Cecilia Castellano is running in Texas House District 80, a recently reshaped electoral division that reaches in a jagged diagonal southwest from San Antonio to the border with Mexico.Nathan VanderKlippe/The Globe and Mail
Cecilia Castellano was still in bed when the two agents rang her doorbell at 6 a.m. The men said they were with the office of the Texas Attorney-General, and they had a search warrant.
Ms. Castellano has no criminal record. When she asked the agents why they had come, they told her: “We don’t know, ma’am. We’re just here to get your phone.”
Ms. Castellano, a Hispanic Democrat running for a key seat in the Texas state House of Representatives, was not the only one who woke up to authorities at their door in late August. Nine men with assault rifles and riot shields showed up at the house of the man who printed her campaign posters. A dozen came to the home of Manuel Medina, who has consulted for her campaign.
The raids were part of what the Texas Attorney-General called an investigation into allegations of voter fraud. But Democrats and lawyers in the state say it forms part of a pattern of investigations in which the resources of the state have been directed toward Hispanic Democrats, often at critical moments in election campaigns. Critics call it voter intimidation through law enforcement.
Ms. Castellano is running in Texas House District 80, a recently reshaped electoral division that reaches in a jagged diagonal southwest from San Antonio to the border with Mexico. It has been held for 28 years by a Democrat, Tracy King, who is not running for re-election, placing the seat into contention at a time when Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has struggled to muster the votes to pass school-voucher legislation.
House District 80 includes Uvalde, where a former student killed 21 at an elementary school in 2022. Republicans see that tragedy as an argument for vouchers, which would give families choice in where to send their children to school. But critics say the move would weaken public education.
Victory for Ms. Castellano would make the voucher push more difficult by tilting the electoral math against the governor.
Ms. Castellano believes that’s the reason she has been swept up in a flurry of trouble. Earlier this summer, her family construction business was threatened with a lawsuit by Guardian House, a non-profit that has received financial donations from the offices of the Texas Governor and Attorney-General. More than 20 public records requests have poured in demanding information about work the company has done. The Texas Workforce Commission has asked for documents, saying it is conducting an audit.
“How can I not think that this is political?” Ms. Castellano said. “How can I not think they’re trying to literally bury me?”
The Texas Attorney-General’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Affidavits filed in connection with the voter-fraud investigation describe evidence of a “vote harvesting” operation in which campaign workers were paid to collect applications for mail-in ballots, drive people to vote and improperly help voters fill in the ballot themselves. They also say a recorded conversation shows Mr. Medina agreeing to pay for such services on behalf of Ms. Castellano. None of the allegations have been proven in court.
The allegations in the vote harvesting case primarily concern events that occurred in 2022. Ms. Castellano did not become a candidate until the following year.
The perception that Texas Republicans are using the state to further their interests has bred deep skepticism among Democrats in the state. For example, the dispute between Ms. Castellano’s construction company and Guardian House.
Ricardo Cedillo, a San Antonio lawyer acting for the non-profit, said that dispute is based solely on failures by Ms. Castellano’s company to deliver a construction project on time and on budget. “She assumes her political enemies are supporting or financing this refusal to accept the losses she has caused, and which continue,” Mr. Cedillo said. “She’s wrong.”
Democrats say the bigger issue lies in the investigations overseen by Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump. The former president’s drumbeat of election-fraud allegations, including in the 2020 vote that he lost, have spread widely in conservative circles.
“It’s a tremendously popular issue on the conservative side of the world right now,” said Mr. King, whose seat Ms. Castellano is fighting to maintain.
That gives Mr. Paxton an incentive to pursue any such allegation, Mr. King said.
“But I think he’s going to concentrate on the ones where they have an opportunity to help his party more.”
In August, Mr. Paxton launched an e-mail tip line, saying “any attempt to illegally cancel out legal ballots with fraud, vote harvesting, or other methods will be met with the full force of the law.”
Mr. Paxton has said his office has opened about 900 election-related cases.
Lawyers in Texas, however, say very few have gone to trial. Fewer still have resulted in convictions.
“None of this is ever done to actually try to get a conviction or anything,” said Stuart Clegg, a Democratic operative who was caught up in one such investigation.
“On the one hand, they’re using the levers of state power in a manner which they’re entitled to do. But on the other hand, they’re doing it for evil purposes.”
In 2018, agents came to Mr. Clegg’s home and, failing to find him there, questioned his 16-year-old son about his election-related activities. It was part of an investigation that led to the arrests of four campaign workers in the Fort Worth area, who were accused of participating in an “organized voter fraud ring.” Investigators obtained a warrant to draw blood for a DNA sample from one of those arrested, which they compared with saliva residue on envelopes used to mail in ballots.
But none of the allegations led to any convictions. A Texas court dismissed the entire case last year.
Greg Westfall, a criminal defence and civil-rights lawyer who has represented three Hispanic Texans accused of voting or campaign fraud, including one of the four arrested around Fort Worth, likened those investigations to historical efforts to keep minority voters from casting ballots in the U.S.
In some instances, Mr. Paxton’s cases have been announced in close proximity to voting dates. Investigations have occasionally been ham-handed, with English-speaking agents struggling to ask questions of Spanish-speaking subjects.
“It’s like a mixture between the Proud Boys and the Keystone Cops,” Mr. Westfall said.
The consequences are nonetheless real. Those accused of wrongdoing have lost jobs and income.
Mr. Medina, the campaign consultant for Ms. Castellano, had to buy a new door, after his was broken in two during the raid. Agents took away dozens of phones and computers.
Ms. Castellano, for her part, said she has been overwhelmed by the allegations against her and her company.
“I’m not sure if I live in Texas, United States – or if I live in a third-world country where they can just do whatever they want to me. Because that’s what it seems like.”