All told, 11 of the 28 House candidates supported by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks won their primaries outright, and another eight are headed to runoffs this May.
the billionaires’ campaign money. And their enemies believed they were vulnerable — one bad election day from losing their grip on the state.
Tuesday was a stark contrast from just two years ago, when Dunn and Wilks’ top political fundraising group poured $5.2 million into a host of longshot candidates — much more than what they spent in the current election cycle. They lost badly that year — 18 of the 19 challengers to Texas House members they backed were defeated. Their only successful House candidate that year was Stan Kitzman of Pattison, who toppled former Rep. Phil Stephenson of Wharton in a runoff.
Even so, the billionaires’ fingerprints appear all over the outcomes. Since January, they spent more than $3 million to support candidates through a new political action committee, Texans United For a Conservative Majority. That PAC is a rebrand of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which has been at the center of a
Dunn and Wilks both made their fortunes in West Texas oil and, in the last 15 years, have poured more than $100 million into aof political action committees, dark money groups, nonprofits and media websites that they have used to push the state GOP further to the right. In House District 62, Shelley Luther, a former hair salon owner who rose to fame after being jailed for defying COVID-19 lockdown measures, beat Republican Rep. Reggie Smith by 7 percentage points — a stunning, 24-point swing from the 2022 primary. Luther has run for office twice and lost. In her last run, she said that she was not comfortable with transgender children and complained that students shouldn’t be punished for making fun of them.
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