Tea party billionaires targeting Legislature

AUSTIN — The Texas tea party movement, a faction continuously battling House Speaker Joe Straus and his top lieutenants, has a new set of megadonors providing financial firepower in the ongoing intraparty warfare among state Republicans.

West Texas fracking billionaire Farris Wilks and his family sank $15 million into Ted Cruz’s presidential bid over the summer, and now they’ve set their sights on a new target: the Texas Legislature.

Recently released campaign finance reports show Wilks and his wife, Joann, contributed a total of $800,000 to the political arms of two allied tea party groups — Empower Texans and Texas Right to Life — intent on steering the Legislature further to the right. Some of that cash, state records show, has already been spread around to help candidates critical of

Straus’ leadership or those challenging the speaker’s allies in the March 1 primary.

Another $50,000 cash injection from Farris Wilks went directly to one of Straus’ opponents in the upcoming GOP primary, San Antonio tea party activist Jeff Judson.

The Austin-based trade publication Quorum Report first disclosed the contributions from the Wilks brothers.

Combined, the contributions are a drop in the bucket for Farris Wilks and his brother Dan, who together have a net worth of about $2.7 billion, according to Forbes.

But the high-six-figure amount, money aimed directly at shaking up the state’s political power structure, marks a new front in the ultra-expensive shootout that has consumed the state GOP for years.

Asked about the entry of a West Texas billionaire family into the world of hotly contested and expensive state GOP primary contests, Straus brushed it off with a simple message: “Welcome to the fray.”

“What they really don’t like is the fact they don’t have a puppet they can control,” Straus told reporters Thursday after a speaking event in downtown Austin.

‘Patriotic family’

Straus’ sharp comment highlights the tension among many Republicans in the Legislature facing primary challenges from tea party groups. Straus has been in the line of fire since he first became speaker in 2009 and has had to fend off consecutive primary challenges from a tea-party supported candidate. He’s also crushed several tea party House lawmakers who have challenged him for the title of House speaker.

Empower Texans has spent big in past elections against Straus and many of the lawmakers who make up his leadership team. The vast majority of the millions of dollars spent by Empower Texans’ political arm in recent years has come solely from Midland oilman Tim Dunn, state records show.

Those who know the low-profile Wilks brothers say the big spending on state elections falls in line with their overall conservative philosophy.

“They are a very patriotic family,” said Luke Macias, a Republican consultant who has worked with the Wilks family. “The Wilks’ generosity continues to help conservatives get their message out.”

The sons of a bricklayer, Farris — a 63-year-old who still pastors a church in the small town of Cisco — and his brother Dan earned their fortune in the hydraulic fracturing industry. They sold their company Frac Tech, which designed and built pumper rigs used to open shale formations, for $3.5 billion in 2011.

“Our country was founded on the idea that our rights come from the

creator, not the government. I’m afraid we’re losing that,” Farris Wilks told CNN in a July statement when the outlet first reported that he and his brother had pumped $15 million into a super PAC supporting Ted Cruz.

The two have used nonprofits to steer millions of dollars to social conservative and far-right causes. Their recent $800,000 in contributions was not the family’s first foray into state political giving.

Straus is prepared

During the 2014 cycle, the Wilks family gave $100,000 to the campaign of Konni Burton, a tea party firebrand who would go on to win the race to replace Wendy Davis of Fort Worth in the state Senate. They also gave $25,000 to another tea party candidate, Bob Hall of Edgewood, helping him beat a long-time incumbent in the state Senate.

Judson, the tea party candidate challenging Straus in San Antonio’s House District 121, said the $50,000 donation he received from the Wilks family will help him run

a more effective campaign against the very well-funded speaker.

“They are doing this because they believe in the principle of America and the great state of Texas,” said Judson, a former lobbyist and ex-head of an influential Austin think tank.

Macias, the Republican consultant, cautioned not to look too much into the big-money blast from the Wilks family, saying he expects Austin’s entrenched power players to help establishment Republicans outspend conservatives in this cycle.

For his part, Straus is armed with nearly $9 million in his political coffers, money that readily flows from special-interest groups and lobbyists due to his position of influence as speaker.

He has already spent heftily in the current cycle to position himself early to fend off Judson and another GOP primary challenger, former school teacher Sheila Bean. Some of that money will also be used to help his allies in the House.