Mitch Little, an attorney who successfully represented embattled Texas Attorney General Paxton during his impeachment trial, is running for the House seat currently occupied by a Republican for whom Little once served as campaign treasurer.
The race for Texas House District 65, which stretches from the northern suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth and includes southern Denton County, is one of the more intriguing primaries during what has become an internecine power struggle in the Texas Republican Party between House Speaker Dade Phelan’s backers and supporters of Paxton. That is because Little was perhaps Paxton’s most effective lawyer, whom many credit with drawing out the witness testimony that may have led to Paxton’s acquittal during the Senate impeachment trial.
There is also the added twist that Little once worked for the campaign of his opponent, two-term Rep. Kronda Thimesch (R-Lewisville), before he resigned over her vote to impeach Paxton.
Little is a native Texan who attended Harvard University, where he played football, before coming home to obtain a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives with his wife and three children in Lewisville and is a partner at a law firm with multiple offices in North Texas.
Aside from challenging what he considers to be Phelan’s disastrous leadership, his platform includes opposing the appointment of Democrats to chair committees, reducing property taxes to help make home ownership affordable, and staunchly defending the Second Amendment. Little does not believe that Thimesch is “conservative” enough for the 65th, as he told The Cross Timbers Gazette.
“My opponent campaigns like a Republican but votes like a Democrat,” he said.
Earlier this month, Little and Thimesch participated in a candidate forum put on by the Flower Mound Area Republican Club, where they each presented their reasons why voters should choose them and answered questions about their campaigns.
Thimesch touted her portfolio of legislative activity, claiming that she shepherded 15 bills out of the House, eight of which became law.
Little, when given the chance to elaborate on his platform, made no secret that a vote for him was a vote against Phelan. Invoking biblical imagery, Little — who has served as a church elder at the same house of worship that counts Thimesch as a congregant — told the audience that he is running “to pay a price for you that you are not able to pay.”
What he meant, he explained, is that he will face down Democratic efforts to influence the legislative process, including by blocking their appointment to committee chairmanships, a key objective of his.
He noted that when some House Republicans did try to limit Democrat appointments, they “could only find seven representatives who would not bow the knee to Dade Phelan for fear of retaliation that he would put them on a committee in charge of nothing and totally neutralize them in the House.”
“Does anyone here think that a Democrat should be in charge of civil jurisprudence or criminal jurisprudence in this state? Of youth health and safety? Of county affairs? We’re in Denton County. The County Affairs Committee is headed by a Democrat,” he told the audience.
“And who do we have to thank for that? Dade Phelan, who supported him and all the people who still support him,” he said, gesturing towards Thimesch.
Little also spoke about another legislative priority of his: to ban Chinese state ownership of land in Texas.
“Priority number one is the most diabolical thing that we have going in Texas, from my perspective,” he said. “The Chinese Communist Party owns 140,000 acres in Val Verde County up against Lofland Airforce Base. And that’s not all they own. What we should be doing in Texas is divesting the Chinese Communist Party of real estate in this state forever.”
Little emphasized the “macro” issues he’s concerned with, such as border security, property taxes, inflation, and the economy that affect the whole state. He also described his vision of building “a red castle in [Denton] County” that would prevent Democrats from ever getting close to the levers of power there again.
He also touted his plan to go back to paper ballots to safeguard future elections from the fraud that allegedly occurred around the county during the 2020 election cycle.
In line with his support of Paxton, Little remarked that voter fraud could have been handled by Paxton, whom he called “the people’s champion,” had the legislature passed a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the attorney general to investigate and prosecute such election fraud. He then noted that instead of working to give the attorney general that power, Thimesch voted to impeach Paxton.
“He had 900 cases at the time the Court of Criminal Appeals took it away from him,” Little informed the audience. “And where do those cases go to die? Soros backed DA’s.”
The Dallas Express spoke with Little about his bid to replace Thimesch. He explained how Phelan’s practice of giving important chair positions to Democrats has been how he has been able to maintain his position as speaker.
“The reason we have Democrat chairs is not because of some House rule. It’s not because of tradition. It’s because the speaker consolidates his power behind the force of every Democrat in the Texas House,” he claimed. “So the grand bargain here is that the Democrats have more influence in the House under Speaker Phelan than they would under an alternative speaker.”
“When you stop and appreciate that he was brought into power by the Democrat voting block plus some number of supportive Republicans, you start to understand that there are favors owed,” he said. “The system that we have created is broken. It prevents Republican legislative priorities from advancing.”
Little told DX that the Paxton impeachment was about an establishment reacting to a law enforcement officer who threatened to end what he refers to as an entrenched system of “crony capitalism.”
“General Paxton’s going to work every day. He’s fighting Big Pharma. He’s fighting Big Tech. He’s fighting the Biden administration. And there are very significant moneyed interests in the state of Texas that are not okay with that level of disruption that he creates. And they will by any means necessary try to diminish or remove him,” he said.
As to why primary voters should choose him over Thimesch, Little claimed, “[Thimesch] doesn’t have the boldness or courage that’s necessary to stand up against the things that we as a party and a state need to stand up against. She’s not a leader. She’s a follower. We need someone who is going to bring Republican legislative priorities forward rather than waiting and being told what to do by the speaker and special interests.”
“I consider myself to be a reformer,” Little said before arguing that the wing of the party that succumbs to crony capitalist priorities does so because it suffers from a “fundamental crisis of belief among the moneyed interest of the Republican Party.”
Little explained why it is important not to give in to that cynicism, stating, “The Bible tells us not to grow weary of doing good, and I’m a firm believer in that. This is a hard fight. It’s going to continue to be a hard fight. It will not be over in March. It will not be over in November. It’s a fight that we have to bring to our district and to our state.”