'Heaviest vote you will ever cast': Why Rep. Jeff Leach urged senators to oust Ken Paxton

State Rep. Jeff Leach didn't hold back Friday when he talked about his affection for the embattled Texas attorney general, whose political career and personal reputation were hanging by a thin and frayed string on the floor of the Texas Senate, as Ken Paxton's defense team and the prosecutors seeking to impeach him laid out their closing arguments.

"I have loved Ken Paxton for a long time," said Leach, a Republican from a suburban North Texas district whose career in politics mirrored Paxton's before the latter ran for statewide office nine years ago. "We've traveled together, attended church together."

Paxton, Leach said, had mentored him when he was a freshman House member. It was Paxton who carried the Senate version of the only bill that Leach would pass in his first legislative session in 2013. And it was Paxton, Leach said, who must be banished from his post as the state's top elected lawyer for misusing the office that voters of Texas had thrice elected him to hold.

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"This will, if you're like me, be the hardest, the most difficult, the heaviest vote that you will ever cast in your time in the Legislature," Leach said, most likely talking from his own experience as one of the House members who made the case in the lower chamber to charge Paxton with offenses ranging from constitutional bribery and disregarding his official duties to firing the once-trusted aides who had warned him he was straying outside of legal bounds.

Leach spoke after Paxton defense lawyer Tony Buzbee of Houston delivered a fiery account of what he called baseless allegations that resulted in the first-ever impeachment of a Texas attorney general and the first impeachment of a statewide officeholder in 106 years.

Buzbee called the House's case "much ado about nothing."

Buzbee says the only reason the managers brought up Laura Olson, the woman with whom Paxton reportedly had an affair, is "because they want to shame people. They want to be morally superior." If marital infidelity is impeachable, he said, "Line up, we're going to be doing a lot of impeachment in this city. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

"When the house Board of Managers brought this case, they made an assumption. They assumed that this man would quit," Buzbee said. "They assumed that this man would run and hide."

Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, one of the House impeachment managers, told senators that Paxton's defense lawyers "have blindly ignored the fact that he ultimately served one person: himself.”

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In response to warnings from his then-top aides turned whistleblowers, Murr, who led the House team who investigated Paxton, said, "Mr. Paxton's response was swift, vicious and wrong."

In his final remarks, Leach implored the senators to consider their vote carefully.

"The people of Texas deserve answers," Leach said.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Texas lawmaker urged senators to oust Ken Paxton at impeachment trial