How two Texas megadonors have turbocharged the state’s far-right shift

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How two Texas megadonors have turbocharged the state’s far-right shift

This is Texas now: While the Lone Star State has lengthy been a bastion of Republican politics, new legal guidelines and insurance policies have taken Texas additional to the proper lately than it has been in a long time.

Elected officers and political observers in the state say a significant factor in the transformation might be traced again to West Texas. Two billionaire oil and fracking magnates from the area, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, have quietly bankrolled a few of Texas’ most far-right political candidates — serving to reshape the state’s Republican Party of their worldview.

Over the final decade, Dunn and his spouse, Terri, have contributed greater than $18 million to state candidates and political motion committees, whereas Wilks and his spouse, Jo Ann, have given greater than $11 million, placing them amongst the high donors in the state.

The beneficiaries of the power tycoons’ mixed spending embrace the farthest-right members of the legislature and authors of the most high-profile conservative payments handed lately, in line with a CNN evaluation of Texas Ethics Commission information. Dunn and Wilks additionally maintain sway over the state’s legislative agenda by way of a community of non-profits and advocacy teams that push conservative coverage points.

Critics, and even some former associates, say that Dunn and Wilks demand loyalty from the candidates they again, punishing even deeply conservative legislators who cross them by bankrolling major challengers. Kel Seliger, a longtime Republican state senator from Amarillo who has clashed with the billionaires, mentioned their affect has made Austin really feel somewhat like Moscow.

“It is a Russian-style oligarchy, pure and simple,” Seliger mentioned. “Really, really wealthy people who are willing to spend a lot of money to get policy made the way they want it — and they get it.”

Dragged to the ‘laborious proper’

Dunn and Wilks didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark. In previous interviews and opinion pieces, Dunn has argued that his political spending is concentrated on making Texas’ state authorities extra accountable to its voters, whereas Wilks has described his donations as aimed toward electing principled conservative leaders.

Former associates of Dunn and Wilks who spoke to CNN mentioned the billionaires are each particularly targeted on schooling points, and their final aim is to switch public schooling with non-public, Christian education. Wilks is a pastor at the church his father based, and Dunn preaches at the church his household attends. In their sermons, they paint an image of a nation below siege from liberal concepts.

“The cornerstones of our government are crumbling and starting to come apart,” Wilks declared in a 2014 sermon at his insular church, the Assembly of Yahweh seventh Day. “And it’s because of the lack of morality, the lack of belief in our heavenly Father.”

Texas’ far-right shift has nationwide implications: The candidates Dunn and Wilks have supported have turned the state legislature right into a laboratory for far-right coverage that is beginning to acquire traction throughout the US.

The Texas State Capitol is seen on the first day of the 87th Legislature's third special session on September 20, 2021 in Austin, Texas.
Dunn and Wilks have been less successful in the 2022 major elections than in previous years: Almost all of the GOP legislative incumbents opposed by Defend Texas Liberty, a political motion committee primarily funded by the duo, received their primaries this spring, and the group spent hundreds of thousands of {dollars} supporting a far-right opponent to Gov. Greg Abbott who misplaced by a large margin.

But consultants say the billionaires’ current struggles are partly a symptom of their previous success: Many of the candidates they’re difficult from the proper, from Abbott down, have embraced increasingly conservative positions, on points from transgender rights to weapons to voting.

“They dragged all the moderate candidates to the hard right in order to keep from losing,” mentioned Bud Kennedy, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper who’s lined 18 periods of the Texas legislature.

“I don’t think regular Texans are as conservative as their elected officials,” Kennedy mentioned. “The reason that Texas has moved to the right is because the money’s there.”

Political investments paying off

Over the final decade, lots of the most conservative payments in the Texas legislature, on matters from LGBT rights to guns to private school vouchers, have been killed by the reasonable Republicans who held sway in the state House. That modified final yr, due to individuals like Valoree Swanson.

Swanson was a Sunday faculty instructor and political activist when she challenged a 14-year incumbent Republican, Debbie Riddle, in 2016 in a district masking Houston’s Republican-dominated northern suburbs.

Swanson, who ran to Riddle’s proper, shocked political observers by outraising the incumbent — an uncommon feat for a first-time candidate. Her largest donor: Empower Texans, a political motion committee created by Dunn and largely funded by him and Wilks. She defeated Riddle in the Republican major by greater than 10 proportion factors and went on to simply win the normal election.

Last yr, Swanson received a significant legislative victory: She authored the transgender sports activities invoice, which blocks trans college students from taking part in on Okay-12 faculty sports activities groups that are not aligned with their genders at start. While different payments about transgender points had failed in earlier years, the sports activities invoice was authorized by a legislature now firmly managed by the GOP’s proper flank after the reasonable former House speaker retired. Observers noticed it as a validation of the billionaires’ early investments in Swanson’s first marketing campaign, paying off years later.

“They’re effectively investing their money and they’re moving the needle on policy in Austin,” mentioned Scott Braddock, the editor of Quorum Report, a publication that is been masking the legislature for many years, referring to Dunn and Wilks. “These are extreme people investing a lot of money in our politics to reshape Texas, such that it matches up with their vision.”

Demonstrators gather on the steps to the State Capitol to speak against transgender-related legislation being considered in the Texas Senate and Texas House, May 20, 2021, in Austin, Texas.

Swanson is hardly an outlier: All 18 of the present Republican members of the Texas Senate, and virtually half of the Republican members of the Texas House, have taken a minimum of some cash from Dunn, Wilks or organizations that they fund. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have additionally been main beneficiaries of the billionaires’ spending.

Texas is certainly one of simply 10 states that permit people to make limitless contributions to state political candidates, in line with the National Conference of State Legislatures — letting Dunn and Wilks have extra affect than they could elsewhere in the nation.
While Dunn and Wilks give attention to state politics, they’ve additionally gotten concerned in nationwide races. Wilks, his brother Dan and their wives have been amongst the largest donors to tremendous PACs supporting GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016, contributing a complete of $15 million. And Dunn has given millions of {dollars} to tremendous PACs supporting former President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans lately.

In a press release to CNN, Cruz referred to as the Wilks brothers “the epitome of the American dream” and “fearless champions of conservative causes, much to the consternation of the corrupt corporate media.”

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So far in 2022, Dunn’s and Wilks’ political investments have not been as profitable as in previous years. Defend Texas Liberty, the group they fund, gave greater than $three million to Don Huffines, a former state senator who challenged Abbott in his Republican major and received simply 12% of the vote. Despite his loss, consultants identified, over the course of the marketing campaign Abbott embraced a few of the positions Huffines had staked out, together with strong opposition to transgender rights and support for deploying National Guard members to the US-Mexican border.

Defend Texas Liberty’s second-largest beneficiary this yr has been Shelley Luther, an unsuccessful far-right legislative candidate who attracted nationwide consideration after she was arrested for refusing to close down her Dallas hair salon to adjust to coronavirus restrictions.

In an interview with CNN, Luther — who proposed banning Chinese students from Texas universities and declared she is “not comfortable with the transgenders” — mentioned that Dunn and Wilks had been integral to her marketing campaign.

“Without them, I couldn’t have even run,” Luther mentioned. But she added that the spending would not have given the billionaires affect over her votes or choices: “He wants me to do what I say that I represent,” she mentioned of Dunn.

Enforcing the ‘regulation of the jungle’

The Texas Highway Patrol stands in front of pro-life demonstrators as pro-choice supporters leave the Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Saturday May 14, 2022.

Dunn and Wilks do not simply use marketing campaign donations to play a task in state politics. They additionally fund a community of organizations that have been influential at boosting conservative causes.

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, a non-profit chaired by Dunn, has launched a “Fiscal Responsibility Index” every legislative session grading state lawmakers primarily based on their stances on conservative payments. The scorecard, which is commonly cited in election advertisements that present up in voters’ mailboxes, is understood in Texas political circles for its capacity to make and break Republican major campaigns.

“If you don’t show up well on the scorecard, you’re going to have a lot of money spent against you,” Seliger mentioned.

Texas Republicans say that even a deeply conservative file does not shield somebody from a major problem funded by Dunn, Wilks and teams they bankroll.

State Sen. Bob Deuell had received elections for years in his northeast Texas district and racked up a conservative file — together with co-authoring a 2013 abortion invoice that was thought-about amongst the strictest in the nation at the time, and was struck down by the US Supreme Court.
But in 2013, Deuell, a physician, supported a invoice that overhauled Texas’ end-of-life procedures. Texas Right to Life, a gaggle whose largest donor over its historical past is Wilks, falsely claimed the invoice would “strengthen Texas’ death panels.” The following yr, Deuell was challenged by Bob Hall, a tea get together activist.
Bob Deuell speaks to CNN's Ed Lavandera in Greenville, Texas on February 23, 2022.

Texas Right to Life spent greater than $150,000 on mailers, voter guides and political consultants for Hall and different candidates in 2014, airing a barrage of advertisements claiming Deuell had “turned his back on life and on disabled patients.” Hall received the Republican major in a runoff by 300 votes. Since that first marketing campaign, Hall has obtained greater than $900,000 from Dunn, Wilks, and teams that they’re main funders of — a couple of third of his whole donations.

“All this West Texas money is what made him into a viable candidate,” Deuell mentioned of Hall, who didn’t reply to requests for remark from CNN.

Seliger, Deuell’s former colleague in the Senate, has additionally staked out conservative positions on many points, and Dunn gave his marketing campaign $1,000 throughout his first yr in workplace in 2004.

But after Seliger determined he could not help efforts to divert funding from public faculties to personal faculty vouchers, Dunn turned on him, he mentioned. In the decade since, he is discovered himself repeatedly working towards a challenger backed by teams funded by Dunn and Wilks.

“That’s the law of the jungle now in Texas,” Seliger mentioned. “The majority of Republican Senate members just dance to whatever tune Tim Dunn wants to play.”

Dunn has defended his spending and his group’s marketing campaign ways.

“Empower Texans remains outside the swamp, and the group informs voters who want their representatives to do in Austin what they promised during election season,” he wrote in a 2018 op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, responding to criticism of the group’s ways. “If all of us outsiders stick together, we can drain the Austin Swamp.”

Zachary Maxwell has had an inside view of the billionaires’ affect. He labored for Empower Texans, Dunn’s PAC, and served as marketing campaign supervisor and chief of workers for then-state Rep. Mike Lang, who obtained greater than 60% of his marketing campaign donations from Wilks and PACs he and Dunn have been main funders of.

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Maxwell advised CNN in an interview that there was “no way” Lang might have gotten elected with out Wilks’ cash. At one marketing campaign fundraiser, he mentioned, Jo Ann Wilks handed Maxwell a verify for greater than $100,000.

“I was like, ‘Can you even write a check that big?’ ” Maxwell remembered. “I about had a heart attack.”

Huge sums like that helped purchase Wilks affect as soon as Lang took workplace, Maxwell mentioned. “Whenever (Farris Wilks) called, he answered,” Maxwell mentioned of Lang. “There was a lot of control.”

Lang didn’t reply to requests for remark from CNN.

West Texas upbringings

Texas has a protracted custom of oil and fuel magnates utilizing their fortunes to form politics. Hugh Roy Cullen, certainly one of Houston’s wealthiest philanthropists, supported the pro-segregation Dixiecrat motion in the 1940s, and H.L. Hunt, who owned an enormous swath of the East Texas Oil Field, funded a conservative radio program that aired throughout the US in the ’50s and ’60s.

What units Dunn and Wilks aside, political observers say, is how they’ve spent a lot cash pushing not simply business-friendly insurance policies that increase their backside line but in addition socially conservative payments that appear designed to reshape Texas in the picture of their far-right Christian values.

Both are merchandise of humble West Texas upbringings who earned enormous fortunes in Texas’ power trade.

Dunn, 66, lives in Midland, the childhood house of George W. Bush and a middle of the state’s oil trade. He grew up in close by Big Spring, the son of a farm and manufacturing facility employee, and studied chemical engineering at Texas Tech earlier than working for Exxon and different oil and banking corporations.

He began his personal oil firm, now named CrownQuest Operating, in 1996. The agency operates oil wells round West Texas’ Permian Oil Basin and past, and pumped 31 million barrels of oil in Texas in 2021, making it the state’s 12th largest oil producer, in line with government records.
Dunn turned extra concerned in Texas politics in 2006, when he opposed a tax measure that included a brand new tax on enterprise partnerships — together with some that fund oil wells, Texas Monthly reported. He began a corporation to oppose the measure, Empower Texans, which continued to fund conservative causes even after the tax laws handed. The group’s PAC shut down in 2020, and the billionaires extra not too long ago pivoted to funding Defend Texas Liberty.
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Wilks, 70, grew up in a transformed goat shed in Cisco, Texas, a city of three,700 the place sleepy streets are dotted with greater than a dozen church buildings. He and his youthful brother Dan have been the sons of a bricklayer and began their careers as apprentice masons.

After a number of different enterprise ventures, in 2002 they based Frac Tech Services, an organization that offered trucking providers for fracking operators. It was good timing: Fracking was about to take off in Texas and elsewhere in the US amid a growth in shale fuel.

Less than a decade later, in 2011, the Wilkses sold their majority share of the firm for greater than $three billion to a gaggle that included worldwide buyers. Since then, they have been shopping for up land in Texas and round the Western US, becoming a member of the ranks of America’s largest landowners — and getting concerned in politics.

Farris Wilks is the pastor of the Assembly of Yahweh seventh Day Church, which operates a sprawling compound outdoors of Cisco and was based by his father. In sermons, he has denounced homosexuality and abortion rights in vitriolic phrases.

“A male on male or a female on female is against nature,” Wilks declared in a 2013 recording of 1 sermon posted on his church’s web site, which is not publicly out there. “This lifestyle is the predatorial lifestyle in that they need your children. … They want your children.”

Dunn additionally preaches at his church, the Midland Bible Church, the place he serves as a member of the congregation’s “pulpit team.”

“No matter what rules you grew up with, none of them are enforceable in God’s kingdom,” he declared in a single 2018 sermon.

In a 2004 interview with The Times of London, Dunn advised a reporter he believed that, as the newspaper put it, “his oil has existed for only 4,000 years, the time decreed by Genesis, not 200 million years as his geologists know.”
That spiritual fervor has influenced Dunn’s and Wilks’ political strikes. In a gathering with former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, who’s Jewish, Dunn declared that solely Christians ought to maintain management positions in the chamber, Texas Monthly reported. Straus declined an interview request with CNN.

And each Wilks brothers have donated hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by way of their private foundations to conservative Christian teams, together with disaster being pregnant facilities, in line with IRS data, which work to dissuade ladies from abortion and in some instances share deceptive medical data.

‘The aim is to tear up, tear down’

People who’ve labored with Wilks and Dunn say they share an final aim: changing a lot of public schooling in Texas with non-public Christian faculties. Now, educators and college students are feeling the affect of that conservative ideology on the state’s faculty system.

Dorothy Burton, a former GOP activist and spiritual scholar, joined Farris Wilks on a 2015 Christian talking tour organized by his brother-in-law and mentioned she spoke at occasions he attended. She described the fracking magnate as “very quiet” however approachable: “You would look at him and you would never think that he was a billionaire,” she mentioned.

But Burton mentioned that after a yr of listening to Wilks’ ideology on the talking circuit, she turned disillusioned by the single-mindedness of his conservatism.

“The goal is to tear up, tear down public education to nothing and rebuild it,” she mentioned of Wilks. “And rebuild it the way God intended education to be.”

In sermons, Dunn and Wilks have advocated for spiritual affect in education. “When the Bible plainly teaches one thing and our culture teaches another, what do our children need to know what to do?” Wilks asks in a single sermon from 2013.

Dunn, Wilks and the teams and politicians they each fund have been elevating alarms about liberal concepts in the classroom, concentrating on academics and college directors they see as too progressive. The billionaires have particularly targeted on essential race principle, in what critics see as an try to make use of it as a scapegoat to interrupt voters’ belief in public education.

In the summer season of 2020, James Whitfield, the first Black principal of the principally White Colleyville Heritage High School in the Dallas suburbs, penned a heartfelt, early-morning electronic mail in the wake of George Floyd’s homicide, encouraging his faculty to “not grow weary in the battle against systemic racism.”

James Whitfield looks at photos at his home in Bedford, Texas on January 13, 2022.
The backlash got here months later. Stetson Clark, a former faculty board candidate whose marketing campaign had been backed by a gaggle that obtained its largest donations from Dunn and organizations he funded, accused Whitfield throughout a college board assembly final yr of “encouraging all members of our community to become revolutionaries” and “encouraging the destruction and disruption of our district.” The board positioned Whitfield on go away, and later voted to not renew his contract. He agreed to resign after coming to a settlement with the district. Clark didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Whitfield mentioned he noticed the rhetoric pushed by Dunn and Wilks as a significant reason for his being pushed out.

“They want to disrupt and destroy public schools, because they would much rather have schools that are faith-based,” Whitfield mentioned. “We know what has happened over the course of history in our country, and if we can’t teach that, then what do you want me to do?”

Meanwhile, the legislature has additionally been taking over the dialogue of race in lecture rooms, passing a invoice final yr that bans faculties from making academics “discuss a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs.” The laws was designed to maintain essential race principle out of the classroom, in line with Abbott, who signed the invoice into regulation.

Some of the co-authors and sponsors of the bill and former variations of the laws obtained vital funding from Dunn and Wilks.

The billionaires “want to destroy the public school system as we know it and, in its place, see more home-schooling and more private Christian schools,” mentioned Deuell, the former senator.

The Texans feeling the affect embrace Libby Gonzales, an 11-year-old transgender woman residing in the Dallas suburbs. She and her household say they really feel like targets after the new regulation limiting trans college students’ participation in class sports activities went into impact final yr — handed by Swanson and different legislators bankrolled by Dunn and Wilks. Now, Libby will not be capable of play for the women’ soccer staff that she’d like to hitch.

Libby Gonzales plays outside her home in a suburb of Dallas on January 19, 2022.

“We don’t have issues in our neighborhood, among our friends,” mentioned her mom, Rachel Gonzales. “It’s when our legislators meet and decide that they’re going to leverage their political power against some of the most marginalized kids in our state.”

Gonzales has began volunteering for political campaigns in an try to show the tide on anti-trans insurance policies. Libby mentioned she’s been following the information about Texas’ conservative flip — and worrying what’s coming subsequent.

Last month, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a suppose tank that Dunn serves on the board of, called on the legislature to ban the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for minors.

“I’m under attack,” Libby mentioned. “I have no idea why people don’t understand that I’m just a girl: an 11-year-old girl living in Texas — with amazing hair.”

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