Texas' Ken Paxton somehow gets even sleazier

His cell-tower company won a prime spot at a Frisco hospital in 2006 while he sat on its board.

Ken Paxton on CNN

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate whose career has accumulated enough corruption allegations to require its own filing cabinet, has yet another interesting financial arrangement to explain.

The New York Times reports that Paxton co-founded a cell-tower company, Premier Vertical Properties, in 2005. Less than a year later, the fledgling company landed a remarkably valuable location: the grounds of Centennial Medical Center in Frisco, Texas, where Paxton just happened to serve on the board of directors from 2003 to 2013.

Industry experts expressed surprise that a cell tower in a prime spot — near a highway and a hospital in a busy area — would be snapped up by a cell tower company like Mr. Paxton's, which had been created only the year before, and not by a larger, more established firm.

"It's basically like the guy that steps to bat and hits a home run off one swing," said Hugh Odom, who runs a cell tower consulting firm that exclusively represents landowners.

There's no available evidence that Paxton voted on the hospital's agreement with his company or participated in the negotiations. Conveniently, the original terms of the deal aren't available, and the hospital's current owners say they don't have records from that era. But industry experts claim a hospital board would ordinarily have to review and approve a land lease for a cell tower.

Paxton's campaign dismissed the reporting as digging through ancient paperwork for "a story that does not exist."

The tower does exist. So does the money.