FORT WORTH
The mild-mannered Tarrant County judge is speaking out again, this time about what has gone so very wrong for both Republicans and Texas.
And he’s naming names: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Tim Dunn and Dan and Farris Wilks.
“Since 2006, when Dan Patrick got elected [as state senator] and Empower Texans was founded, we have become more and more like Washington each year,” he told civic leaders the other day, unloading on two forces that have made life miserable for business Republicans and lately have even pressed Gov. Greg Abbott into falling obediently in line.
“They demonize everything. They attack local officials. And from Empower Texans’ standpoint” — he used the old PAC name loosely for both Dunn and the Wilks brothers, all West Texas oil-money political donors who spend millions to elect candidates — “they feel like if they can get influence over half the people in the Capitol, then they can control what goes on in this state.”
This isn’t the first time Whitley, a 24-year county commissioner and judge leaving office in 2023, has sounded off.
In 2018, the Hurst accountant set off fireworks at the usually snoreworthy “State of the County” speech by saying Dunn was “trying to buy the Legislature” by backing Texas House challengers.
This time he singled out Patrick, a former radio talk host who holds the most powerful position in state government and wields huge clout as the state official closest to former President Donald Trump.
“Patrick is driving Abbott farther to the right,” Whitley said in a later interview.
As an example, Whitley gave the topsy-turvy political twist last week, when Abbott and Texas Republican officials sided with labor unions against corporations in a dispute over whether employers can require workplace vaccinations.
The Fort Worth and Dallas chambers of commerce, Texas Realtors, manufacturers, contractors and even Texans for Lawsuit Reform responded sharply to defend employers.
“When would you have ever thought the Republican Party would be telling a business what they can do?” Whitley said.
“The lieutenant governor basically has a stranglehold over what goes to the governor’s desk. So it’s transgender bills, it’s bathroom bills, it’s the election [recount]. It’s a bunch of things Patrick keeps pushing.”
Lately, the two officials seem locked in a measuring contest to see who’s the most conservative going into the 2022 election.
“The governor is running again and trying to get himself in line to run for president,” Whitley said.
“He has to be seen as the most conservative person in the state, and more conservative than the Florida governor [Ron DeSantis].”
Yet in Texas, Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan are really the two most powerful officials in the state. They rule state policy, state law and the state budget.
Abbott’s power lies in appointments, and lately in the 1975 law allowing him to issue orders and “meet the dangers” of disasters.
If Patrick is driving the party farther to the right, then the money from Dunn and the Wilks brothers is helping push it along.
Dunn, co-founder of a religious private school in Midland, was described in a 2018 Texas Monthly headline as “pushing the Republican Party into the arms of God.”
The PAC has been low-profile since a couple of 2019 scandals, one where staffers were recorded poking fun at Abbott’s wheelchair. But last year Dunn gave $1.5 million to Pilot Pilot salon owner Shelley Luther’s losing Texas Senate campaign.
Farris Wilks, a church elder, and his brother Dan have emerged in recent years as prominent national Republican donors funding websites and supporting the party’s Christian-libertarian faction. Farris’ son-in-law, Jon Francis, spent $1.5 million in a single losing 2020 Texas House campaign.
“These people are willing to put millions, millions and millions into campaigns,” Whitley said.
“They come in with their money and try to control whatever goes on in the state. They take more and more control away from our local elected officials.”
Whitley isn’t running again in 2022.
That means he can keep telling the truth about Texas.
This story was originally published October 16, 2021 12:00 AM.
