges, some of whom he appointed, and his own Justice Department dismissed the allegation as baseless.

Texas is one of several Republican-led states that tightened election laws this year in the name of “election integrity,” despite protests from Democrats and civil rights groups who decried the changes as voter suppression.

Politics recently derailed Abbott’s previous picks for secretary of state.

In 2019, Democrats blocked David Whitley’s nomination after he oversaw a botched attempt to purge voter rolls that wrongly flagged thousands of Texans as potential noncitizens.

This year, the GOP-led Senate never confirmed Ruth Ruggero Hughs, who left the office in May. Hughs had overseen the 2020 election, in which Houston’s Harris County rolled out early-voting methods that are now banned by the new GOP-backed elections law.

The law, which takes effect in December, gives a slew of new election powers to the secretary of state.

The office will be newly empowered to fine counties up to $1,000 a day for not properly maintaining their voter lists and to audit potentially years’ worth of the counties’ elections. The office also will have broader ability to pass on alleged voter fraud or missteps by election officials to the attorney general, who has made prosecuting election violations a top priority.

The office is also overseeing an audit of the 2020 election results from four urban counties: Collin, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant. The review was announced last month, just hours after Trump began pressing for one. Recently he has lobbied Texas lawmakers to go further, but they rejected a bill for more reviews of the 2020 outcome.

Scott, who has been a lawyer for nearly 33 years, most recently worked at a firm he helped found, Franklin Scott Conway, where Hughs works as counsel.