Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to appoint former state Rep. Nate Schatzline as a senior adviser on election policy says as much about the direction of Texas Republican politics as it does about the state’s lack of seriousness about free and fair elections.
Schatzline last week joined Abbott’s office, where he’ll work on what the governor describes as “election integrity” policy.
The appointment drops one of the Legislature’s most outspoken far-right culture warriors as well as an outspoken Christian Nationalist into a position that’s likely to play a major role in shaping future election legislation.
During his time in the Texas House, Schatzline built a reputation as a partisan bomb thrower who showed only marginal interest in crafting serious legislation. Among his greatest hits: referring to Islam as a “death cult” poised to take over the United States and bragging during the middle of Texas’ most recent measles outbreak that his kids’ school has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state.
Schatzline’s divisive rhetoric matters because election administration depends on public confidence that the laws treat everyone equally and aren’t being crafted as part of an ideological crusade. This joker’s political brand has been the opposite: he’s an attention-grabbing showboater who’s repeatedly sought to inject himself into Texas’ most polarizing cultural fights.
It’s hard to see the appointment representing anything other than Abbott’s continued embrace of the most extreme fringe of the state GOP and his continued push to marginalize the voting power of Texans who don’t share his increasingly unpopular agenda.
Schatzline has been featured in this column multiple times for his outlandish claims and behavior. Looks like it takes an assclown to fully embrace an assclown.
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