Texas: For Sale to the Highest Bidder

It's not just West Texas Billionaires...

With the release of the Semi-January campaign finance reports, we finally have a full picture of the 2024 election cycle and can compare it to those that have come before. And oh boy, looking at things across a long lens really shows you how expensive politics in Texas have gotten, and how that favors the billionaire class, taking advantage of no cap on campaign finance contributions.

Let’s take a look back at some of the top individual contributors over the past five elections cycles.

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2016 Cycle (1/1/15 to 12/31/16)

This was the cycle I started paying attention. And there at the top of the list for 2016 sits Farris Wilks from Cisco, TX, giving $2,408,984.

My mind was boggled when I saw how much he was pouring into Texas House races, giving directly and pushing into various PACs, including Empower Texans, Texas Right to Life, Texas Homeschool Coalition, and many others.

Just eight people gave more than $1,000,000 in 2016. Most of those eight (and really the list above of top donors) were pushing that money into Republican candidates and PACs supporting Republicans.

But what happened in 2016? A president was elected with a Christian nationalist entourage. It energized those aligned with Christian nationalism to do more and do it faster. Leading us to…

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2018 Cycle (1/1/17 to 12/31/18)

2018 was the big push from Empower Texans to take things over. CRAZY money from Tim Dunn ($4.2 million) and Farris Wilks ($3.79 million) to serve as the two top individual donors in the cycle. All fourteen on my chart above were over $1,000,000, with Kyle Stallings (a Dunn and Wilks crony) holding down that bottom slot.

Empower Texans lost badly in 2018. People were sure Dunn and Wilks were finished, having lost so much money on so many races. But they didn’t lose every race. And they didn’t go away, as their push wasn’t just about the money. It was about religion.

What was more important about what happened from 2016 and 2018 was the realization from others about the tactics leveraged by the Empower Texans crew: how even when you lost, you moved the ideological bent of the party, making things more extreme, by focusing on races that historically didn’t get that much attention. The other oligarchs (and those who want to emulate them) looked at Texas, from the statehouse, to the courthouse, to the school house, and decided the time was ripe to invest and work to take things over.

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2020 Cycle (1/1/19 to 12/31/20)

The biggest Christian nationalist oligarchs turned their attention more toward the federal spaces in 2020, leaving room for the other oligarchs to get used to spending more money in Texas.

At the top of the list is Charles Butt, of HEB grocery stores, who put $10,000,000 into the Charles Butt Public Education PAC. Butt gives to mostly Republicans, who advance all the things that work to tear down public education, but stops at vouchers, the final step in undermining public schools. So I guess there is that.

The rest of the list is quite the rogues gallery. Folks like Phil Huffines trying to buy a seat, Gary Gates and Mayes Middleton successfully buying a seat, Jan Duncan working to take a away the right to bodily autonomy, Dick Weekley, Javaid Anwar, John Nau, and James Pitcock working to ensure when a company screws you over, you can’t sue them.

But here is the big thing. Bottom of the list in 2020 is now up to almost $2 million. And the Republicans took back all of their loses in 2018 and then some, pulling the state to the right. So the oligarchs playbook was working.

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2022 Cycle (1/1/21 to 12/31/22)

With the 2020 election a loss, Tim Dunn retools, setting up Defend Texas Liberty, and starts spending money. Right behind are all of the other oligarchs, pushing their version of patriarchy, plutocracy, and plundering the coffers for their own benefit, convincing voters their schools and society in general are failing, due to CRT, dirty books, DEI, marxism, and those LGBTQ people, but especially the transgender people. And the immigrants. They are really bad too. ALL OF THIS is rooted in Christian nationalism.

The money continues to ramp up, with those at the top all pouring in multiple millions. Bottom of this list is now at $2.2 million.

Texans eat up the Christian nationalist rhetoric, not just at the state level (where this data is centered), but also on city councils, county commissioner courts, and school boards, especially in suburban, near suburban spaces. They vote against the things that provide value in their communities in order to punish those they fear, who might be different from them, but are still human beings who should be valued. It doesn’t matter to the oligarchs, who continually push a message of us vs them, good vs evil, and there are plenty of Republicans who go along with it. There are plenty of Republicans who tell you they aren’t ok with it, but, dang it, they just can’t support a Democrat because of this thing or that thing. But if Democrats were more like Republicans, maybe. SMDH.

You know those Republicans Charles Butt supports, the one’s who vote for all of the things that make people fear public schools, but stop just short of vouchers? They mostly still win their races, but the heat turns up, and in the Texas legislature, they go through four special sessions, holding funding for public schools hostage to get vouchers. It doesn’t work, so schools don’t see any additional funds for the next two year.

Christian nationalism isn’t just the work of two oligarchs at this point. It’s the whole damn party.

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2024 Cycle (1/1/23 to 12/31/24)

The takeover by oligarchs, some in state, some out of state, seems almost complete. The money in 2024 is INSANE. $23 million at the top of the chart. And over $3 million at the bottom. Compare that to the numbers JUST 8 years earlier. The money has exploded. And this is just what we can see.

PACs figured out they could just attack candidates and never have to report it on the campaign finance report of the beneficiary. The school choice groups (one of the largest donors in this set of folks is Jeff Yass, a TikTok investor, who is very down with vouchers), incensed that they didn’t get vouchers in the previous session, spent millions attacking, and honestly making stuff up, about lawmakers who voted against their agenda. These are the same lawmakers who voted for all of the rest of the Christian nationalist items, again, Republicans, but decided that even though they voted to ban books, ban trans kids from athletics, ban teachers ability to teach real history, they weren’t going to vote for a tax break for well to do parents who already send their kids to private school. Weird place to draw the line. Pretty much all of those lawmakers lost, most by A LOT. So their party did turn on them, but let’s not treat them like heroes. And believe me, they want us to treat them like heroes.

These lawmakers were members of the Leopards Who Eat People’s Faces Party. And now they are crying because the Leopards decided to eat their faces. It always happens. And there will always be another face to be eaten. That doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a fool.

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I keep hearing pundit after pundit say Democrats lost in 2020 in Texas because they weren’t enough like Republicans, even though they keep catering to Republicans and moving their way on issues. I keep hearing them say Democrats lost in 2022 in Texas, even with talk of a blue wave, because they weren’t enough like Republicans. I keep hearing them say Democrats lost across the country, but especially in Texas, even with talk of flipping the top of the ticket from some quarters, because they weren’t enough like Republicans and needed to quit talking about protecting trans people and the rights of making a decision about your own body.

Nonsense.

Democrats lost in each of those three elections because we didn’t have a true north, because we didn’t connect with those who have become disenfranchised and disenchanted with the current parties and politics. Democrats didn’t connect with them because they were so focused on being more Republican, on reaching out to Republican voters trying to get them to flip, rather than focusing on people who just need to believe someone cares about them, and will actually fight for them, making their lives better.

The oligarchs, those fully on board with Christian nationalism and those along for the ride, they see the 2024 election as an opportunity to tear down the protections we’ve worked generations to attain, for women, the LGBTQ+ community, minorities, and those of different faiths, and to ensure government works best for rich, white, straight, Christian men. If someone else who also bends the knee makes it, that's ok, as long as they know their place, and always stay in line.

Our government, federal, state, and local, is all under attack. Project 2025 is going to happen and it's impact will resonate at every level of our country. Democrats in the Texas House will yet again be the frog, carrying the scorpion across the pond, believing the sweet whispers of the scorpion that it will be different this time. Or maybe a better image is Lucy, Charlie Brown, and a football. We know how that ends.

We need to quit playing the game by the old rules. That’s a suckers bet at this point. It’s where the oligarchs want us. Let’s be sand in the gears and make sure everyone knows what we are fighting for and how they can help. We have to keep fighting for the least of us, while showing up for the people who do the work to keep this country running. It ain’t the oligarchs.

See It. Name It. Fight It.