Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 210, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 28, 2018 Page: 10 of 22
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STATE
10A
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Denton Record-Chronicle
From Page 1A
Wilks
staunchly conservative political
causes and news media sites. In
state races, the two couples have
zoomed to the top of the list of
GOP mega donors.
Through Jan. 25, the Wilkses
and their main PACs — Em-
power Texans, Texas Right to
life and Texas Home School Co-
alition — had plowed nearly
$2.7 million into state races,
mostly GOP legislative cam-
paigns, according to a Dallas
Morning News analysis of cam-
paign-finance reports to the
Texas Ethics Commission.
One-fifth of those dollars
have flowed to Hall in his race
with Burkett. The contest pits
Hall, who opposes toll roads and
state debt, against Burkett, a
lieutenant of retiring Speaker
Joe Straus, who has warned the
party’s hard-right elements are
anti-business.
Asked to discuss their politi-
cal giving, the Wilkses did not
respond to The Dallas Morn-
ing News.
They and advisers who man-
age PACs and candidates they
support have devoted big sums
to defending two tea party in-
cumbents, Hall and Rep. Mike
Lang of Granbury, said Rice
University political scientist
Mark Jones.
This cycle, Hall and Lang are
the top targets of the state GOP’s
old guard and business groups
— both increasingly alarmed by
transgender bathroom legisla-
tion and anti-immigration mea-
sures promoted by Gov. Greg
Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick,
Jones said.
In Hall’s race against Burkett
and several House battles, the
Wilks brothers and a few other
ideologically driven conserva-
tive donors have stripped away
the shield that business-orient-
ed Republicans have tradition-
ally enjoyed, he said.
“They’ve allowed the move-
ment conservatives to effectively
compete on a near-equal play-
ing field with their establish-
ment rivals,” Jones said of the
Wilkses, Midland oilman Tim
Dunn and a few of Dunn’s
friends.
State Sen. Bob
Hall, R-Edge-
wood, and his
election chal-
lenger, Rep.
Cindy Burkett,
R-Sunnyvale,
were inter-
viewed at The
Dallas Morning
News this
month. The
Wilks brothers
are backing Hall,
although they
live in West
Texas.
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He questioned the propriety
of one mailing, from an Empow-
er Texans-created entity called
Texas Ethics Disclosure Board.
It lists lobbying clients of Geren’s
wife, Mindy Ellmer.
“It’s very official-looking,”
said Geren, who said he’d count-
ered by buyingup as many inter-
net domain names for the group
as he could.
Sullivan, of Empower Tex-
ans, did not respond to requests
for comment.
Tarrant County Judge Glen
Whitley, a Republican, said the
Wilks brothers and Empower
Texans, dominated by West Tex-
as donors, “are in fact trying to
buy the Legislature.”
“People need to wake up and
realize when their representa-
tives have most of their cam-
paign contributions coming
from outside their particular
districts that ought to be a signal
that maybe they’re not going to
represent us,” Whitley said.
Southlake GOP Rep. Gio-
vanni Capriglione is being chal-
lenged by Keller City Council
member Armin Mizani, who’s
backed by the Wilkses and Em-
power Texans, he noted.
“Gio has been very strong
pro-life and yet all of a sudden,
these organizations that the
Wilkses have been contributing
heavily to are going against him,”
Whitley said. “They’re in fact
scaring people off from running.”
an ally whom Straus tapped to
handle some of the bills passed
to overhaul Child Protective
Services and foster care.
Last year, Straus and his lieu-
tenants blocked House passage
of a bathroom bill and other top
Patrick priorities, such as tighter
caps on local property tax reve-
nue and on state and local
spending.
Freedom Caucus
With some support from Ab-
bott, the major conservative do-
nors have circled the wagons
around House members such as
Lang who belong to the Texas
Freedom Caucus. The 12 House
incumbents who formed the
caucus last session are in sync
with Dunn, Sullivan and the
Wilkses. Like them, Lang & Co.
want to make their chamber
more like Patrick’s Senate.
The Wilkses and their PACs
also are providing, at least so far,
more than two-thirds of the con-
tributions for four Republican
challengers to GOP incumbents
and for Dallas County Republi-
can House hopeful Deanna
Metzger.
In a district that includes
parts of North and East Dallas,
Metzger is seeking the GOP
nomination to challenge Demo-
cratic Rep. Victoria Neave this
fall. Through Jan. 25, Metzger
was beholden to the Wilkses and
Wilks-funded PACs for 80 per-
cent of her total funding.
Keffer, the Wilkses’ former
state representative, said the do-
nations amount to “overkill” and
could come back to haunt the re-
cipients by creating an unfavor-
able perception.
“I would think they want
their guys to go out and raise
money so everybody knows they
have presence in the district, in-
stead of getting nine-tenths of
their money from one source,”
he said. “It just makes all of these
guys lazy.”
The primary is March 6. Ear-
ly voting continues through Fri-
Top donors, current cycle
Farris and
Dan Wilks
$1,350,000
Farris, JoAnn,
Dan and Staci Wilks
$1.25 million
Tim Dunn
$1,215,000
Ralph &
Linda Schmidt
$305,000
EMPOWER
TEXANS
Tim Dunn
$100,000
TEXAS RIGHT
TO LIFE
Mayes
Middleton
$200,000
All other
donors
$284,298
All other
donors
$231,166
Kyle &
Jamie Stallings
$150,000
Kyle Stallings
$278,000
Michael Hogue/The Dallas Morning News
SOURCE: Texas Ethics Commission
numbered House Democrats.
In the 2014 election cycle,
Dunn provided $3.4 million to
the Empower Texans PAC, or 80
percent of its receipts. In the
current cycle, Dunn has given
the PAC $1.2 million.
However, the Wilkses have
now eclipsed him, giving $1.35
million.
slightly more than they’ve given
for 2018, though it’s still early in
the current cycle.
They continue to have frack-
ing interests. Last year, the
Wilkses owned 12 percent of a
Canadian company, Calfrach
Well Services Inc., Bloomberg
News reported. Some critics
have noted that they donated to
more than 20 GOP lawmakers
who voted to overturn Denton’s
anti-fracking ordinance in
2015.
The Dallas
Morning
News found.
Other
Wilks-backed
House candi-
dates include
Fort Worth
businessman
Richard “Bo” French, whom
they’ve given nearly $213,000
for his rematch against Straus
sidekick and House Administra-
tion Committee Chairman
Charlie Geren; and Thomas
McNutt of Corsicana, whose
family runs the Collin Street
Bakery, famous for its fruitcakes.
He helped force into retirement
Straus ally and House State Af-
fairs Committee Chairman By-
ron Cook, who isn’t seeking a
ninth term.
\
Lang
Brothers’ background
Until a few years ago, the
brothers were unknown outside
of the petroleum industry and a
small religious group in West
Texas.
But Jones, the Rice professor,
puts the Wilks brothers in a sep-
arate category from past major
donors in state races, such as the
late Houston trial lawyer Steve
Mostyn, who backed Demo-
crats, and the late Houston ho-
mebuilder Bob Perry, who sup-
ported Republicans. Perry won
from the Legislature protections
against lawsuits over defective
construction and even a new if
short-lived state agency to han-
dle homeowner complaints.
The Wilkses, by contrast, “are
very ideological donors,” Jones
said.
“They’ve eliminated the prin-
cipal advantage that establish-
ment candidates always had,
which is money.”
Hall said the large amount of
donations from the Wilkses,
Empower Texans and Right to
life is an endorsement of his
core beliefs.
Their mother, Myrtle, was
the daughter of Charlie Fenter.
In the late 1940s, Fenter led a
group that broke away from a
Church of Christ and formed a
new congregation in De Leon,
southwest of Stephenville. It lat-
er was influenced by a Bethel,
Pennsylvania, religious group
that developed out of the radio
ministry of Jacob O. Meyer.
Following in the footsteps of
his late father, Voy Wilks, Farris
Wilks is pastor of Assembly of
Yahweh 7th Day Church in Ris-
ing Star. Adherents observe a
Friday night-to-Saturday dusk
sabbath, consider being gay a
“grievous sin,” condemn abor-
tion as “murder” and view the
Bible as correct in every histor-
ical and scientific detail, accord-
ing to a 2015 story by Reuters
news service.
Farris and Dan Wilks grew
up working in their father’s ma-
sonry business. They struck it
rich in the hydraulic fracturing
revolution in North American
oil fields in the 2000s. They sold
the majority stake in their busi-
ness, Frac Tech, in 2011. The
brothers are worth an estimated
$15 billion each.
Today, they own Forward
Publishing, which includes the
conservative website The Daily
Wire. They also continue to have
interests in Canadian shale
plays; are among the largest pri-
vate landowners in Montana
and Idaho; and are major bene-
factors of Dennis Prager Univer-
sity, which helps produce videos
for staunch conservatives and
their causes.
In 2014, the Wilks brothers
and their PACs gave nearly
$800,000 to then-Texas Sen.
Ken Paxton of McKinney in his
successful bid for state attorney
general. In that cycle, they and
their favored PACs such as Em-
power Texans also gave about
$14 million to staunchly conser-
vative legislative candidates that
year, The Dallas Morning
News found.
Dan and Farris Wilks then
exploded onto the national po-
litical scene in 2015 when they
gave $15 million to a super PAC
supporting Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz’s presidential bid.
They also ramped up their
giving to state lawmakers. In the
2016 cycle, the Wilkses and their
state PACs gave nearly $2.9 mil-
lion to legislative candidates —
Top race
In the Wilkses’ top race, the
Senate seat battle east of Dallas,
Hall, a military veteran, is a
freshman close to Patrick, the
lieutenant governor. The Em-
power Texans PAC, of which the
Wilkses are now the biggest fi-
nancial
‘Official-looking’ mailer
Last week, Geren said the
Wilkses’ money — 57 percent of
French’s total funding, The Dal-
las MomingNews found — has
forced him to respond to waves
of attack-mail pieces by Em-
power Texans.
“I spend as much time rais-
ing money as I do going to
events and politicking,” Geren
said.
“To me it says they like the
values I have,” he said. “They like
the fact I go to Austin and do
what I say. They like the fact that
I’m 100 percent pro-life. They
like the fact that I’m fiscally re-
sponsible. They like the fact that
I stand up for family values.”
Craig Murphy, an adviser to
Burkett, though, said Hall is like
a puppet on Empower Texans’
string.
angels,
$200,000 to Hall last month.
For eight years, the PAC’s main
goal has been dethroning Straus
as speaker. In October, Straus, a
San Antonio Republican, an-
nounced he’s retiring.
Burkett, who is giving up her
House seat to challenge Hall, is
donated
“They’re giving to try to elect
candidates who share their vi-
sion of the world rather than
candidates who will promote
legislation that will benefit them
economically,” he said.
day.
4TH ANNUAL
From friend to ‘villain’
In 2016, Farris and Dan
Wilks’ top priority was defeating
Eastland Republican Jim Keffer,
a key Straus ally who was their
state representative.
The Wilkses and their causes
showered $336,500 on Lang.
He announced against Keffer
early in 2015.
That year, Lang’s wife, Katie,
the Hood County clerk, attract-
ed national headlines when she
“In four years, 196 times in a
row, he did exactly what they
told him ahead of the time was
louch $4
Truck DCS
their preferred position,” Mur-
phy said, referring to Empower
Texans’ daily lists advising law-
makers of the group’s position
on bills.
“That’s amazing,” he said.
“Most people don’t agree with
their own husband or wife 100
percent of the time. But he man-
aged to agree with the guy who
gave him a half-million dollars
100 percent of the time.”
cited her religious beliefs in de-
nying a marriage license to a gay
couple after the U.S. Supreme
Court
DATE: Saturday, March 3, 2018
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Rising on the right
For much of the past decade,
party purification efforts by
staunch conservatives were
funded mostly
by Midland’s
Dunn. He fi-
nanced chal-
lengers to
Straus, his
GOP allies in
the House and
centrist-con-
servative Re-
publicans in the Senate.
Dunn operated through Em-
power Texans and Texans for
Fiscal Responsibility, both run
by his Austin-based strategist,
former journalist Michael
Quinn Sullivan.
In recent cycles, Empower
Texans has joined forces with so-
cial conservative groups such as
Texas Right to Life, the Texas
Home School Coalition and Tex-
as Eagle Forum to try to defeat
“RINOs” — deemed Republi-
cans in name only. Dunn, Sulli-
van and now the Wilkses deter-
mined that Straus was too mod-
erate, too conciliatory to out-
legalized
unions. Hood County eventually
paid a $43,800 settlement to a
couple who was denied.
Eventually, Keffer bowed
out. Lang won the seat over a
more moderate Republican by 8
percentage points.
Keffer, who said he’d been on
friendly terms with the Wilks
brothers, said he was surprised
to learn in 2015 they were mak-
ing big contributions to Lang.
“They were supporters of
mine. I helped get Cisco an air-
port,” he said, referring to their
hometown. “Then they got in
the other camp. They started be-
lieving Right to life and Mi-
chael Quinn [Sullivan]. I be-
came the villain.”
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In the current cycle, Lang
faces Granbury school Superin-
tendent Jim Largent in the GOP
primary. Their contest is viewed
as a key test of whether the
House will drop its opposition to
Patrick’s private-school tuition
vouchers.
Through Jan. 25, the Wilkses
and their favorite PACs had giv-
en Lang more than $173,000,
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 210, Ed. 1 Wednesday, February 28, 2018, newspaper, February 28, 2018; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1137779/m1/10/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .