# Defend Texas Liberty PAC **Defend Texas Liberty** was the main political action committee of the West Texas oil billionaires [[Tim Dunn]] and [[Farris Wilks]]. They used it to discipline the Texas Republican Party from the right. Dunn had given it nearly $10 million by 2022. It is best understood as the successor to [[Empower Texans]]: the same donors, the same primary-challenge strategy, and in Jonathan Stickland, a former state representative, a president who was a veteran of the same hard-right bloc. ## What it did - **Primary warfare.** It funded challengers against Republican incumbents seen as insufficiently conservative, especially allies of House Speaker Dade Phelan, and punished members who crossed the donors on school vouchers, border policy or leadership votes. - **The Paxton impeachment.** It gave **$3 million** to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's campaign as he prepared to preside over the 2023 Senate trial of Attorney General [[Ken Paxton]]. The Senate acquitted Paxton. See [[Ken Paxton Impeachment and SEC Settlement]]. ## The Fuentes meeting In October 2023 the *Texas Tribune* reported that Stickland had hosted white nationalist [[Nick Fuentes]] at the PAC's Fort Worth-area office for nearly seven hours. The fallout was immediate: - Phelan and his allies denounced the meeting. - Patrick said Dunn had told him "unequivocally" that the meeting was "a serious blunder," and put $6 million of campaign money into Israeli bonds. - The state party's executive committee fought over an antisemitism resolution prompted by the episode. ## The rebrand The donors did not leave; they changed vehicles. In December 2023 a new PAC, **Texans United for a Conservative Majority**, appeared. Dunn's firm Hexagon Partners gave $700,000 and Wilks gave $1.3 million. After the scandal Defend Texas Liberty itself nearly stopped giving. The new PAC went straight at Phelan's allies in the March 2024 primaries, where many incumbents who had voted to impeach Paxton lost. **The pattern worth keeping:** in a donor-driven faction, a scandal retires the brand, not the money. ## See also - [[Tim Dunn]] · [[Farris Wilks]] · [[Empower Texans]] · [[Texas History Hub]] - [[Ken Paxton Impeachment and SEC Settlement]] · [[Nick Fuentes]] · [[Energy Sector]]