A crucial midterm contest is happening right now in Texas, one that could determine the future of the state and its influence on federal policy and national politics.

But the race I’m talking about is downstream of that: Who will succeed Ken Paxton?

The two major-party candidates vying to be attorney general are Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator from Dallas, and Mayes Middleton (“MAGA Mayes,” as his own ads call him), a Republican state senator and GOP mega-donor whose district covers parts of Harris, Brazoria, and Galveston counties. An October poll from the Texas Politics Project shows a dead heat, with Johnson at 48 percent and Middleton at 47 percent.

The Texas attorney general is a very powerful position, one that has frequently been a springboard to higher office—John Cornyn held the job before becoming a U.S. senator, as did Greg Abbott before becoming the state’s governor. The AG is meant to defend the laws of the state, and has certain specific responsibilities, such as enforcing child support and investigating Medicaid fraud. Over the past few decades, however, the role has become something more: a way for ambitious politicians to wage culture wars, cultivate a national profile by taking on right-wing causes, and shape law and policy not just in Texas but nationwide.

The attorney general “helps set legal policy across the country,” Justin Nelson, a Democrat who came within a few points of unseating Paxton in 2018, told me. The race between Talarico and Paxton may be capturing everyone’s attention right now, but “when you’re a senator, you’re one of 100,” Nelson pointed out. There’s only one attorney general of Texas.

Early in his tenure as attorney general, Paxton encouraged clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He used the office to sue the developers of a mosque and housing community north of Dallas for securities fraud; the case fueled right-wing conspiracy theories nationwide about the “Islamization of Texas.” (A state securities commissioner described the case as “horseshit”—ironically, Paxton himself was accused of securities fraud.) He wrote a memo that designated puberty blockers and other gender-affirming health care “child abuse” and that kicked off Child Protective Services investigations of parents of trans children, and most recently used the state’s consumer-protection law to target pediatricians who vaccinate children. He has threatened to investigate public schools to ensure they’re displaying the Ten Commandments. He also filed the case asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

An entire accounting of Paxton’s use of the AG’s office to further extreme conservative causes would take too long. But you get the idea. The Texas AG’s office is the “largest legal power in the conservative movement, nationally, period, end of story,” Adam Piper, who runs the Republican Attorneys General Association, told The Texas Tribune earlier this year. Ali S. Zaidi, the former director of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, told me that “simply removing a Republican” from the Texas attorney general’s office “could have enormous ripple effects across the country for, frankly, generations to come.”Paxton’s aggressive use of the office isn’t an exclusively right-wing phenomenon; Democratic AGs from California, New York, and other states have been at the forefront of litigation against President Trump’s tariffs, his environmental policies, and his attempt to repeal birthright citizenship. AGs have also pursued consumer-protection issues that the federal government mostly abandoned.

This is surely a smart pitch for such a red state, and the race is quite close for a place where Democrats haven’t won statewide office since Pulp Fiction was in theaters. Nevertheless, Texas Republicans’ objections to Paxton are less about policy and more about ethics. “I think Mayes Middleton is a stronger candidate than Ken Paxton,” Nelson said, describing Paxton as perhaps the “most corrupt public official in the country.”Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political consultant, told me that Middleton’s policy views “align with a majority of Texans.”This state has been red for three decades. Voters may be tired of Paxton’s baggage, but that doesn’t mean they’re tired of having a state attorney general who tries to move the state and the country in a conservative direction.

Whoever becomes the next attorney general, he’ll be tasked with enforcing Texas law, which includes that near ban on abortion and a series of restrictions on trans rights that frightened some families so much that they ultimately fled the state. But there’s a difference between enforcing the law and what Paxton has done, which is interpret the law so aggressively that, for example, a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal abnormality has to leave the state just to get care.

Johnson told me that Paxton’s attempt to sue doctors in New York, Delaware, and California over abortion medication that is banned in Texas was “legally ridiculous.”Texas law, he said, does not apply outside of Texas.

Johnson said he is “not opposed to immigration enforcement” but that he would sue the federal government if immigration authorities violate Texas residents’ constitutional rights. He called the law passed last year requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments unconstitutional, and said he would not strong-arm any schools who declined to follow the law “until the Supreme Court says otherwise.”He also decried Paxton’s effort to use driver’s-license data from the Department of Public Safety to create a registry of transgender Texans. Johnson’s approach, he suggested, would be to simply leave trans people alone.

“We’re talking about not abusing your power to make certain people miserable, to rally your base,” he said. “And I’m happy to say that I don’t think that kind of behavior is being rewarded politically right now in Texas.”Still, Texas has arguably gotten redder in the past six years. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016 by nine points, Biden by about six, and Harris by about 14.

Even in a midterm year with an unpopular incumbent president weighing down the GOP ticket, Democrats have a lot to overcome. Middleton also has a lot more money. In the candidates’ most recent campaign-finance reports, Johnson had taken in a little more than $1 million, whereas Middleton—the inheritor of his father’s oil-and-gas company—had almost $3.5 million in contributions. That money could make a big difference, especially since neither candidate has much name recognition.

In the Texas Politics Project poll, 40 percent of voters had no opinion of Middleton, and 48 percent had no opinion of Johnson.

But Zaidi told me that Johnson, being part of the class-of-2018 Democrats who entered office during Trump’s first term, was well equipped to compete in Texas. These officials know how to take on big “policy fights, but in a way that’s not a turnoff for the median voter,” Zaidi said, pointing to Johnson’s work trying to expand Medicaid in Texas—a popular policy but one that Republican state lawmakers have blocked.

The AG race—and those of other state offices—may be decided by the top of the ticket. Johnson, Nelson said, will “rise or fall depending on how well” Talarico and the Democratic candidate for governor, Gina Hinojosa, do. “I think Nathan is well positioned to ride a wave. He’s got his surfboard out.”

If Middleton triumphs, he seems intent on continuing Abbott’s and Cornyn’s legacies. Middleton has said that “there’s no such thing as separation of church and state,” and that “one of the most important things here is backing up President Trump and his border security and deportation agenda.”A recent campaign ad boasts of Middleton’s support of the state’s bathroom bill, “Mayes Middleton: kicking perverted men out of women’s restrooms and locker rooms.”This seems to be a subject of particular importance to Middleton, who recently told an audience that Johnson will “fight to get men in your little girl’s restroom and locker room.”

Nelson believes that, after 30 years of Republican control, Texans are getting tired of these culture wars. They hear Republicans talking about trans people in bathrooms, and they’re “like, Yeah, cool, man, but why is cereal eight bucks and I don’t know if my kid’s gonna have a job?”The GOP thinks Texans are looking for an ethical conservative who will pursue the same causes as Paxton, and the Dems are betting on widespread fatigue not just with Paxton personally, but with conservative culture-war politics. These visions may be miles apart politically, but as far as the polls are concerned, for now, they’re neck and neck.