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GOP Leader Quits in Last-Minute Revolt Against Party’s Pick

“Our party needs a slap in the face,” the Republican leader said.

A Texas Republican leader has resigned after refusing to back her party’s scandal-plagued Senate nominee just days before the midterms.

Hillary Shepheard, 34, who led the Young Republicans in Tarrant County, told The Atlantic in a story published Saturday that “Ken Paxton has to lose” for the sake of the GOP’s future.

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Paxton, the state’s three-term attorney general, was impeached on corruption charges, accused of cheating on his now ex-wife, and charged with securities fraud. The fraud charges were later dropped under an agreement requiring community service and ethics training.

“Our party needs a slap in the face,” Shepheard said.

Faced with a choice between Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, Shepheard said, “I’m perfectly comfortable leaving that particular race blank.”

She also said she would cross party lines to back Democrat James Rosenthal over Republican Bo French in the Texas Railroad Commission race.

Paxton and French can’t “define the Republican Party to the outside world,” she told the Atlantic.

Bo French has made racist comments about South Asian students at the University of Texas and called for the lynching of Barack Obama.

On Saturday, Shepheard announced her resignation in a letter to the board of the Texas Young Republican Federation.

“I stand by what I said,” she wrote of her comments in The Atlantic.

Shepheard acknowledged that the group’s rules prohibit members from publicly declaring their intention to vote for a non-Republican. She said she had been unaware of the rule but fully respected it.

“Limited government, free speech, and the belief that character matters in those we elect are the reasons I got involved in the first place,” Shepheard wrote. I believe our party is strongest when it holds its candidates to those same principles, and I could not, in good conscience, set them aside for this election.”

Paxton has been unable to motivate Republicans in one of the most loyally red states. He has struggled to fill even small venues for his rallies.

Even Trump, who handpicked Paxton, has repeatedly insulted the Texas Republican.

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“Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses. And I say this, it’s so insulting to him, but I might as well say it,” Trump said on Sept. 2. “You might not... like the way he looks. You might not love his look. You might not love his television interviews.”

Trump then urged voters to vote for Paxton, only after saying the suit he was wearing “didn’t look so great.”

Talarico, meanwhile, has drawn more outspoken enthusiasm ahead of the Tuesday midterms, with polls showing him in the lead with 49 percent to Paxton’s 43 percent.

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Lauren HartleyBreaking News Intern

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