Pleading for Paxton; New York fraud fury; Scalia’s Federalist Society links

Pleading for Paxton

Some Republicans running for Congress in Texas this year say their party will see better turnout if Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, wins the Senate nomination.

The battle between Mr. Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn has been the biggest show of the primary season, with the incumbent coming in a surprising first place on Tuesday. The two men head to a runoff in May.

“Seen, Heard & Whispered” has learned of at least two Republicans running for U.S. House seats who think Mr. Paxton would drive their base voters to turn out more than Mr. Cornyn in November.

A state GOP consultant said Mr. Paxton has some unique crossover appeal to pro-organic parents, often Democrats, who are skeptical of the pharmaceutical and food industries.

A few crunchy influencers, while not endorsing, have shared Mr. Paxton’s work on removing artificial dyes from food and investigating COVID-19 vaccines on their social media accounts.

Democrats on Tuesday picked state Rep. James Talarico, who bested U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in a race that saw extraordinary enthusiasm. Even though the state trends red, more than 238,000 Democrats cast ballots in their primary than GOP voters did.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, says Mr. Cornyn, a 24-year Capitol Hill veteran, is a safer match-up against Mr. Talarico than Mr. Paxton, who is more polarizing.

The political prognosticators at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics agree. They said as long as Mr. Cornyn remains a viable option, they rate the race as a “likely Republican” victory.

President Trump this week said he’s looking to head off months of divisive campaigning. He said when he makes an endorsement, the other candidate should drop out.

“We have an easy-to-beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively!” the president wrote on social media.

Mr. Paxton said he’ll drop out if the Senate can find a way to pass a federal voter ID measure that has been stalled for weeks.

New York fraud fury

New York could be the next state to face the Justice Department’s legal fury over rampant fraud, “Seen, Heard & Whispered” has learned.

Julian Hagmann, the chief operating officer at Caring Professionals Inc., said he expects federal lawyers to soon file a complaint challenging the state’s deal with a single firm to oversee the state’s home care program under Medicaid.

“It’s massive Medicaid fraud,” Mr. Hagmann, whose firm offers home care aides in New York, told “Seen, Heard & Whispered.”

He’s been a prominent critic of the state’s new setup, which saw Gov. Kathy Hochul move from paying hundreds of home care firms to the single company, Public Partnerships LLC.

Newly released emails suggest Ms. Hochul’s office was working with PPL weeks before the state Legislature authorized the solicitation of bids. The governor’s office and the firm previously denied any concrete conversations took place.

Spokespeople from PPL and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. 

Specifically, the forthcoming DOJ lawsuit is said to allege three causes of action against Public Partnerships LLC: consumer protection, Medicaid fraud and procurement fraud.

In his State of the Union address last month, Mr. Trump declared a “war on fraud.”

Minnesota was the first to face pain, with Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, saying he’s halting more than $250 million in Medicaid reimbursement payments to the state until it comes up with an anti-fraud plan.

Dr. Oz said this week that he’s probing New York’s $124 billion Medicaid program. He gave the state 30 days to detail its fraud-fighting efforts.

He said the state is spending more than $12,000 per Medicaid beneficiary, which is 36% higher than the national average.

“The numbers coming out of New York’s Medicaid program don’t add up,” he said in a video announcing the review.

Scalia’s Federalist links were a skunk at court

Veteran journalist James Rosen, who just released the second in his trilogy biography series of Justice Antonin Scalia, said when he first arrived at the Supreme Court, the high court newcomer was greeted with disgust by fellow Justice Harry Blackmun.

In particular, Blackmun was dismissive of Scalia’s ties to the Federalist Society, a group that attracted conservative and libertarian legal minds to debate the big issues of the day.

Mr. Rosen, in researching his new volume, “Scalia: Supreme Court Years, 1986 to 2001,” said Blackmun had his clerks mark “Federalist Society” next to names tied to Scalia’s staff.

“Like it was some sort of scarlet letter, calling them stupid and such,” Mr. Rosen said.

Mr. Rosen even said the Blackmun team referred to Scalia’s clerks as “fascists.”

Blackmun, appointed by President Richard Nixon, planted himself firmly on the court’s liberal wing, including authoring the majority opinion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found a right to abortion in the Constitution. The Supreme Court would repudiate that ruling in 2022.

Scalia, appointed by President Reagan, served on the court until his death in 2016, becoming a star for conservatives and a must-read for court watchers of all political persuasions.

• Seen, Heard & Whispered is a weekly column taking you inside the conversations happening in Washington’s power corridors, the moves being made and the whispers that explain what’s really going on in the nation’s capital. Email tips to whispered@washingtontimes.com. Click here to receive this in your inbox every Friday morning.