# Empower Texans **Empower Texans** was the political machine that West Texas oil billionaire [[Tim Dunn]] used to pull the Texas Legislature to the right. From 2006 to 2020, backed by Dunn and the [[Wilks Brothers]] (Farris and Dan), it scored legislators, funded primary challengers and ran its own news outlet. It also showed House Republicans that crossing it could end a career. It **dissolved in 2020**, but its operation lives on in a series of successor PACs. The vault treats it as the template for **state-level donor discipline**. ## The machine - **Founding.** It started in early 2006 as Empower Texans, at first to fight a proposed tax on investor-financed oil wells, and later also operated as Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. **Michael Quinn Sullivan**, from the [[Texas Public Policy Foundation]], became president in December 2006. - **Scorecards and challengers.** It published legislative ratings, funded primary challengers to Republicans who scored badly, and rewarded those who scored well. - **The outlet.** **Texas Scorecard** (from 2015) was its own news operation. It covered the Capitol on the group's terms and sought floor press credentials like any newspaper. It was spun off as a separate nonprofit in 2020. ## The Bonnen tape In June 2019, House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and his caucus chair, Dustin Burrows, met Sullivan. Sullivan secretly recorded the meeting. On the tape, Bonnen offered **House floor press credentials** for Texas Scorecard's reporters if Empower Texans would target about ten moderate Republican members in the next primaries. Sullivan released the 64-minute recording on **Oct 15, 2019**. Within a week Bonnen announced he would not seek reelection. The ethics side ran for a decade. The Texas Ethics Commission had fined Sullivan **$10,000** in 2014 for failing to register as a lobbyist. The Texas Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in March 2024, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review on **June 2, 2025**, which sent the case back for a jury to set what he owes. ## Successors The money moved on rather than stopping: - **[[Defend Texas Liberty PAC]] (from March 2020).** Funded mainly by Dunn ($9.7 million) and the Wilkses ($4.8 million), it ran the same primary-discipline campaigns. In October 2023 its president, former Rep. Jonathan Stickland, hosted white nationalist [[Nick Fuentes]] at his office for nearly seven hours. The resulting scandal drove Stickland out. - **Texans United for a Conservative Majority (January 2024).** A **new** PAC, not a rename, seeded with $1.3 million from Farris Wilks and $700,000 from Dunn's company. It funded challengers to the House Republicans who had voted in May 2023 to impeach Attorney General [[Ken Paxton]], whom the Senate acquitted that September. - **2026.** In the March 3 primary, Dunn-backed challengers beat Reps. Cecil Bell Jr. and Stan Kitzman but failed against Ken King and Angelia Orr. The cycle was dominated less by the Dunn network than by challengers backed by Texans for Lawsuit Reform. ## See Also - [[Tim Dunn]] · [[Farris Wilks]] · [[Dan Wilks]] · [[Wilks Brothers]] · [[Texas Public Policy Foundation]] - [[Defend Texas Liberty PAC]] · [[Ken Paxton Impeachment and SEC Settlement]] · [[Nick Fuentes]] · [[Texas History Hub]]