In railroad commission GOP runoff, Stogner best

As many readers know, we initially recommended oil and gas attorney Sarah Stogner in the GOP primary for Texas railroad commissioner. In our candidate interview, she impressed on every substantive issue facing the Railroad Commission of Texas. She spoke with urgency about addressing flaring and venting of natural gas, contaminated water and seismic activity due to fracking. She called for much-needed ethics reform for a regulator that is cozy with industry and spoke of holding bad operators accountable.

But after Stogner posted a TikTok video of herself sitting semi-nude on a pump jack, we withdrew our recommendation and opted for another candidate, Dawayne Tipton, who also impressed us. This generated even more attention.

The video surprised us, and we cited a desire, anachronistic as it might be, for decorum and civil discourse from candidates. We also wondered if such a video was a distraction. Stogner offered a pointed response. And she raised some powerful questions about political norms, and why we (and others) would react to a short social media video in which she is “scantily clad” given the significant enduring issues at the railroad commission. She’s given us much to think about.

Stogner then made the runoff against incumbent Wayne Christian. We invited both candidates to meetings. Christian never committed to a meeting. Stogner accepted. We don’t normally offer candidates guest opinion pieces, but we did so in this race, given the dynamics. Both candidates accepted.

In a this month, Stogner told us she viewed the pump jack video as capturing the issues “that I as a female in the oil and gas industry struggle with.”

“You are supposed to be pretty, but not too pretty,” she said, “and you are supposed to be assertive, but not too assertive.”

She said she has talked at length about the big issues surrounding the oil and gas industry — and could not break through with voters. She could not afford traditional campaign ads, she said, so she made her own, a “Super Bowl” video. The video was an effort to reclaim “what men have been objectifying us about” and to get the attention of voters.

“My asset is my brain; it’s my experience,” she told us. “And now that I have got your attention, let’s dive into all of that, and I feel like I have done a pretty good job of turning that conversation back to the issues.”

We again recommend Sarah Stogner for the Railroad Commission of Texas. She is vastly superior to Christian. As an oil and gas attorney, she has relevant expertise for a regulator.

Christian is a former state lawmaker and former Grammy-nominated gospel singer. He also carries heavy ethical baggage. Consider the $100,000 campaign contribution he received from the High Roller Group, which in 2020 was seeking to build a ninestory landfill to dispose of oil sludge about 20 miles north of Midland near the Ogallala Aquifer.

While railroad commission staff recommended killing the project, Christian and then-Commissioner Ryan Sitton supported it. Days later, Christian then received the campaign contribution.

Stogner speaks urgently about holding oil firms accountable for abandoned wells, and we like her idea of creating an agency liaison to help landowners navigate the railroad commission’s bureaucracy.

She has ideas about providing incentives to natural gas producers to improve reliability, and she deftly talks about the realities of climate change, reducing flaring and venting, and the need for innovation in the form of carbon capture, while also recognizing the value and necessity of all energy sources.

While Christian has sought to portray Stogner as “increasing” regulations, she told us “we just need to enforce what’s on the books,” and she championed the oil and gas industry as important for domestic security and lifting people out of poverty.

Meanwhile, Christian, a climate skeptic, has dismissed an independent study about the benefits of reducing flaring as “too good to be true.”

If elected, Stogner said she will be going live on TikTok at her first meeting — to bring transparency to an opaque agency.

We ended our initial recommendation by saying we appreciated Stogner’s sense of urgency. We still do — and so should voters. She wants to change all that Christian’s tenure represents.

Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas attorney, has the expertise for a regulator. She is the superior candidate.