Tim Dunn: The West Texas Billionaire Trying to Turn Texas into a Christian Theocracy

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@Brisketexan and @YGIFS and everybody else - want to know why Abbott and the others went batshit?  Why Texas has declared war on LBGTQs?  Because one man has decided he should tell Texans what to do and think.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/billionaire-tim-dunn-runs-texas/

The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy

The state’s most powerful figure, Tim Dunn, isn’t an elected official. But behind the scenes, the West Texas oilman is lavishly financing what he regards as a holy war against public education, renewable energy, and non-Christians..

You may not think about Tim Dunn. Indeed, unless you’re a close observer of Texas politics, it’s likely you haven’t heard of him. But Dunn thinks a lot about you.

For two decades he has been quietly, methodically, and patiently building a political machine that has pushed Texas forcefully to the right, sending more and more members of the centrist wing of the Republican Party into exile. A 68-year-old oil billionaire, Dunn seeks to transform Texas into something resembling a theocracy. If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his checkbook. If you question why Texas’s elected officials no longer represent the majority of Texans’ views, the reason can be traced to the tactics employed by Dunn and the many organizations and politicians he funds and influences. He has built his own caucus within the Legislature that is financially beholden to him. And despite his Sunday school pleas for comity, Dunn has deepened Texas’s political divisions: there are the Democrats and what remains of the mainstream conservative Republican Party. And then there are Dunn and his allies.

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He grew up in Big Spring, about forty miles northeast of Midland, with three older brothers in a cramped house. He now lives in a mansion, hidden within a roughly twenty-acre walled compound on the northern edge of Midland. Nearby is the nondenominational church where he regularly delivers sermons as a lay minister. The Dunns are one of Texas’s wealthiest families, having acquired inexpensive leases in the Permian Basin years before fracking made it possible to extract oil and gas from fields previously thought to be in decline. As a political power broker, he mostly operates behind the scenes, routinely writing six- and seven-figure checks. This money is only the visible portion of a political operation that shapes the agenda in Austin and is feared by many Republican elected officials.

Throughout its history, Texas has seen plenty of influential men who have shared their message from the pulpit. And a steady march of rich men have opened their wallets to get politicians to do what they want. But we’ve never seen the two archetypes merge in quite this way. Dunn has said he believes we’re in the midst of a holy battle that pits Christians against those he refers to as Marxists, who he claims want to control all property and take away freedom. Marxists “are increasingly becoming bolder and more brazen in their quest for tyranny,” he has warned. “It is becoming clear they want to kill us.” The founder of Marxism, he argued, wasn’t Karl Marx. It was Satan.

For Dunn, politics, work, and religion all run together. “I have very deliberately unsegmented my life,” he said in 2022 on a podcast hosted by Ken Harrison, the chair of Promise Keepers, a national evangelical group for men. “I don’t have one approach in business and another approach in ministry and another approach in church . . . I work for God, and God has given me a bunch of jobs to do.”

Dunn directs that work from the center of a hive of his own creation, surrounded by politicians and pastors, fellow oil billionaires, and political consultants, all of whom are carrying out his vision. He still has a bee on a string—except these days, that bee is the state of Texas.

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In the past two years Dunn has become the largest individual source of campaign money in the state by far. Until recently his main tool for exerting influence has been the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, to which he has given at least $9.85 million since the beginning of 2022. This is nearly all the money he contributed to Texas races over that span and the majority raised by the committee. The political action committee targets Republicans, many of them quite conservative, whom it deems insufficiently loyal to the organization’s right-wing agenda. Dunn is not a passive donor who will dole out a few thousand dollars after a phone call and some flattering chitchat. The funding machine he has built is designed to steer politics and control politicians.

Its methods are deceptively simple. A Dunn-affiliated organization lets lawmakers know how it wants them to vote on key issues of the legislative session. After the session, it assigns a number, from zero to one hundred, to each lawmaker based on these votes. Republicans who score high, in the eighties or nineties, are likely to remain in Dunn’s good graces. But those who see their scores drift down to the seventies or even sixties—who, in other words, legislate independently? Their fate is easy to predict.

They’ll likely face a primary opponent, often someone little known in the community, whose campaign bank account is filled by donations from Dunn and his allies. This cash provides access to political consultants and operations that can be used to spread false and misleading attacks on Dunn’s targets, via social media feeds, glossy mailers, and text messages. “They told you point blank: if you don’t vote the way we tell you, we’re going to score against you,” said Bennett Ratliff, a Republican former state representative from Dallas County. “And if you don’t make a good score, we’re going to run against you. It was not a thumb on the scale—it was flat extortion.” Ratliff lost in 2014 to a Dunn-backed right-wing candidate, Matt Rinaldi, who scored a perfect one hundred in the next two sessions and quickly amassed power: Rinaldi now serves as the combative and divisive chair of the state GOP.

According to several sources involved in Texas politics, what Dunn demands from his candidates, even more than electoral victory, is fealty. He tends to win, sooner or later, one way or another. Sometimes his preferred candidates win the primary and, given the gerrymandering that favors Republicans in most districts in Texas, waltz into office. But even when his candidates lose, the reelected incumbents have been battered by negative rhetoric and have begged and borrowed to raise funds to counter the attacks. Many are left wondering if it’s worth fighting back. Some have chosen to get out of politics entirely. Notable recent retirements include former state senator Kel Seliger and Representative Andrew Murr, both of whom were centrist Republicans who commanded respect from colleagues in both parties and acted as brakes on Dunn’s agenda.

Dunn’s influence goes well beyond campaigns and politics. His résumé is lengthy. He is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank located a couple of blocks south of the Capitol. TPPF generates policy proposals—from severe property tax cuts to bills that impede the growth of renewable energy—that are often taken up by the Texas Legislature and emulated in other red states. He has served for years on the board of the First Liberty Institute, a legal powerhouse that has won Supreme Court cases to advance Christianity’s role in public life.

As his wealth has grown, Dunn has used it to support private companies that align with his goals. Through his financial vehicle Hexagon Partners, he recently invested in Christian Halls, whose chief executive says his vision is to create Christian community colleges and trade schools “in every county of the nation in the next ten years.” Also through Hexagon Partners, Dunn invested $7.5 million in a company affiliated with Brad Parscale, who worked in San Antonio targeting swing voters with digital advertising before he became manager of Donald Trump’s failed 2020 presidential campaign. That firm plans to build a “Christian-based” advertising agency that will use artificial intelligence to precisely target consumers with commercial and political messages.

In the past several years Dunn has become involved with multiple online media operations. “You can’t trust the newspapers,” he wrote in a 2018 letter to voters. But apparently you can trust Texas Scorecard, a political website that is often critical of politicians who don’t support his agenda. Texas Scorecard was published by Empower Texans, a group largely funded by Dunn that then became a separate organization in 2020. It continues to publish articles that are generally critical of candidates Dunn opposes.

He has also been an officer with Chicago-based Pipeline Media, which maintains a network of websites designed to look like independent local media outlets but that churn out often-partisan articles that amplify stances taken by special interest groups. The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University found that this network has attacked renewable energy and advocated for property tax cuts. Further, Dunn is a longtime board member of the Lucy Burns Institute, publisher of the website Ballotpedia, which provides information on federal, state, and local elections. It recently launched an “ultra-local” initiative, publishing updates on candidate positions and endorsements in areas that have become news deserts after the closures of local newspapers. The site reported more than a quarter billion page views in 2022. .

Dunn generally steers clear of news outlets he doesn’t control. He did not respond to multiple requests for interviews with Texas Monthly, nor did he or his attorney respond to a detailed list of questions. Many of those closest to Dunn declined to be interviewed, and many elected officials refused to speak about him, often out of fear of reprisal. To report this story, I spoke with more than thirty people who know him or work in his orbit; listened to hundreds of hours of his sermons, speeches, and Sunday school lessons; and conducted an exhaustive search of corporate records and tax filings, among other documents.

Dunn’s voluminous political enterprises are all sidelines to what has long been his main gig. He is chief executive of CrownQuest Operating. While not well-known outside oil-industry circles, it controls a significant portion of the Permian Basin. In 2022 it was the eighth-largest oil producer in Texas. It operated wells that pumped out about 35 million barrels that year, worth more than $3 billion. In December, Occidental Petroleum agreed to purchase the company’s wells and oil reserves for $12 billion, including assumption of debt. Dunn and his family own about 20 percent of these assets. They stand to collect a windfall worth a couple billion dollars. Once the sale is completed, Dunn presumably will have more time—and more money—for his political interests.

Some of Dunn’s critics are quick to note that he and the candidates he backs have posted a poor overall record of electoral success. While there’s some truth to that claim, it misses the point. Yes, Dunn has, in essence, single-handedly financed the campaigns of inexperienced, extremist candidates who have failed to connect with voters. Nonetheless, these campaigns—and the promise of future, amply bankrolled, mudslinging challengers—have led incumbents to either acquiesce to his agenda or retire. Even when Dunn loses, he often wins.

Moreover, he is a major donor to some of the most prominent politicians in Texas. He was instrumental in helping Dan Patrick get elected lieutenant governor, arguably the most powerful office in the state. When Patrick first ran for that office, in 2014, he entered a runoff against incumbent David Dewhurst. In the final days before the election, Empower Texans gave Patrick $350,000 and secured for him a $300,000 loan from a Houston bank. The money helped pay for a last-minute blitz of advertising on television and on Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Dunn is also a longtime backer of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and helped him escape impeachment last year for abuse of public trust and other corruption-related charges. Prior to Paxton’s trial, Jonathan Stickland, the head of Defend Texas Liberty, made it clear he was ready to spend Dunn’s money to go after any official who voted to oust the attorney general. “There will be one helluva price to pay,” he warned in a tweet, and then added: “Wait till you see my PAC budget.”

That wasn’t the only step Dunn took to protect his ally. Before the impeachment trial in the Texas Senate, Defend Texas Liberty gave Patrick—who chose to preside as judge in the proceeding—$1 million in campaign donations and a $2 million forgivable loan. This is thirty times more than Defend Texas Liberty gave Patrick in 2022, when he was running for reelection. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a bribe—it was all perfectly legal under state law—and Patrick has denied any quid pro quo.

Still, as soon as the final votes to acquit the attorney general were cast, Patrick discarded his veil of impartiality and delivered a caustic rebuke to the House leadership for wasting everyone’s time. Despite abundant evidence of Paxton’s corruption, Patrick argued that the House should never have impeached the attorney general. Representative Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat who served as an impeachment manager, told Texas Monthly that this tirade made it clear the fix had been in from the moment Patrick grabbed the gavel.

Later, the Texas Tribune reported on a meeting between infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Stickland, who prior to leading Defend Texas Liberty was a state representative to whom Dunn had contributed handsomely. Patrick was quick to condemn Fuentes but slow to criticize Stickland and the PAC. He never returned the money he’d received from the group. Instead he invested it in Israeli bonds, which his campaign treasurer could presumably sell at a later date or simply collect interest payments on for years.

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This wasn’t the first time Dunn had opined on Jews. In 2010 he attended a private breakfast meeting with Joe Straus, the first Jewish Speaker of the House in the Texas Legislature. According to Straus insiders, Dunn told him that only Christians should hold leadership positions. When Texas Monthly first reported that encounter, in 2018, it shocked many in Austin’s political class. Dunn’s influence has grown since then, and his worldview has sunk even deeper roots in Texas.

Dunn’s sermon that August day came at a crucial juncture in Texas politics. A few months before, a bipartisan majority in the state’s House of Representatives had voted to impeach the attorney general for abusing the power of his office. Dunn had responded in late June by donating $150,000 to Paxton and $1.8 million to Defend Texas Liberty, which turned around and gave Patrick that infamous seven-figure donation and loan. It’s not clear whether the events unfolding in Austin were on Dunn’s mind as he drafted his sermon, but one of his principal messages involved a religious and political battle…

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Parts of his message can be heard in churches across Texas every Sunday. But how many such sermons are delivered by lay preachers who write $1 million checks to politicians and political action committees? How many are delivered by billionaires who are building an army of influence? Whose power and connections make them insiders even as they see themselves as outsiders trying to overthrow entrenched interests? How many believe that only Christians should lead Texas, to the exclusion of millions of Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and secular Texans?

Dunn holds several views that veer outside the mainstream. In late 2022 he delivered a sermon titled “How to Truly Love Your Spouse.” Before he began speaking, he played a brief video quoting from the First Epistle of Peter. It advises women, who are “the weaker vessel,” not to braid their hair or wear too much gold jewelry. They should “adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands.” When the video ended, Dunn was at the pulpit. He praised the narrator’s deep bass voice, noting it was that of his eldest son. “Don’t you love Lee’s voice? Sounds like God reading us scripture, doesn’t it?” He later talked about his view that men’s brains are structured differently from women’s: men are superior problem solvers, while women tend to be more articulate.

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Dunn advised men to invite their wives into their professional lives. His wife, Terri, homeschooled their children for sixteen years. When their youngest was in college, playing basketball for Texas Tech University, they would take long trips to watch his games. She would read Dunn’s emails to him as he drove. She liked feeling involved, Dunn said, so he gave her the password to his email account. She also listens to political talk shows, something he doesn’t like to do, and keeps him up to speed on what pundits are saying. This “helps her feel like a part of everything I’m doing,” Dunn explained. “Women were designed as helpers.”

Chris Tackett neverintended to become the foremost chronicler of Dunn’s political influence. But sometimes curiosity charts an unexpected course. On a cool fall day, I met Tackett at a hip coffee shop a few blocks south of downtown Fort Worth. He wore blue jeans and a maroon T-shirt from a New York City bookstore and carried a MacBook Air loosely with one hand. In his early fifties, Tackett is fit, with thick, graying hair. By day, he works in human resources for a food processing company. In his spare time he has built a tool to track how a rising flood of money is reshaping Texas politics.

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Chris Tackett neverintended to become the foremost chronicler of Dunn’s political influence. But sometimes curiosity charts an unexpected course. On a cool fall day, I met Tackett at a hip coffee shop a few blocks south of downtown Fort Worth. He wore blue jeans and a maroon T-shirt from a New York City bookstore and carried a MacBook Air loosely with one hand. In his early fifties, Tackett is fit, with thick, graying hair. By day, he works in human resources for a food processing company. In his spare time he has built a tool to track how a rising flood of money is reshaping Texas politics.

Just a few years ago, he was the volunteer director of a youth baseball league in Granbury, about forty miles southwest of where we met, when he decided he could do more for his community. So he ran for a school board seat. It was one of those life decisions that seemed innocuous at the time but turned out to be momentous.

He won the nonpartisan election and, by dint of his new responsibilities, became more involved in state education issues. The board communicated its priorities to Mike Lang, Granbury’s state representative, and Tackett assumed that Lang would be an ally. But when the school board asked Lang to vote for certain bills that protected the district’s funding, Tackett says Lang took the opposite position. Lang took other votes that Tackett felt were not in the best interest of local public schools. The board opposed vouchers, for example, which would allow taxpayer money to be used for private schools, potentially diverting needed revenue from the public school system. Yet Lang supported pro-voucher amendments. Curious about why, Tackett decided to look at the sources of Lang’s campaign contributions. “I mean, what else would it be other than money?” he recalled thinking.

I asked Tackett to guide me through what he’d found. We started by looking at who has given the most money to Texas politicians since 2000. The answer, surprisingly, was Tony Sanchez, a Laredo oilman who largely self-financed a quixotic $58 million run for governor two decades ago, creating a feckless orgy of political spending in a few months. After him, there’s a drop and then three more names: grocery magnate Charles Butt, an avid proponent of public education, and Houston homebuilder Bob Perry—and then Tim Dunn. (Pennsylvania billionaire financier Jeff Yass, a school voucher advocate, gave $6 million to Abbott in December, but he still falls far behind the cumulative spending of these four and others.) Perry died a decade ago, and Butt has reserved most of his political contributions for his education PAC. Meanwhile, Dunn has sped up.

We looked up Dunn’s contributions since 2000 and found he had given $14.3 million, a figure that struck me as low. Tackett told me to wait. He plugged in name variations: Tim Dunn, Timothy Dunn, Tim M. Dunn, TIM DUNN, Timothy M. Dunn, and so on. The number kept rising until it topped $24.5 million. He gave nearly $11 million—nearly half his total—just between January 2022 and the end of 2023.

Under state law, contributions to nonjudicial candidates and PACs aren’t capped but must be disclosed to the Texas Ethics Commission. But there’s another category of expenditure, to “social welfare organizations,” that is called dark money because the donors can remain invisible. These groups cannot give money to a candidate, but they can produce “voter guides” that explicitly point out that only one candidate is, say, a “strong Christian conservative” (however that may be defined). In other words, there are means to push voters’ buttons in ways that are hard to track. As in cosmology, what we can see in the night sky is only part of what’s out there.

Still, what was visible told a story. From 2000 until 2015, the big donors in Texas politics tended to be pro-business. They wanted to make it harder to sue corporations—Texans for Lawsuit Reform was still at the height of its power—and they lobbied to spend taxpayer dollars to attract out-of-state companies. The business of Texas, these donors believed, was business. Dunn and other megadonors shared those views, but they had other priorities. The schism came to a head over the 2017 “bathroom bill,” which would have targeted transgender Texans by requiring them in some instances to use restrooms associated with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Dunn backed the bill, but the business lobby opposed it, fearing a backlash that would’ve harmed their companies’ profits. The old guard prevailed.

Since then, though, Dunn and his allies have racked up victories, including passing a ban on abortions (before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision) and another bill prohibiting minors from receiving gender-affirming care. Nowadays, the business of Texas is to promote not just business but also a right-wing Christian worldview. “There’s a handful of billionaires trying to pull the strings across the state and pull Texas all the way to the right,” Tackett said.

Dunn has deviated from the pro-business camp in other ways. The previous generation of big donors often supported public schools in the interest of training the future workforce. Dunn has long advocated for drastically cutting property taxes, which are the major source of funding for public schools, police, and other essential services in a state that collects no income tax. He backs private Christian schooling and was involved in a recent failed effort to defeat a $1.4 billion bond for Midland public schools.

The fight over school vouchers became perhaps the most contentious policy issue during the 2023 legislative session, a key reason why Abbott called four special sessions. Dunn recently said he is “basically uninvolved” in the effort to pass voucher legislation, but he’s underplaying his influence. He gave $37,500 to the Texas Federation for Children PAC, a leading proponent of vouchers. Advocates from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the America First Policy Institute, organizations for which Dunn has served as a board member, testified last year in favor of voucher bills, as did Matt Rinaldi, whom Dunn backed as a state house candidate and leader of the Texas GOP. What’s more, Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, the Dunn-affiliated lawmaker scorecard, has consistently given high marks for votes that allow use of public money to help pay private school tuition. (These grades are not just given after the fact; a lawsuit turned up extensive evidence that longtime Dunn ally Michael Quinn Sullivan communicated to lawmakers before the votes how each would be scored, arguably telling them how to vote if they wished to avoid a well-funded backlash when the score came out.)

Tackett sees the voucher push as an attempt to undercut public schools and bolster Christian education. “This was all part of this broader agenda that was to inject religion into our government and erode trust in the government,” Tackett said. He and Mendi are six years into this project and have no plans to stop. “There are days we feel burned out,” he said. But then he uncovers more evidence that Dunn is leading an effort to buy public officials, subvert the state’s democracy, and bend it to his ideology, and that energizes him to keep going. “Democracy is much more at risk than I think most people realize,” he said.

In January Tackett texted me an update. A new PAC, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, had been created. The first donation it received was $700,000 from the Dunn-controlled Hexagon Partners. A few days later, Farris Wilks chipped in $1.29 million. The money was being used to unseat incumbent Republicans who scored relatively low on the Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s index. Tackett surmised that after the backlash surrounding the meeting between Stickland and the white supremacist Fuentes, Defend Texas Liberty had become too toxic. So Dunn had simply created a new PAC with less baggage.

A month before Tim and Terri married, he wrote a letter to the Texas Tech student newspaper about the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed change to the U.S. Constitution that would enshrine equal protection for men and women under American law. The letter is remarkable for its certainty, and it appears to be Dunn’s first public airing of his political views. He opposed the ERA, writing that the amendment would give “homosexuals equal protection under the law . . . Public schools and, yes, even private Christian schools will not be able to refuse to hire a teacher because he is a homosexual.” (His desire to keep private Christian schools free of government regulations remains intact, as does his animosity toward LGBTQ rights.)

After graduating from Tech, Dunn worked at Exxon for two years, in Houston. In 1980 he was hired by First City Bancorp, which traced its lineage to 1866 and was one of the largest banks in Texas. In the mid-eighties the bank moved Dunn to Midland, where he served as the head of commercial lending. In December 1984, First City ran a nearly full-page ad in the business section of the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “We Know Oil & Gas,” it read. “We know Midland!” It featured a drawing of several bankers. Prominently positioned in the middle was a confident, smiling Dunn.

Like many Texas banks, First City boomed when strong oil prices buoyed the state economy. But during the final months of 1985 global oil prices began souring. Texas saw massive job losses and a surge in bankruptcies. First City had “aggressively expanded during the early eighties to capitalize on the energy-driven Texas boom and found itself particularly vulnerable,” said Sorin Sorescu, a professor of finance at Texas A&M University who has studied regional banks. In September 1987, First City needed a nearly $1 billion bailout from the federal government. It was, at the time, the second-largest bank rescue ever. Dunn appears to have left the troubled institution right before the bailout; the bank’s financial condition couldn’t have been a surprise to anyone paying attention.

In July, two months before the bailout, a new oil firm was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Based in Midland, it was focused on drilling in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. It was called Parker & Parsley Development Partners, and Dunn was a general partner. He remained a top executive as the company grew. By 1995, however, it was foundering and announced a series of belt-tightening measures and a shuffling of its management. Dunn stepped down from the board and took on the role of managing operations in two of the company’s most productive regions. Only one executive remained on the board: Scott Sheffield, who would go on to lead the company for years. Parker & Parsley later renamed itself Pioneer Natural Resources and became a top oil company in the Permian. Last year Exxon Mobil agreed to purchase it for $59.5 billion, in one of the largest oil field deals in two decades.

A year after leaving the board, Dunn cofounded his own Midland-based oil company, which would become one of the largest producers in Texas, although one fourth the size of Pioneer. As he built his company, Dunn inched into politics. In 1996 he served as a delegate to the state Republican convention. By this time he and Terri were beginning to construct a private cocoon around their family. They homeschooled their children, developing a curriculum that emphasized reading great books from the Western canon. The Dunns approached like-minded families, recruiting the parents of fifteen students and founding a new school, Midland Classical Academy, that met behind their church. Students attended classes two days a week and studied at home the other three.

Ron Miller, the dean of students, told a reporter in 2001 that Christianity was incorporated into every classroom and lesson. “Here, I’m allowed to speak my mind about Jesus Christ,” he said. “Everything we do is centered around the role God has in our life.” The school eventually moved to a new multimillion-dollar building on the north side of Midland, where the homes give way to scrubland dotted by an occasional pump jack. Parents were encouraged to volunteer. Dunn served as the assistant girls’ basketball coach.

Today the Dunns’ compound is bisected by a private road named Happy Trails Drive and has been landscaped to look like a rolling prairie. Dunn and Terri live there in a six-thousand-square-foot house. They conveyed plots to three of their sons as well as to a son-in-law, who have built million-dollar homes. A fifth plot was deeded to a daughter and her husband, but they still live a ten-minute drive across town, and another son lives with his wife in Nashville. More than a dozen of the Dunns’ grandchildren live behind the gates.

The first substantial campaign check Dunn wrote was in February 2002: ten thousand dollars to Free Enterprise PAC. Its legislative wish list, according to a report it printed at the time, included bills that would “prohibit homosexual marriages and adoptions” and “require a super majority to increase taxes.” The PAC printed a ranking of most-to-least conservative legislators, a strategy later adopted by Dunn-backed groups such as Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.

In the period when Dunn contributed, Free Enterprise PAC spent nearly $66,000 supporting Republican candidates for the state House, with most of that going to those it deemed most conservative. The biggest beneficiary was a little-known lawyer running in a five-way contest for an open seat in Collin County. It was his first electoral victory. His name was Ken Paxton.

Free Enterprise spent even more on mailings attacking six Republican incumbents—half in the House and half in the Senate—each of whom scored low in the group’s rankings. Several days before the primary election, acting lieutenant governor Bill Ratliff, one of the six, denounced Free Enterprise PAC. Its mailings, which featured a photograph of two men kissing and another of two grooms cutting a wedding cake, claimed Ratliff supported a “radical homosexual agenda.” His alleged sin was voting for a hate crimes bill named after James Byrd Jr., a Black man who in 1998 was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck by three white men in the East Texas town of Jasper. The bill allowed heightened penalties for crimes motivated by the victim’s identity, including race or sexual orientation.

All six of the incumbents targeted by the PAC won reelection, but Ratliff was incensed by the group’s tactics. “This type of hate-mongering is reminiscent of the Nazis. This type of hate-mongering is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “This type of hate-mongering is now being practiced by the al Qaeda and the Taliban.” The negative press and attention from prominent Republicans didn’t deter Dunn. In 2006 he gave another $10,000 to the group right before the general election. Since that first check in 2002, he has made more than 225 donations of at least $10,000.

Dunn’s campaign cash washes through multiple political action committees and helps support various bands of right-wing political activists. The Texas Voice reported that shortly after Thanksgiving a little-known group called the Texas Family Project blasted out text messages that attacked select Republican lawmakers. The messages claimed that those legislators voted in favor of funding to help transgender Texans transition from the gender they were assigned at birth. This was hogwash.

All of the targeted Republicans voted for Senate Bill 14, a law passed last year and signed by Abbott that banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth; further, it required Texas to revoke medical licenses for doctors who didn’t comply. Their apparent transgression was not voting for an anti-transgender amendment on an unrelated bill, creating a gossamer thread of truth to the text message’s claim. In reality, these Republicans were singled out and castigated not for their position on transgender Texans but for having the gall to vote independently. (In late January, the same outfit sent anti-Muslim mailers assailing several Republicans in the Legislature.)

Dunn’s connection to Texas Family Project is labyrinthine and apparent only after some digging. The group was created in 2022 by Brady Gray, a pastor turned political activist from Weatherford, about thirty miles west of Fort Worth. On the same day in April, he founded two groups: Texas Family Project and Texas Family Project Foundation. One is a nonprofit charity and the other is a dark-money “social welfare group.” Both can keep their donors anonymous, making it nearly impossible to determine who is funding the organizations.

Before running these outfits full time, Gray was chief executive of Pale Horse Strategies, a Fort Worth political-consulting firm run by Stickland, who was simultaneously leading Defend Texas Liberty. Pale Horse, named after the line from the book of Revelation in which Death rides a pale horse, thrived on contracts from Defend Texas Liberty. In 2022 and 2023, Defend Texas Liberty paid Pale Horse $829,260 for consulting services.

Gray also runs a political action committee called the Texas Pastors
Coalition, which was created in May 2022 and has so far been inactive, neither raising nor spending any money, according to state campaign-disclosure documents. But it shares a Fort Worth post office box with the Tarrant County Patriots PAC, which is run by Cary Cheshire, a former Pale Horse adviser who has worked for Dunn-supported groups on and off since 2014. This PAC has raised $80,000 in the last couple of years—all of it from Defend Texas Liberty.

This is a typical pattern in Dunn’s orbit. A new organization emerges that attacks Republicans who are conservative but not sufficiently obedient to Dunn and Defend Texas Liberty. The groups, which spread misinformation and sow division, share the same pool of political operatives and funding.

Among the lawmakers targeted by the Texas Family Project’s text messages was Stephanie Klick, a longtime nurse and Republican who has represented the northeast Fort Worth suburbs since 2013. In the 2022 election, a former military policeman and Republican Party operative named David Lowe ran against her, claiming she was too moderate. He described himself in campaign material as “an army veteran, a constitutional conservative, [and] follower of Christ.” When Lowe made it into a runoff against Klick, Defend Texas Liberty gave him $177,608—the majority of the $269,467 he raised during the head-to-head campaigning.

When I reached Lowe, who is running against Klick again, I asked him what he believes Dunn and Defend Texas Liberty want and why they are supporting him. “I think they’re strong Christians,” he replied. “They’re trying to lay the foundation to make Texas more conservative.”

What that means, he said, is not yet clear—even to him. “The truth is, you don’t really know what they want until Texas is conservative,” he said. I replied that it was already quite conservative. He ticked off a list of additional legislative goals: increased militarization of the border, preventing abortions that are accomplished through medications received in the mail, punishing anyone who helps a transgender child receive gender-affirming care, and abolishing property taxes.

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For Dunn, influencing government is a sacred mission. “When we go into governmental politics, we’re going into the darkest places,” he said in 2022. He was giving a speech in Orlando, to the Convention of States, a Houston-based organization (Dunn has been a board member since its founding) that calls for a constitutional convention to limit the power of the federal government. “And we have the opportunity to make disciples in the places that need it the most. It is a high and holy calling.”

To achieve this mission, Dunn has supported some candidates who are morally repugnant. In 2018 he got involved in an East Texas statehouse race. The incumbent was Dan Flynn, an Army veteran who had served as a brigadier general in the Texas State Guard. He first came to office in 2003, at which point he was considered quite conservative. Yet as the lower chamber moved further to the right, he was increasingly viewed as a centrist. Empower Texans donated nearly half the money raised by his 2018 primary challenger, a former youth pastor named Bryan Slaton.

What did Flynn do to raise the hackles of Dunn and his allies? Mark Owens, an assistant professor of political science at the Citadel who formerly taught at the University of Texas at Tyler, where he studied Texas politics, described Flynn as a principled, independent conservative who believed in limited government spending. Empower Texans’ attempt to create a cohesive, hard-right voting bloc didn’t sit well with Flynn. “He wasn’t on board,” Owens said.

Flynn still won the 2018 primary and coasted to victory in the general election. Before those votes were cast, Dunn sent a letter on Empower Texans letterhead to Flynn’s constituents, urging them to “hold Flynn accountable” for his votes in the upcoming legislative session. “Why was I involved in Texas elections? What do I want,” Dunn wrote. He claimed he was fighting against corporate lobbyists, with nothing less than American democracy at stake. “If we lose this fight . . . representative government will die, and with it the American dream.”

The letter was notable for its omissions. He described Empower Texans as a “non-profit service organization” but didn’t mention that he had given $2.63 million to the Empower Texans PAC the previous year. Dunn described himself as a champion of the little guy, helping voters fight back against politicians co-opted by Austin lobbyists. He never mentioned that he’s a whale in the campaign-finance ocean, or that he uses his political clout to promote his own worldview.

Two years later Dunn and Slaton took another shot at Flynn. Dunn personally gave $225,000 to Slaton—nearly two thirds of Slaton’s entire war chest. This time Slaton prevailed. After the election Dunn continued supporting him, giving his campaign another $50,000 in 2021. At the end of the session, Slaton received the highest score, 98 out of 100, on the Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s index. He was an obedient anti-LGBTQ rabble-rouser, and Texas Monthly gave him the “Cockroach” award, reviving an old legislative term for a lawmaker who annoys members of both parties, makes a lot of noise, and accomplishes little. Despite these dubious accomplishments, Slaton was reelected in 2022, with more than half of his contributions coming from Dunn and Defend Texas Liberty.

But his time as a lawmaker was cut short. The Texas Voice reported that last year Slaton was enlisted to speak at a networking meeting for “business leaders dedicated . . . to preserving our culture, protecting our children and promoting self-governance over tyranny.” According to the schedule, Slaton took the stage immediately after a talk by Dunn.

Later that night, at 10 p.m., he invited two nineteen-year-old capitol aides and two of their friends to his Austin apartment. He mixed rum and Coke in a large Yeti thermos cup and drank until the early hours of the morning, by which time all but one of the aides had left. The one who remained was intoxicated, and according to a subsequent investigation, they engaged in sex. The next morning, she went to a drugstore to obtain Plan B pills to avoid getting pregnant. Several weeks later, in May, Slaton was expelled for “inappropriate workplace conduct,” the first member of the Texas Legislature to be removed in nearly a century.

Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group, withdrew its endorsement of Slaton, saying it held its endorsees to a high moral standard. Dunn, on the other hand, hasn’t made a public statement about Slaton’s behavior or his own role in electing him.

Why would Dunn ally himself with someone like Slaton? It’s a question that perplexed Bob Deuell a few years ago. He’s a family physician who served as a state senator from Greenville, northeast of Dallas, for more than a decade. A Republican, he was known as a staunch conservative with an independent streak. In 2014, after receiving a low score on a Dunn-backed scorecard, he drew a primary challenge from Bob Hall, a retired Air Force captain and recent transplant from Florida. During the campaign, Hall suggested that Satan controlled Deuell and bizarrely claimed that the incumbent intended to follow a United Nations imperative by adding bicycle lanes to Texas highways. Deuell shook off these outlandish statements but said he was deeply troubled by court documents in which Hall’s ex-wife claimed she was “physically, sexually and verbally abused for most of our marriage.” (Hall denied these allegations.)

Hall ran a relatively low-budget campaign, spending an average of $52 a day through the primary, mostly on signs, T-shirts, and door hangers. When he made it to a runoff with Deuell, Dunn-connected money rained down. Hall’s spending jumped to more than $2,100 a day, and he began using Facebook advertising and a direct-mail campaign generated by an out-of-state consultant. He attacked Deuell for voting like a “liberal Democrat” even though he had endorsements from the National Rifle Association and some right-to-life groups. “It was a bunch of lies,” Deuell told me. “His whole campaign was a bunch of lies.”

In the middle of the election, Deuell decided to write Dunn a letter. He told me that its message was simple: “Mr. Dunn, I’m not sure why you’re wanting to have me out of office. Certainly, you don’t want to put somebody like this in office,” referring to Hall. Deuell never got a response.

Hall eked out a victory by three hundred votes and has served in the Texas Senate since 2015. In the past three sessions, he has scored highest among senators in the Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s index. Deuell told me he learned one lesson from this experience: “As long as they get their puppet, they don’t care what the qualifications are because they know Bob Hall’s going to vote with them.”

For all his talk of Christian piety, Dunn’s tactics and beliefs have put him at odds with many fellow believers. “To see billionaire pastors, which should be an oxymoron, take over our state and turn it into an authoritarian theocracy is terrifying,” said James Talarico, a Democratic state House member representing North Austin and surrounding suburbs. Talarico is a former public school teacher and is studying to become a pastor at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “Without this ecosystem built by Tim Dunn, we wouldn’t see the extreme far-right policies coming out of Texas that we’ve seen in the last decade,” he said.

Amanda Tyler, the executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, lives in Dallas. She has observed the rise of Dunn’s dominion. He already wields control over the Texas Senate through his influence over Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and I asked her what Texas would look like if he managed to do the same in the Texas House. “I think it could create a second-class citizenship status for anyone who doesn’t agree with the elected leaders and their religious views,” she said. “And that looks like discriminatory laws and policies if they don’t align with a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. I also find that it would be profoundly undemocratic.”

She said Dunn is an ambassador of Christian nationalism, not Christianity. “I believe the central message of Christianity is the gospel of love,” she told me. “And Christian nationalism is a false idol of power.”

Summer Wise has also watched Dunn’s rise with dismay. She comes from an old Texas family and is distantly related to Angelina Eberly, a bronze likeness of whom presides over Congress Avenue, in downtown Austin. One night in 1842, Eberly famously took it upon herself to ready the town cannon and fire the six-pounder to prevent the records of the nascent Republic of Texas from being taken from the capital. Wise has engaged in a different sort of public service. She sat on the State Republican Executive Committee from 2018 to 2020 and has appeared as a delegate at seven state conventions. She lost her post in 2020 as part of a takeover of the party by Dunn’s allies. She told me she is deeply uncomfortable with the toxicity in some factions of today’s Texas Republican Party.

Many of her friends and former allies have given up their activism or left public office, creating what she told me was an exodus of talent and passion. It’s hard to fight against people who command vast resources and who believe their eternal salvation depends on the outcome, she said. She fears that Texas is moving away from a representative republic. In its place is a system driven “by ideology and the ideologies of a few. That is not how government is intended to function.”

We spoke several times over a few months. In one of her final emails to me, she lamented the state of the state but vowed, like her ancestor, not to surrender. “I cannot think of a time when we have seen the very integrity of our political system so tested,” she wrote. “Dunn has a misguided belief that he is fighting for souls, but I’m fighting for the soul of Texas.”

[hobbes2702 12847]

[956 Worldwide 34444]

If I were a billionaire in Midland the first thing I’d buy would be a one-way plane ticket out of Midland. 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11810]

Lotta words to say a repressed gothic jockey is throwing a shit fit.  Eat shit, Timmy.  

Edited February 15 by Judge Roybeanbag

[hobbes2702 12847]

If I were a billionaire in midland the first thing I would do is make it a crime to not use spoiler tags.

[Radical Larry 28529]

tl;dr: He’s a piece of shit. 
 

 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11810]

3 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

If I were a billionaire in midland the first thing I would do is make it a crime to not use spoiler tags.

Pretty sure if you were a billionaire in midland the first thing would be to get the fuck out of midland.  Maybe pecos. Or Hobbs.  

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

Tim Dunn is waging a holy war on renewable energy and meanwhile Texas solar farms set a record on Tuesday for the amount of electricity they provided to the grid operated by Ercot ---- 16,668 megawatts, enough to power more than 3.3 million homes in the state during periods of peak demand. Right now, as I speak, at 8:49 p.m. on Feb 14, 2024, wind is supplying 46.6 percent of our electricity.  Rooftop solar is getting better and better and there are more and more installations. I see them all over now. Dunn is swimming against the inexorable tide of history. It has always been true: build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Renewables are a better mousetrap already ---- and getting better and better. Tim Dunn might as well be a buggy whip manufacturer. 

 

Edited February 15 by Horn Under a Bad Sign

[Judge Roybeanbag 11810]

Tim Dunn can single-handedly provide Texas energy by running really fast in his corduroy pants. Rubbing his tiny penis against his leg costs extra.  

[safe sex 11684]

I did not enjoy reading that.

This state is fucked. We can't overcome this.

[TwiceHorn 31285]

23 minutes ago, safe sex said:

I did not enjoy reading that.

This state is fucked. We can't overcome this.

Motherfucker's gonna die soon.  So there's that.

[safe sex 11684]

Did I miss something in the article? He's 68, rich, and evil. He'll live to be 100.

[Voldemort86 2259]

Quote

A 68-year-old oil billionaire, Dunn seeks to transform Texas into something resembling a theocracy

68 years old.  Looks like I have another death to root for ASAP. We’ve been lucky enough to rid ourselves with trash like rush Limbaugh, Sheldon adelson, and Antonin Scalia in the last 10 years or so.

still eagerly awaiting the passing of Dan Patrick, Mitch McConnell, and now this guy.

[wildcat09 29260]

[Blotto 23434]

I skimmed the article and noticed enough Jesus talk to assume he diddles kids.

[Guest]

Here's what I don't get... if it's so damn cheap to buy politicians, why aren't other billionaires doing it to simply pay the price to have them be decent human beings?

Why isn't Michael Dell or Mark Cuban funneling money to these politicians to have them just cut this shit out? Oh, a $6 million donation to Abbott to have him be pro-voucher all the sudden? Here's $10 million, now ban assault weapons and cut out the voucher shit.

$3 million to Patrick to protect Abbott and go on a diatribe against impeachment? Here's $5 million -- find an AG who isn't corrupt.

[tchookem 3900]

Here's what I don't get... if it's so damn cheap to buy politicians, why aren't other billionaires doing it to simply pay the price to have them be decent human beings?
Why isn't Michael Dell or Mark Cuban funneling money to these politicians to have them just cut this shit out? Oh, a $6 million donation to Abbott to have him be pro-voucher all the sudden? Here's $10 million, now ban assault weapons and cut out the voucher shit.
$3 million to Patrick to protect Abbott and go on a diatribe against impeachment? Here's $5 million -- find an AG who isn't corrupt.

Why take money for a cause you don't support when you can take money for a cause you do support?

[fattyflattie 4636]

16 minutes ago, tchookem said:

56 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Here's what I don't get... if it's so damn cheap to buy politicians, why aren't other billionaires doing it to simply pay the price to have them be decent human beings?
Why isn't Michael Dell or Mark Cuban funneling money to these politicians to have them just cut this shit out? Oh, a $6 million donation to Abbott to have him be pro-voucher all the sudden? Here's $10 million, now ban assault weapons and cut out the voucher shit.
$3 million to Patrick to protect Abbott and go on a diatribe against impeachment? Here's $5 million -- find an AG who isn't corrupt.

Why take money for a cause you don't support when you can take money for a cause you do support?

Not to mention, be voted out the next election.  They seek money and power, not one or the other. 

[High Plains Drifter 10978]

 

I was just in Midland this past Saturday. If it wasn't such a god-forsaken shithole, I should've stopped by this guy's church on Sunday morning with sign quoting Matthew 19:24. 

 

 

[Blotto 23434]

1 hour ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Here's what I don't get... if it's so damn cheap to buy politicians, why aren't other billionaires doing it to simply pay the price to have them be decent human beings?

Why isn't Michael Dell or Mark Cuban funneling money to these politicians to have them just cut this shit out? Oh, a $6 million donation to Abbott to have him be pro-voucher all the sudden? Here's $10 million, now ban assault weapons and cut out the voucher shit.

$3 million to Patrick to protect Abbott and go on a diatribe against impeachment? Here's $5 million -- find an AG who isn't corrupt.

What makes you think Michael Dell or Mark Cuban give a fuck about whether or not the people in office are decent human beings. Both of those individuals care about one thing primarily, their own wealth and accumulating more. That's kind of the billionaire thing. Don't expect those dudes to act in any interest contrary to their wealth building.

https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?cand=&cycle=&employ=dell&name=michael+dell&order=desc&sort=A&state=&zip=

[royiv 9164]

1 hour ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Here's what I don't get... if it's so damn cheap to buy politicians, why aren't other billionaires doing it to simply pay the price to have them be decent human beings?

Why isn't Michael Dell or Mark Cuban funneling money to these politicians to have them just cut this shit out? Oh, a $6 million donation to Abbott to have him be pro-voucher all the sudden? Here's $10 million, now ban assault weapons and cut out the voucher shit.

$3 million to Patrick to protect Abbott and go on a diatribe against impeachment? Here's $5 million -- find an AG who isn't corrupt.

The same Mark Cuban who just cashed a huge paycheck from the Adelson family? 

[bolverk 29405]

This motherfucker graduated from my fucking high school 15 fucking years before me, and I have three mutual fucking friends with him on fucking Facebook. Fuck!

 

[Voldemort86 2259]

I wish we could recruit some low life’s from Dallas or Houston with nothing to lose to go to his church and rough him up.

[M12BH 544]

Oh but hey did you hear about Soros and his pinko commie agenda? Same difference. 

[gofuckyourself 8122]

Fascinating article.

Despite the long copy/paste there are whole, rather important, sections omitted from the original.

 

Quote

Dunn is up-front about his desire to use politics to pave the way for a “New Earth,” in which Jesus Christ and his believers will live together. (“When heaven comes to earth and God dwells with his people as the King,” Dunn has said.) Until then, he remains a key player in the growing Christian nationalism movement, which rejects the importance of pluralism to American identity. Instead it contends that only devout Christians are good Americans.

 

Take a look at the underlying idea and philosophy here.

The "good Americans" vs. "bad Americans" concept which has been around, and is still growing, is based on much earlier ideas.

Religious zealots helped carry the torch of the eugenics movement in the United States in the early 1900s, but that itself was spawned from the German psychological doctrine that man was just another animal to be "bred correctly." Wundt, Galton, Ploetz et al.

"Good stock" vs "bad stock." Destroy the "bad" so the "good" can flourish.

That philosophy motors on despite the Holocaust and all other horrific examples of it put into action. It is recast by Dunn and his ilk proclaiming they are the only ones who should be in power and dictate the future -- but it's the same shit, different day 100+ years later.

Create a "pure" state. Remove the impure. Put people "in their place."

Political hygiene, racial hygiene. We're-better-than-you-ism. All the same shit.

[bolverk 29405]

According to Forbes, here are our richest Texans. Go check the Open Secrets website like Blotto did for Michael Dell and see who/what they contribute to.

1    Elon Musk    $251 B    52    Tesla, SpaceX
11    Michael Dell    $71.5 B    58    Dell Technologies
14    Alice Walton    $66.5 B    73    Walmart
45    Autry Stephens    $14.8 B    85    Oil
47    Stanley Kroenke    $14.6 B    76    Sports, real estate
48    Jerry Jones    $14.5 B    80    Dallas Cowboys
50    Andrew Beal    $13.8 B    70    Banks, real estate
51    Jeffery Hildebrand    $13.7 B    64    Oil
87    Ann Walton Kroenke    $9.4 B    74    Walmart
89    Robert F. Smith    $9.2 B    60    Private equity
96    Joe Gebbia    $8.9 B    42    Airbnb
114    Tilman Fertitta    $8 B    66    Entertainment, Houston Rockets
121    Charles Butt    $7.6 B    85    Supermarkets
123    Richard Kinder    $7.5 B    78    Pipelines
123    Robert Rowling    $7.5 B    70    Hotels, investments
128    Dannine Avara    $7.4 B    59    Pipelines
128    Scott Duncan    $7.4 B    40    Pipelines
128    Milane Frantz    $7.4 B    54    Pipelines
128    Randa Duncan Williams    $7.4 B    62    Pipelines
140    Bert Beveridge    $7.2 B    61    Vodka
140    Ray Lee Hunt    $7.2 B    80    Oil, real estate
144    Ken Fisher    $7.1 B    72    Money management
184    David Bonderman    $5.7 B    80    Private equity
184    Dan Friedkin    $5.7 B    58    Toyota dealerships
192    Janice McNair    $5.6 B    87    Energy, sports
192    Kelcy Warren    $5.6 B    67    Pipelines
204    Robert Bass    $5.3 B    75    Oil, investments
204    Thai Lee    $5.3 B    64    IT provider
211    Mark Cuban    $5.2 B    65    Online media, Dallas Mavericks
215    Joseph Liemandt    $5.1 B    55    Software
227    Margot Birmingham Perot    $4.9 B    89    Computer services, real estate
227    W. Herbert Hunt    $4.9 B    94    Oil
227    Trevor Rees-Jones    $4.9 B    72    Oil & gas
249    Donald Horton & family    $4.6 B    73    Homebuilding
278    Steven Udvar-Hazy    $4.1 B    77    Aircraft leasing
291    Sid Bass    $3.9 B    81    Oil, investments
304    Hayes Barnard    $3.7 B    51    Fintech
304    H. Ross Perot, Jr.    $3.7 B    64    Real estate
326    Carl Thoma    $3.5 B    74    Private equity
345    John Arnold    $3.3 B    49    Hedge funds
356    George Bishop    $3.2 B    85    Oil & gas
366    Drayton McLane, Jr.    $3.1 B    87    Walmart, logistics
379    John Paul DeJoria    $3 B    79    Hair products, tequila
395    Bill Austin    $2.9 B    81    Hearing aids
395    Ray Davis    $2.9 B    81    Pipelines

[chainsaw 9838]

17 minutes ago, gofuckyourself said:

We're-better-than-you-ism.

[chainsaw 9838]

3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Bert Beveridge    $7.2 B    61    Vodka

username checks out

[gofuckyourself 8122]

7 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

I never said okies and aggies didn't deserve some derision and scorn.

Definitely some sterilizing.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

18 minutes ago, bolverk said:

According to Forbes, here are our richest Texans. Go check the Open Secrets website like Blotto did for Michael Dell and see who/what they contribute to.

1    Elon Musk    $251 B    52    Tesla, SpaceX
11    Michael Dell    $71.5 B    58    Dell Technologies
14    Alice Walton    $66.5 B    73    Walmart
45    Autry Stephens    $14.8 B    85    Oil
47    Stanley Kroenke    $14.6 B    76    Sports, real estate
48    Jerry Jones    $14.5 B    80    Dallas Cowboys
50    Andrew Beal    $13.8 B    70    Banks, real estate
51    Jeffery Hildebrand    $13.7 B    64    Oil
87    Ann Walton Kroenke    $9.4 B    74    Walmart
89    Robert F. Smith    $9.2 B    60    Private equity
96    Joe Gebbia    $8.9 B    42    Airbnb
114    Tilman Fertitta    $8 B    66    Entertainment, Houston Rockets
121    Charles Butt    $7.6 B    85    Supermarkets
123    Richard Kinder    $7.5 B    78    Pipelines
123    Robert Rowling    $7.5 B    70    Hotels, investments
128    Dannine Avara    $7.4 B    59    Pipelines
128    Scott Duncan    $7.4 B    40    Pipelines
128    Milane Frantz    $7.4 B    54    Pipelines
128    Randa Duncan Williams    $7.4 B    62    Pipelines
140    Bert Beveridge    $7.2 B    61    Vodka
140    Ray Lee Hunt    $7.2 B    80    Oil, real estate
144    Ken Fisher    $7.1 B    72    Money management
184    David Bonderman    $5.7 B    80    Private equity
184    Dan Friedkin    $5.7 B    58    Toyota dealerships
192    Janice McNair    $5.6 B    87    Energy, sports
192    Kelcy Warren    $5.6 B    67    Pipelines
204    Robert Bass    $5.3 B    75    Oil, investments
204    Thai Lee    $5.3 B    64    IT provider
211    Mark Cuban    $5.2 B    65    Online media, Dallas Mavericks
215    Joseph Liemandt    $5.1 B    55    Software
227    Margot Birmingham Perot    $4.9 B    89    Computer services, real estate
227    W. Herbert Hunt    $4.9 B    94    Oil
227    Trevor Rees-Jones    $4.9 B    72    Oil & gas
249    Donald Horton & family    $4.6 B    73    Homebuilding
278    Steven Udvar-Hazy    $4.1 B    77    Aircraft leasing
291    Sid Bass    $3.9 B    81    Oil, investments
304    Hayes Barnard    $3.7 B    51    Fintech
304    H. Ross Perot, Jr.    $3.7 B    64    Real estate
326    Carl Thoma    $3.5 B    74    Private equity
345    John Arnold    $3.3 B    49    Hedge funds
356    George Bishop    $3.2 B    85    Oil & gas
366    Drayton McLane, Jr.    $3.1 B    87    Walmart, logistics
379    John Paul DeJoria    $3 B    79    Hair products, tequila
395    Bill Austin    $2.9 B    81    Hearing aids
395    Ray Davis    $2.9 B    81    Pipelines

Joe Gebbia seems like a good candidate. He's 42, donates a ton of money, has joined The Giving Pledge group. partnered with the Clinton Foundation to improve the lives of women, has partnered with the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation, donates a lot to refugee philanthropy, gave a 25 million dollar donation to The Ocean Cleanup charity etc ... 

 

[Smax 3800]

4 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

 

I have a long list of people I'd love to see take that for a test drive

[MonkeyDoughnut 10145]

47 minutes ago, bolverk said:

According to Forbes, here are our richest Texans. Go check the Open Secrets website like Blotto did for Michael Dell and see who/what they contribute to.

1    Elon Musk    $251 B    52    Tesla, SpaceX
11    Michael Dell    $71.5 B    58    Dell Technologies
14    Alice Walton    $66.5 B    73    Walmart
45    Autry Stephens    $14.8 B    85    Oil
47    Stanley Kroenke    $14.6 B    76    Sports, real estate
48    Jerry Jones    $14.5 B    80    Dallas Cowboys
50    Andrew Beal    $13.8 B    70    Banks, real estate
51    Jeffery Hildebrand    $13.7 B    64    Oil
87    Ann Walton Kroenke    $9.4 B    74    Walmart
89    Robert F. Smith    $9.2 B    60    Private equity
96    Joe Gebbia    $8.9 B    42    Airbnb
114    Tilman Fertitta    $8 B    66    Entertainment, Houston Rockets
121    Charles Butt    $7.6 B    85    Supermarkets
123    Richard Kinder    $7.5 B    78    Pipelines
123    Robert Rowling    $7.5 B    70    Hotels, investments
128    Dannine Avara    $7.4 B    59    Pipelines
128    Scott Duncan    $7.4 B    40    Pipelines
128    Milane Frantz    $7.4 B    54    Pipelines
128    Randa Duncan Williams    $7.4 B    62    Pipelines
140    Bert Beveridge    $7.2 B    61    Vodka
140    Ray Lee Hunt    $7.2 B    80    Oil, real estate
144    Ken Fisher    $7.1 B    72    Money management
184    David Bonderman    $5.7 B    80    Private equity
184    Dan Friedkin    $5.7 B    58    Toyota dealerships
192    Janice McNair    $5.6 B    87    Energy, sports
192    Kelcy Warren    $5.6 B    67    Pipelines
204    Robert Bass    $5.3 B    75    Oil, investments
204    Thai Lee    $5.3 B    64    IT provider
211    Mark Cuban    $5.2 B    65    Online media, Dallas Mavericks
215    Joseph Liemandt    $5.1 B    55    Software
227    Margot Birmingham Perot    $4.9 B    89    Computer services, real estate
227    W. Herbert Hunt    $4.9 B    94    Oil
227    Trevor Rees-Jones    $4.9 B    72    Oil & gas
249    Donald Horton & family    $4.6 B    73    Homebuilding
278    Steven Udvar-Hazy    $4.1 B    77    Aircraft leasing
291    Sid Bass    $3.9 B    81    Oil, investments
304    Hayes Barnard    $3.7 B    51    Fintech
304    H. Ross Perot, Jr.    $3.7 B    64    Real estate
326    Carl Thoma    $3.5 B    74    Private equity
345    John Arnold    $3.3 B    49    Hedge funds
356    George Bishop    $3.2 B    85    Oil & gas
366    Drayton McLane, Jr.    $3.1 B    87    Walmart, logistics
379    John Paul DeJoria    $3 B    79    Hair products, tequila
395    Bill Austin    $2.9 B    81    Hearing aids
395    Ray Davis    $2.9 B    81    Pipelines

Number 121 on that list has always been pro-public education and has recently been stepping things up to insure Dunn's voucher campaign isn't about money raising. He's giving money to anyone, especially GOP who vote against it and support public education. I'm hoping he starts going on the offense even more.

[hobbes2702 12847]

59 minutes ago, bolverk said:

According to Forbes, here are our richest Texans. Go check the Open Secrets website like Blotto did for Michael Dell and see who/what they contribute to.

1    Elon Musk    $251 B    52    Tesla, SpaceX
11    Michael Dell    $71.5 B    58    Dell Technologies
14    Alice Walton    $66.5 B    73    Walmart
45    Autry Stephens    $14.8 B    85    Oil
47    Stanley Kroenke    $14.6 B    76    Sports, real estate
48    Jerry Jones    $14.5 B    80    Dallas Cowboys
50    Andrew Beal    $13.8 B    70    Banks, real estate
51    Jeffery Hildebrand    $13.7 B    64    Oil
87    Ann Walton Kroenke    $9.4 B    74    Walmart
89    Robert F. Smith    $9.2 B    60    Private equity
96    Joe Gebbia    $8.9 B    42    Airbnb
114    Tilman Fertitta    $8 B    66    Entertainment, Houston Rockets
121    Charles Butt    $7.6 B    85    Supermarkets
123    Richard Kinder    $7.5 B    78    Pipelines
123    Robert Rowling    $7.5 B    70    Hotels, investments
128    Dannine Avara    $7.4 B    59    Pipelines
128    Scott Duncan    $7.4 B    40    Pipelines
128    Milane Frantz    $7.4 B    54    Pipelines
128    Randa Duncan Williams    $7.4 B    62    Pipelines
140    Bert Beveridge    $7.2 B    61    Vodka
140    Ray Lee Hunt    $7.2 B    80    Oil, real estate
144    Ken Fisher    $7.1 B    72    Money management
184    David Bonderman    $5.7 B    80    Private equity
184    Dan Friedkin    $5.7 B    58    Toyota dealerships
192    Janice McNair    $5.6 B    87    Energy, sports
192    Kelcy Warren    $5.6 B    67    Pipelines
204    Robert Bass    $5.3 B    75    Oil, investments
204    Thai Lee    $5.3 B    64    IT provider
211    Mark Cuban    $5.2 B    65    Online media, Dallas Mavericks
215    Joseph Liemandt    $5.1 B    55    Software
227    Margot Birmingham Perot    $4.9 B    89    Computer services, real estate
227    W. Herbert Hunt    $4.9 B    94    Oil
227    Trevor Rees-Jones    $4.9 B    72    Oil & gas
249    Donald Horton & family    $4.6 B    73    Homebuilding
278    Steven Udvar-Hazy    $4.1 B    77    Aircraft leasing
291    Sid Bass    $3.9 B    81    Oil, investments
304    Hayes Barnard    $3.7 B    51    Fintech
304    H. Ross Perot, Jr.    $3.7 B    64    Real estate
326    Carl Thoma    $3.5 B    74    Private equity
345    John Arnold    $3.3 B    49    Hedge funds
356    George Bishop    $3.2 B    85    Oil & gas
366    Drayton McLane, Jr.    $3.1 B    87    Walmart, logistics
379    John Paul DeJoria    $3 B    79    Hair products, tequila
395    Bill Austin    $2.9 B    81    Hearing aids
395    Ray Davis    $2.9 B    81    Pipelines

This tells me there are way too many billionaires if this list is just for our state

[Satchel 6908]

3 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

I was just in Midland this past Saturday. If it wasn't such a god-forsaken shithole, I should've stopped by this guy's church on Sunday morning with sign quoting Matthew 19:24. 

 

 

There’s no hate like the Christian love these people espouse.

[Samson's Wig 3181]

1 hour ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Joe Gebbia seems like a good candidate. He's 42, donates a ton of money, has joined The Giving Pledge group. partnered with the Clinton Foundation to improve the lives of women, has partnered with the Kevin Durant Charity Foundation, donates a lot to refugee philanthropy, gave a 25 million dollar donation to The Ocean Cleanup charity etc ... 

 

And yet that man-child built his fortune by founding a company that has done more to make home ownership a pipe dream for most Americans than any other factor.  Don't forget he's also an Elon bootlicker and on the Tesla board.  Fuck Joe Gebbia.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

17 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

And yet that man-child built his fortune by founding a company that has done more to make home ownership a pipe dream for most Americans than any other factor.  Don't forget he's also an Elon bootlicker and on the Tesla board.  Fuck Joe Gebbia.

When founding his company, was it his intention to make home ownership a pipe dream?

You'll have to catch me up to speed on what Gebbia has said about Elon that makes you say he's a bootlicker. 

[elfenix 34172]

3 hours ago, bolverk said:

This motherfucker graduated from my fucking high school 15 fucking years before me, and I have three mutual fucking friends with him on fucking Facebook. Fuck!

 

And one of them is mfcdg 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

9 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

 Most people aren't spending their time emulating Russian disinformation campaigns even if they have the means to do it.

But why aren't at least a few? Why are there no anti-Tim Dunns in Texas?

[bolverk 29405]

13 minutes ago, elfenix said:

And one of them is mfcdg 

Ha! No, they ain't FB friends. She'd stab the motherfucker the first chance she'd get.

Edit: She's also from San Antonio.

Edited February 15 by bolverk

[Samson's Wig 3181]

13 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

When founding his company, was it his intention to make home ownership a pipe dream?

You'll have to catch me up to speed on what Gebbia has said about Elon that makes you say he's a bootlicker. 

What do his original intentions have to do with it?  The saddest part of that origin story is that he came up with the idea because he couldn't afford his rent.  Now he's made sure many more are in the same boat.

As for the second item, it would probably be easier for you to catch everyone else up to speed on how anyone on the Tesla board is anything but a rubber stamp.  But you can find one example of Gebbia being little more than a bro if you look at his direct tweets at Elon, including telling him that threatening to go private was a "baller move" instead of calling him out (or being able to recognize it) for what it really was.

I'm sure he's a nice enough guy and fun guy to party with, which is probably how he ended up on Tesla's board in the first place, but like most of the tech bros that so many deluded goobs look up to these days, he's an empty suit that causes a great deal of harm without adding much of anything of value beyond funneling wealth into a smaller and smaller pool.  That's not something I find commendable, personally. 

[TexArcher 37522]

18 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

If I were a billionaire in Midland the first thing I’d buy would be a one-way plane ticket out of Midland. 

Seriously.  If you can afford to live absolutely anywhere in the world, and you're in Midland, TX, you don't get to tell anybody shit about fuck.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345]

2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

What do his original intentions have to do with it?  The saddest part of that origin story is that he came up with the idea because he couldn't afford his rent.  Now he's made sure many more are in the same boat.

Well, it says everything, don't you think?  If you invent something that you think is cool and will help people in your situation and it explodes/goes viral and this beautiful thing that you thought you were creating is used by others in ways that you don't support and had no way of foreseeing, that's not your fault and it says nothing about your motives, your goal when you set out etc ...  You might as well blame Tim Berners-Lee for Air BnB.  By inventing the World Wide Web, he set in motion the invention of Air BnB.  Never mind that it wasn't his intent to do so.  The Law of Unintended Consequences says that actions of people, and especially of governments, always have effects that are unanticipated. It is inviolate.  

Besides, rarely is anything 100% wholly good/bad.  The very same Air BnB that you blame (in an incredible oversimplification, by the way) for making housing unaffordable is also responsible, in the cases of two elderly people I know in Marfa, for making it so that they are able to stay in their homes when they certainly would have been forced to leave after the Great Recession of 2008-2009. It has been a lifesaver for them, enabling them to not only pay their property taxes each year but to stash away extra cash in the case of an emergency --- an emergency that, in one of their cases, has arrived. Air BnB has also made it so that houses in my neighborhood which were in the process of falling down or even uninhabitable have been bought, refurbished, and tended --- thus raising the value of all the houses in the neighborhood, including mine.  

Finally, I never said anything about him being commendable. I said that, given the track record of causes he financially supports, he would be a good candidate to consider when exploring options to mitigate the impact of Tim Dunn, the subject of this thread.  Maybe he'd do it because he feels bad the unintended impact of Air BnB. Who cares?
 

Edited February 15 by Horn Under a Bad Sign

[pyrohornIII 4809]

 

[Anastasis 23394]

Holy shit. Tito is a billionaire?

[texasdago 7553]

Today, ordinary Americans still want to make their own decisions, but ruling elites of both parties in Washington D.C. intend that we shouldn’t. The most important fight in America has always been, and will always be, “who decides.” 

I do - Tim Dunn 

https://timdunn.org/about-me-2/

His words and actions are hiiiiilarious!!!

Ruling elites... cough cough... hello?

Another Texas Monthly article - https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/power-issue-tim-dunn-pushing-republican-party-arms-god/ and one from Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2022/08/18/oils-new-bible-thumping-biden-bashing-billionaire/?sh=5004d1a135dc

...and this one is pretty fascinating - https://newstracs.com/brad-parscale-is-working-for-trump-2024-and-is-linked-to-texas-billionaire-tim-dunn/2023/10/10/ 

[safe sex 11684]

Lmao one of his kids has white guy locs 

['stache 21777]

7 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

Dunn is up-front about his desire to use politics to pave the way for a “New Earth,” in which Jesus Christ and his believers will live together. (“When heaven comes to earth and God dwells with his people as the King,” Dunn has said.) Until then, he remains a key player in the growing Christian nationalism movement, which rejects the importance of pluralism to American identity. Instead it contends that only devout Christians are good Americans.

These people don't actually believe the religious dogma stuff as the truth. They use it as a way to conform the world to their individual desires, and use whatever religious interpretation suits them to make it not their idea but the idea of the all powerful whatever. This person knows goddamned well when we die we just rot in the ground, period, but while their here, they can use it to their advantage. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

[Brisketexan 104628]

1 minute ago, 'stache said:

These people don't actually believe the religious dogma stuff as the truth. They use it as a way to conform the world to their individual desires, and use whatever religious interpretation suits them to make it not their idea but the idea of the all powerful whatever. This person knows goddamned well when we die we just rot in the ground, period, but while their here, they can use it to their advantage. Nobody will ever convince me otherwise.

[BevoAbyss 2057]

At least Texas Monthly called it what it is: "Christian Theocracy." That rag known as Texas Tribune (#bothsides) does not have the brains and/or backbone to label anything MAGA-GQP as Christian Theocracy. Same with any Texas newspaper or TV-radio news, I would imagine.

None of this is surprising, if one has been paying attention for the past 4 decades. I'll say it again: the Christian fascist theocracy been building since Reagan-Falwell, expanding right through the Bushes and megachurch clown-show Texas, and seizing power through Trump chaos and MAGA idiot-world America. 

Any vote for Reagan, the Bushes, Trump, or any Texas GOP politician helped enable all this Bible-thumping theocratic, fascist BS.

Edited February 16 by BevoAbyss
typo.