Texas Tribune / Brett Buchanan
Tim Dunn speaks throughout The Texas Tribune Competition on Sept. 24, 2016.
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West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks entered the 2024 main election cycle wounded.
Their political community was in the course of a scandal over its ties to white supremacists. Republicans have been calling on one another to reject the billionaires’ marketing campaign cash. And their enemies believed they have been susceptible — one unhealthy election day from shedding their grip on the state.
As an alternative, Dunn and Wilks emerged from Tuesday maybe stronger than ever — vanquishing previous political foes, positioning their allies for a November takeover of the state Legislature, and leaving little doubt as to who’s profitable a vicious civil battle to regulate the state social gathering.
In race after race, extra average conservative incumbents have been trounced by candidates backed by Dunn and Wilks. Their political community made good on its vows for vengeance towards Home Republicans who voted to question their key state ally, Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton, advancing extra firebrands who campaigned towards bipartisanship and backed anti-LGBTQ+ insurance policies. Tuesday’s election additionally paved the best way for the seemingly passage of laws that will permit taxpayer cash to fund non-public and non secular faculties — a key coverage objective for a motion that seeks to infuse extra Christianity into public life.
All instructed, 11 of the 28 Home candidates supported by the 2 billionaires received their primaries outright, and one other eight are headed to runoffs this Could. And, in an indication of how a lot the state social gathering has moved rightward, 5 of their candidates beat incumbents in rematches from 2022 or 2020 — with some Home districts swinging by double-digits of their favor. Of the candidates they backed, they donated $75,000 or extra to 11 of them — six who received, and 4 who went to runoffs.
Tuesday was a stark distinction from simply two years in the past, when Dunn and Wilks’ high political fundraising group poured $5.2 million into a number of longshot candidates — way more than what they spent within the present election cycle. They misplaced badly that yr — 18 of the 19 challengers to Texas Home members they backed have been defeated. Their solely profitable Home candidate that yr was Stan Kitzman of Pattison, who toppled former Rep. Phil Stephenson of Wharton in a runoff.
Among the many triumphant on Tuesday was Mitch Little, aided by not less than $153,000 in Dunn and Wilks money, who defeated Rep. Kronda Thimesch in a marketing campaign that targeted on Little’s protection of Paxton from impeachment expenses within the Senate trial final summer season. Three days earlier than he received, Little appeared at an occasion in Denton County with Paxton and, amongst others, Steve Bannon, the political operative who helped rally the far proper behind then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
And one other Dunn and Wilks candidate, David Covey, shocked the state by profitable extra votes than Home Speaker Dade Phelan — the No. 1 goal of the state’s far-right partially due to his position within the Paxton impeachment and refusal to ban Democrats from Home management positions. Phelan now faces a runoff from Covey and the prospect of being the primary Texas Speaker since 1972 to lose his main.
Actually, Tuesday’s dark-red wave can’t be attributed solely to Dunn and Wilks. Texas GOP primaries have traditionally been determined by small shares of voters, lots of them additional to the precise of even the social gathering’s mainstream. This election cycle, the billionaires’ targets additionally overlapped with an unlikely ally, Gov. Greg Abbott, who poured greater than $6 million into his quest to rid the Texas Home of Republicans who defied his calls for college voucher laws final yr. (Dunn and Wilks’ political teams supported Abbott’s opponent in his 2022 gubernatorial main.)
In the meantime, Paxton barnstormed the state as he sought retribution towards incumbents who supported his impeachment. And, maybe most significantly, former President Donald Trump was energetic in lots of contests — following the lead of Paxton and his different ally, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and providing late endorsements that bolstered right-wing candidates.
Even so, the billionaires’ fingerprints seem everywhere in the outcomes. Since January, they spent greater than $3 million to assist candidates by means of a brand new political motion committee, Texans United For a Conservative Majority. That PAC is a rebrand of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which has been on the middle of a political maelstrom since early October.
That controversy began barely two weeks after the state Senate acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial — and as Defend Texas Liberty was gearing up for retribution within the primaries.
Jonathan Stickland, then the president of Defend Texas Liberty, was caught internet hosting Nick Fuentes, a outstanding antisemite and white supremacist, prompting Dunn to difficulty a uncommon public assertion by means of the lieutenant governor. Stickland was quietly faraway from his place with the PAC.
Subsequent reporting by The Texas Tribune revealed different ties between white supremacists and teams funded by Dunn and Wilks, prompting outcry from some Republicans and requires the Texas GOP to distance itself from Stickland’s teams.
As votes continued to tally within the far proper’s favor this week, Stickland returned from a post-scandal social media sabbatical to brag.
“We warned them,” Stickland wrote Wednesday on X, one of many handful of posts he’s made since shrinking from the general public eye after the Fuentes assembly. “They selected to not pay attention. Now many are gone.”
Dunn and Wilks each made their fortunes in West Texas oil and, within the final 15 years, have poured greater than $100 million right into a constellation of political motion committees, darkish cash teams, nonprofits and media web sites that they’ve used to push the state GOP additional to the precise.
Their technique has been to incrementally transfer the social gathering towards their hardline views by portray fellow conservatives as weak and ineffectual — as “RINOs,” or Republicans in title solely — and promising well-funded main challengers to lawmakers who defy their community and its goals. With virtually countless wealth, they’ve poured hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into inexperienced candidates who usually lose however advance the far proper’s long-term objectives by slowly normalizing once-fringe positions, bruising incumbents, depleting their marketing campaign coffers and making them extra susceptible within the subsequent election cycle.
For years, many Republicans have denounced the technique, noting that the state Legislature is routinely ranked as essentially the most conservative within the nation and warning that Dunn and Wilks’ no-enemies-to-our-right strategy to politics would ultimately price the social gathering elections and open the doorways to outright extremists.
This yr’s elections present simply how profitable the billionaires have been in pulling the social gathering towards their hardline views.
In Home District 62, Shelley Luther, a former hair salon proprietor who rose to fame after being jailed for defying COVID-19 lockdown measures, beat Republican Rep. Reggie Smith by 7 share factors — a shocking, 24-point swing from the 2022 main. Luther has run for workplace twice and misplaced. In her final run, she stated that she was not comfy with transgender kids and complained that college students shouldn’t be punished for making enjoyable of them. She acquired greater than $183,000 in assist from Texans United For a Conservative Majority this cycle.
Rep. Lynn Stucky, R-Denton, is headed to a Could runoff towards Andy Hopper, who acquired not less than $280,000 in assist from Dunn and Wilks this yr. It’s the second time they’ve squared off — Stucky narrowly defeated Hopper in 2022. Hopper and his household have shut ties to Dunn and Wilks: Considered one of his sons, Sam, works for a consulting agency that’s owned by Stickland and rebranded after the Fuentes scandal.
In the meantime, Brent Cash prevailed in his rematch towards Rep. Jill Dutton after shedding to her in a January particular election to interchange Bryan Slaton, a former state consultant whose profession was bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks till he was unanimously expelled from the Home final yr for having intercourse with a drunk, 19-year-old aide. (One other Dunn and Wilks-backed candidate, Kyle Biedermann, misplaced on Tuesday to Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Austin, after defending Slaton final month — however nonetheless acquired 43% of votes).
In Home District 53, the Dunn and Wilks-backed Wesley Virdell, a gun rights lobbyist, received 60% of votes in his race to interchange Rep. Andew Murr, a Junction Republican who retired final yr after main the Home’s failed impeachment of Paxton — and as Dunn and Wilks teams promised revenge. Two years prior, Murr trounced Virdell within the GOP main. Virdell and Covey, the challenger to Phelan, have each signed a pledge to assist a referendum on Texas secession.
Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, was soundly defeated by Matt Morgan, who was backed by Paxton and acquired greater than $75,000 in assist from Texans United For A Conservative Majority this cycle. Morgan received by 15 factors — a reversal from 2020, when he misplaced by 5 factors to Jetton.
And in Home District 60, Rep. Glenn Rogers misplaced Tuesday by greater than 27 factors in one other rematch. His opponent, Mike Olcott, misplaced to Rogers by 1 level in a 2022 runoff regardless of assist from Wilks and Dunn. Backed this time by the billionaires and Abbott, Olcott walloped Rogers — an outspoken enemy of the state’s far proper.
Rogers made no secret of who he blamed for his loss, accusing Abbott of telling “blatant lies” as a part of his $6 million spending spree towards Home members who broke with him on faculty voucher laws final yr.
However the bulk of Rogers’ ire was reserved for Dunn and Wilks — the “two billionaire, ‘Christian’ nationalist energy brokers that run this state.”
“Historical past will show that our present state authorities is essentially the most corrupt ever and is ‘purchased’ by a couple of radical dominionist billionaires in search of to destroy public training, privatize our public faculties and create a Theocracy that’s each un-American and un-Texan,” Rogers wrote in a Wednesday op-ed within the Weatherford Democrat. “Could God save Texas!”
This text initially appeared within the Texas Tribune.
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