To learn more about Republican nominee Mayes Middleton, read our profile of him from the GOP primary.
In 2018, a little-known Dallas lawyer named Nathan Johnson took on a well-funded, far-right state senator and won, flipping a district that had been in GOP hands for 30 years.
Eight years later, Johnson is trying again, this time on a statewide stage, as he vies to be Texas’ next attorney general.
It’s an uphill battle: The last time a Democrat was elected as Texas’ top lawyer, Forrest Gump was in movie theaters. In the years since, national conservatives have come to rely on the state agency as a launchpad for partisan legal battles, and Johnson’s opponent, fellow state Sen. Mayes Middleton, has a vast oil and gas fortune he could call on to keep the seat red.
In this down-ballot race between two lesser-known candidates, Johnson is hoping to attract independents and moderate Republicans by eschewing partisan fighting, emphasizing his respect for the rule of law and promising to take seriously what he calls the “noble” bureaucracies the office is responsible for.
“I’ve tried to run a very serious, substantive campaign from the very beginning, because I think people are hungry for very serious, very substantive work from their elected officials,” he said in an interview with The Texas Tribune.
Johnson is betting there’s a bloc of voters who are so fed up with the agency’s embrace of culture war fights — a hallmark of outgoing incumbent Ken Paxton’s tenure — that they will throw off the shackles of party loyalty to vote for the guy promising a back-to-basics approach.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, the Democratic nominee for Texas attorney general, speaks at a campaign rally in Lubbock on July 18, 2026. Makayla Perez for The Texas Tribune
It’s an idea that’s been tried, unsuccessfully, in this year’s GOP primary and in general elections past. Even with headline-grabbing Paxton in the office, the attorney general race has long been overshadowed and, to some degree, shaped by what’s happening at the top of the ticket. With a potential blue wave gathering on the horizon, Johnson sees another chance to flip a GOP seat this fall, with some polls showing him within arm’s reach of Middleton.
“I read something in the electorate [in 2018] and I’m reading the exact same thing statewide now,” he said. “After eight years of culture wars and base drum-beating bravado, people are anxious about their lives, they’re anxious about costs, they’re anxious about employment … and the arguments and tricks of the Republican Party have worn out.”
A Dragon Ball Dem
Before Johnson was a corporate litigator at Thompson Coburn in Dallas, he was, of all things, a composer for the anime television show Dragon Ball Z.
Johnson, a classically trained pianist, fell into the job while looking for a way to make money as a musician, but he came to appreciate the show’s larger message the longer he worked on it.
“You have episodes that deal with a set of very different kinds of people — sometimes different species and people from other planets — but they have to work together,” he told the fan blog, Dao of Dragon Ball, in 2018. “Sometimes we find that a person who was formerly your opposition is now your ally.”
He scored 67 episodes and four movies, and then, seemingly overnight, the job market dried up as technology changes made studios less reliant on in-house composers. That sudden shift helped shape his politics, he said.
“You realize that sometimes the world just changes, and you get hit by a tidal wave,” he said. “We in government should try to make sure that people can get back on their feet and help buffer those winds of bad luck.”
That attitude eventually propelled Johnson to run for office. Senate District 16, stretching into the fast-changing Dallas suburbs, had long been represented by John Carona, an old-school Republican known for his maverick stances on gay rights and gambling. When a Tea Party wave swept through in 2014, Carona was ousted by Don Huffines, a conservative activist with a name recognizable from car dealerships around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
As Huffines’ constituent, Johnson felt the fringe, libertarian ideas he was pushing didn’t match the district’s profile. Johnson took note when Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton outperformed Republican Donald Trump in the district in 2016.
“She was not popular, so I figured if people were choosing a qualified Democrat that they didn’t necessarily like over an unqualified right-wing Republican in the presidential race, why wouldn’t they do the same thing in a Senate race?” Johnson said, explaining why he signed up to challenge Huffines knowing he would be vastly outspent.
Johnson speaks with supporters at his election watch party in Dallas on Nov. 6, 2018. Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson for The Texas Tribune
Not unlike this cycle, 2018 was a midterm year that served as a referendum on an unpopular Trump presidency and the GOP that had enabled him. Energized by former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke’s challenge of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, Democrats turned out in droves, and some moderate Republicans held their noses and crossed party lines.
Johnson ran what he described as a positive, issues-focused campaign. And he racked up a few endorsements from dismayed Republicans, including former state Sen. Bob Deuell, who said Huffines’ “lack of leadership and accomplishment” forced him, a conservative Republican, to side with Johnson despite their differences on guns and abortion.
Attorney General Bid
Johnson beat Huffines by eight points, a seismic upset in a year of big flips for Democrats. But despite the blue team’s performance, the Texas Senate remained a Republican-dominated space. Houston Sen. Carol Alvarado, who entered the Senate alongside Johnson, recalls that he was serious about getting things done and avoiding partisan flamethrowing.
“He’s worked across party lines, which if you want to get anything done at the Capitol, you have to, especially in the Senate,” she said. “He quickly demonstrated that he was willing and able to hear both sides of issues … and work with people that you’re maybe not politically aligned with.”
Most senators come to the upper chamber “House trained,” as Alvarado put it, but Johnson was brand new to legislating. His first session, he passed fewer bills than all but one of his Democratic colleagues, the Center for Effective Lawmaking found. By the end of his third session, he was vying for the top spot.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, argues a point of order on the Senate floor during a special session on July 30, 2025. Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
Over the last eight years, he has passed 134 bills focusing on water, the power grid and healthcare, with the Dallas Morning News editorial board deeming him “one of the most effective Democratic legislators in Texas.” In 2023, Middleton, now Johnson’s opponent, signed on as cosponsor of one of his bills to create stronger consumer protections for commercial genetic testing.
Johnson didn’t entirely eschew the polarized fights that animate the chamber, however, filing bills to restore abortion access and expand Medicaid, and clashing with GOP colleagues, including Middleton, on the Senate floor during debates about LGBTQ rights, redistricting and the specter of election fraud. At the Texas GOP convention earlier this year, Middleton called on some of these fights to portray Johnson as a “radical leftist.”
It was in the Senate chamber in 2023 that Johnson first began thinking about the role of attorney general. He and his 30 colleagues had been summoned back to Austin, months after the legislative session, to vote on whether Paxton should be removed from office for allegedly using the agency to benefit a donor.
After the impeachment trial, Johnson voted with the rest of the Senate Democrats to oust Paxton. Middleton was reportedly one of the GOP
