I am oddly fascinated by this.
A Republican candidate for Texas Senate who is backed by top state leaders is fighting a multifront legal battle against primary opponents who want to remove him from the ballot over residency questions.
The latest twist came Monday in a Denton County district courtroom, where one of Brent Hagenbuch’s rivals, Carrie de Moor, was set to argue that he lied about his residency to run for office. But before the hearing could begin, one of her lawyers asked Judge Lee Gabriel to postpone it because he just learned of a new and curious claim by Hagenbuch.
In a filing hours earlier, the candidate said he was subleasing a “corporate apartment” for $1 quarterly in the office building that he listed as his residence when he filed to run. He “slept there, showered there, ate there and lived there,” the filing said.
Gabriel was upset with the last-minute filing by Hagenbuch but agreed to push back the hearing until Jan. 19.
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Hagenbuch’s primary competitors include de Moor, a Frisco emergency room physician who has the support of Attorney General Ken Paxton. There is also Jace Yarbrough, a conservative activist-attorney from Denton County, and Cody Clark, a former Denton police officer.
De Moor has filed the Denton County lawsuit, while Yarbrough is asking the Fort Worth-based Second Court of Appeals to intervene. The court gave Hagenbuch a Monday deadline to respond. Clark, meanwhile, has asked the Texas Rangers to investigate Hagenbuch.
Their efforts have proven unsuccessful so far, and Hagenbuch’s campaign has celebrated each delay. After the aborted hearing Monday, Hagenbuch spokesperson Allen Blakemore told reporters there that Hagenbuch’s opponents were “all following the playbook that Democrats are using against Donald Trump.”
“They fear the candidate,” Blakemore said, “so they’re trying to knock him off the ballot.”
Speaking separately with reporters, de Moor said: “I’m not afraid of [Hagenbuch]. He’s just not eligible.”
In a court filing, Hagenbuch said he was too busy to attend the hearing because he was campaigning elsewhere with Springer.
Under the Texas Constitution, candidates for legislative office have to reside in the district they are seeking to represent for at least a year before the election. That means that candidates for Senate District 30 would have had to live there since Nov. 5, 2023.
When Hagenbuch filed for the seat, he listed his address as an office building inside the district in Denton. It is the same building where his transportation company, Titus Transport, is a tenant. He said he had lived in the district for one and a half months at that point.
His opponents argue a host of public records undercut that claim. They say property, tax and voter registration records indicate that he lived outside the district — in neighboring Senate District 12 — as of Nov. 5.
In the new filing, Hagenbuch’s lawyers argued he established residency at the office building address by signing a “corporate apartment sublease” there on Oct. 2. The subleasor is listed as “NEAT,” which appears to match the name of Titus Transport’s parent company, NEAT Enterprises. The agreement says the term of the sublease is “indefinite” and Hagenbuch owes $1 in rent per quarter.
Asked why Hagenbuch would want to live in the office building, Blakemore told reporters it had to do with “family issues” that he has discussed on the campaign trail. His daughter moved into the family house after her husband died and ended up staying longer than expected, and Hagenbuch was looking for “breathing room.”
Hagenbuch has since moved into an apartment across the street from the office building, according to the new court filing.
Gabriel, the judge, was not pleased with the revelation of the corporate apartment sublease. She said she was “at a complete loss as to why” it was just disclosed Monday morning. A Hagenbuch lawyer, Andy Taylor, told her the timing of the disclosure was “not strategic,” just a result of his heavy workload.
De Moor’s side told the judge they needed time to “vet” the new filing but sounded deeply skeptical while speaking with reporters afterward.
“A guy shows up in court with a $1 lease that, if it’s true, would solve all of these problems for him, and it just magically shows up at the last minute?” de Moor lawyer Jack Stick said.
There’s no one to root for in this story, and no angle that could lead to some kind of Democratic advantage as far as I can see. My sole interest in this case is that it’s a residency dispute, which might offer the chance to clarify (or not) our famously lax and convoluted standards for what qualifies as a “residence” for electoral purposes. The “corporate sublease” in this story is reminiscent of Dave Wilson and his warehouse and is as ridiculous on its face as that was, but as we know Wilson prevailed in court and again on appeal. Given that, I’d bet on Hagenbuch and the inability of anyone I’ve seen so far to define “residency” to the point where one can say with confidence that a given candidate fails to meet it. But this is a different time and a different place, and the thing about an ephemeral standard is that one can see whatever one wants in it. This is another opportunity for a judge to do that, and I’m very interested in what they see.
How many Houston politicians did this… MJ Khan and Al Hoang come to mind, no one really seems to care, least of all, the ethics commission.
I had always thought about just living at work, going to eat and restaurants, or with family and friends, and maybe getting a membership at a gym so that I could shower. Then sleeping under my desk. I mean a mortgage or rent is a huge expense, as well as utilities, and you’re at work most of the time anyway. Plus commuting is another expense. Mostly you’re working just to keep working and having a home that is just a large storage space.
I haven’t heard the name Jack Stick in some time. I had to look up why I even remembered the name; he lost a Travis County state House seat 20 years ago after winning one term through the 2001 gerrymander. I guess Republican politicians never really go away…
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