How a multi-year legal battle by allies of a billionaire megadonor set off this year’s explosive House Speaker race

“How a multi-year legal battle by allies of a billionaire megadonor set off this year’s explosive House Speaker race” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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A bruising election season had come and gone, but the political attacks kept rolling in.

Voters in state Rep. Cody Harris’ East Texas district were flooded with text messages the week before the legislative session kicked off. The barrage of attacks accused the Palestine Republican of colluding with Democrats to elect a speaker of the Texas House.

“A small group of Republican Texas House members are trying to cut a deal with a majority Democrat coalition to elect a speaker who will kill our conservative policies” said one text, which included a disclosure that it was paid for by the Republican Party of Texas. “Unfortunately, your Representative Cody Harris decided to ignore the Trump mandate and is working with the Democrats to stop the GOP nominee.”

Over the past year, outside groups spent heavily on campaigns for their speaker of choice, turning a race that is usually waged quietly and behind closed doors into a public and caustic spectacle that has raised allegations among its members of foul play.

State Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, the candidate most closely associated with prior House leadership, ultimately won. But the result came only after a deluge of spending made legally possible by a pair of lawsuits 14 years apart filed by close associates or allies of a chief Burrows’ adversary: West Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn, who has for years funded an effort to disrupt the traditional Republican leadership of the House and push the chamber closer to his no-compromise, Christian conservative ideals.

As a result of the most recent lawsuit, the Texas Ethics Commission agreed in 2023 to stop enforcing laws that ban outside spending in the speaker’s race, cementing a ruling in the previous case that found the prohibition violated the First Amendment. The commission’s decision was made at the encouragement of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which refused to represent the commission otherwise.

Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who dropped out of the race seeking his third term as speaker after enduring several months of a loud campaign against him, said the presence of outside spending marks a new era in the speaker’s race.

“Outside forces, folks who may not even live in the state of Texas or in the United States, are going to be able to exert pressure among members about their vote for speaker,” he told The Texas Tribune in an interview. “It’s just something we haven’t ever dealt with in the state of Texas.”

The lawsuits ushered in an open season on spending for attack ads. House members for months saw their districts bombarded with social media and text message campaigns, targeting them over their speaker allegiances.

“It was totally different,” said Rep. Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, who said every day leading up to the start of session his inboxes were full of messages threatening him if he didn’t vote for Burrows’ opponent in the race, Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield. “We received thousands of phone calls and emails from all over the state, just really ugly voicemails left and it was totally out of hand.” In prior sessions, VanDeaver, who voted for Burrows, remembers only a few people expressing opinions about his vote for speaker.

Early financial reports show that allies and political groups funded by Dunn spent heavily in the last few months of 2024. The Republican Party of Texas, funded largely by Dunn in recent years, spent at least $163,000 on the speaker’s race. Dunn’s PAC, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, spent at least $43,000. At least one PAC supporting Burrows also spent nearly $60,000 in the last weeks of 2024. Dunn did not respond to an interview request.

Those numbers likely represent only a portion of the spending. It will be months before those groups are required to disclose their spending in the two weeks leading up to the vote. And the state’s weak ethics laws mean Texans may never know the total spent to influence this speaker vote.

Lawmakers have responded to the latest political warfare with lawsuits and legislation. Harris filed an ethics complaint against the chair of the Texas GOP, accusing him of bribery for threatening political retribution if he didn’t vote for Cook. (The ethics commission dismissed the complaint stating it wasn’t in their jurisdiction.)

Another Republican House member filed a lawsuit against a group he said published his cell phone number in a message to constituents that falsely alleged he supported Burrows. And other Republican lawmakers have filed bills to put more guardrails around mass text messages sent as part of political activity.

“It felt like a highly contentious primary runoff,” Harris said. “They tried to elevate the speakership to a statewide elected office and the reality is it’s not. It’s determined by 150 members of the Texas House. … This time they tried to completely disrupt that.”

Ethics reform in the wake of Sharpstown

In the early 1970s, political scandal rocked the Capitol after nearly two dozen Texas officials, including then-House Speaker Gus Mutscher Jr., were embroiled in what became known as the Sharpstown stock fraud scandal, where lawmakers were found to have passed legislation favorable to a Texas businessman in exchange for the opportunity to buy stock in his banking business.

Angry voters sent a largely new crop of lawmakers to Austin in 1973 with demands to restore public trust. Dubbed “The Reform Session,” the Legislature passed a sweeping set of ethics rules, including one bill barring legislators from using campaign money “to aid or defeat a speaker candidate,” and prohibiting individuals from spending more than $100 on correspondence that might influence the speaker’s election. The punishment was up to a year in jail, a $4,000 fine or both.

From then on, it would be almost unheard of for outsiders to get involved publicly in a House leadership race. Lawmakers considered the vote to be an internal legislative act — a matter of “housekeeping” — to be treated differently than an election for office.

But in 2008, a coalition of legal groups sued the Texas Ethics Commission over the prohibition. Among the plaintiffs was the Free Market Foundation and its president Kelly Shackelford. The Free Market Foundation eventually became the First Liberty Institute, of which Shackelford remains the president. Dunn has been a longtime board member.

At the time, their argument — that the ban on spending in the leadership race violated the First Amendment — had bipartisan support. Other plaintiffs included the Christian conservative Texas Eagle Forum and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We were shocked that this would be in the law,” Shackelford said. “The speaker has a lot of power over pretty much every issue and to allow the general public to speak into that, I think, is important.”

Dunn has served on the board for more than two decades. Shackelford told The Texas Tribune that Dunn was not involved with the lawsuit.

Then U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, ruled that lawmakers were too broad when they blocked outside spending in the speakers’ races.

“The election of the Speaker is not, therefore, a matter of internal Housekeeping,” wrote Yeakel in his ruling. “It is an issue of great political importance and a legitimate subject of public debate. Therefore, public speech relating to the election of the Speaker is subject to all the protections of the First Amendment.”

Empower Texans tests the waters

Yeakel’s ruling came around the same time that factions within the Texas GOP started to diverge. Moderate Republican Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio rose to power in the House with the help of Democrats, a fact that conservative members of the party used against him in subsequent primaries.

Empower Texans, a conservative lobbying group funded largely by Dunn, started testing the waters, publicly advocating for their preferred speaker candidate. In 2011, they supported Ken Paxton, who was at that point a relatively unknown state representative from McKinney, in his campaign to unseat Straus as speaker. Paxton vowed to choose more conservative lawmakers to chair influential House committees.

“This is the first time in modern history when Texans can express their preference on the speaker’s race and involve themselves in it,” Empower Texans wrote in a blog post in 2010. “Some in the Austin power elite – including the media – don’t like it.”

Paxton ultimately dropped out of the race, and Straus held on to the gavel. Throughout the rest of the decade, Empower Texans continued to attack House leaders, accusing them of being “Republican in Name Only,” and advocating for more conservative leadership in the lower chamber.

When Dennis Bonnen, an Angleton Republican, succeeded Straus as speaker in 2019, Empower Texans initially praised him. Then, the group began to complain that the new House leader — who was supposed to be more conservative than his predecessor — was compromising too much on key issues and ignoring their input.

Bonnen served one term as speaker, brought down by the leader of Empower Texans who released a secret recording where Bonnen and Burrows offered media credentials to the organization in exchange for his help to “pop” some House Republicans in the next primary.

Bonnen retired and the House handed the gavel to Rep. Dade Phelan of Beaumont, a Bonnen ally.

Only two representatives voted against Phelan for speaker, including former Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royce City, a freshman at the time. Slaton was bankrolled by Defend Texas Liberty, another Dunn-backed PAC that rose from the ashes of Empower Texans, which disbanded in 2020. Slaton was expelled from the Legislature in 2023 after a House investigation determined he had sex with a 19-year-old intern after giving her alcohol.

It was Slaton who took the Ethics Commission to court in late 2022 to once again challenge state statutes that prohibit outside spending in the speaker race. He and two other plaintiffs sued to remove a few remaining statutes that banned the practice. Slaton, Robert Bruce, a San Antonio conservative activist, and the Grayson County Conservatives PAC, argued that they wanted to spend campaign funds, personal money and PAC funds, respectively, to show support for a speaker candidate and state law was unconstitutionally prohibiting them from doing that.

The group was represented by Tony McDonald, an Austin lawyer who served as the general counsel for Empower Texans and then Texas Scorecard, a conservative news website also funded by Dunn.

McDonald and Slaton declined to speak to the Tribune. Representatives from the PAC did not respond to requests for comment. Bruce said he joined the lawsuit because he felt the “good old boys” of the Texas House operated in the dark, and outside individuals and groups had a right to speak their mind about who should lead the lower chamber.

At the time, Burrows and Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, tried to intervene in the lawsuit to oppose Slaton’s case, arguing that the speaker’s race is a “legislative process.”

“If existing law is struck down, Intervenors will be subjected to the effects of limitless spending of political contributions to PACs and legislators on efforts to influence the selection of the Speaker of the House,” wrote Geren and Burrows. “This raises the prospect of influence-buying and corruption tainting the selection of the Speaker.”

But the attorney general’s office, led by Paxton, urged the ethics commission to settle, according to a letter from the Ethics Commission. Paxton is also one of the top recipients of Dunn’s campaign war chest, and he was one of the most vocal opponents of Burrows and Phelan in the speaker’s race.

The commission relented, writing in a letter to Geren in 2023 that the attorney general’s office would no longer represent it as a client in the case unless it settled. The attorney general’s office typically represents state agencies in lawsuits.

Phelan, the former House speaker, took issue with the attorney general’s role in the matter.

“When [Paxton was] elected to office he’s responsible for representing the state whether he agrees with the laws or not,” said Phelan, in an interview. “It’s still the job of that office and they chose not to do their duty to the taxpayers. Now, we are where we are.”

The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But Bruce said Paxton’s decision to settle signaled they did not have a strong legal argument.

“There was no way it was going to stand constitutional muster,” he said. “It would’ve been pointless to have a trial because they knew they were going to lose, because it was a clear First Amendment violation.”

The RINO hunt continues

The state GOP’s decision to campaign against one of its own for House speaker this round was unusual. A review of campaign spending disclosures over the past 15 years leading up to the start of each legislative session shows the vast majority of spending by the party was to support Republican candidates. They had not previously spent money in the speaker’s race.

But in early December, Burrows announced he had the votes for speaker from a coalition of Republicans and Democrats just minutes after the GOP caucus voted in to endorse Cook, setting off off a feverish campaign against the now-speaker.

Party leadership accused Burrows of being a Democrat, spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising and text message campaigns to pressure Burrows and his supporters to endorse Cook.

Dunn’s Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC also sent text messages, urging voters to call their representatives and encourage them to “make the Texas House Republican again.”

In one message paid for by the PAC, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller declared that the “RINO hunt in Texas continues.”

At the same time, a pro-Burrows group, American Opportunity PAC, spent around $60,000 in support of Burrows’ candidacy for speaker, according to the group’s most recent campaign disclosure.

The full scale of spending around the race is still unclear due to a patchwork of filing deadlines and a lack of specificity about what types of spending individuals or groups are required to disclose around this particular race.

“You’ve got an election that’s not really an election,” said Austin ethics lawyer Ross Fischer, of the speaker’s race. “It’s not a primary election. It’s not a runoff election. It’s not a general election. It’s in an entirely different statute. … It’s going to be up to the Legislature to decide whether they want to impose disclosure requirements for those involved in the speaker’s race.”

In one instance, a group called American Action Fund posted a Facebook ad in December asking people to sign a petition demanding their representative ”vote against liberal Dustin Burrows for speaker.” The group is not registered as a PAC with the state and had not filed a campaign expenditure report as of Feb 11. On American Action Fund’s Facebook page, it says it is run by Young Americans for Liberty Inc., which has not filed a report with the state for its political spending in 2024 either. Neither group responded to a request for comment.

Some House Democrats who were supporting Burrows, including Rep. Erin Zwiener, D-Driftwood, were also targeted by text message campaigns. The Courageous Conservatives PAC also sent a text to her constituents that included her personal cell, according to screenshots she provided to The Tribune. Another text message sent out accusing Zwiener of supporting “MAGA Republican Dustin Burrows” didn’t include a disclosure. It’s still unclear who sent that text.

That murkiness is at the heart of the lawsuit that Rep. Pat Curry filed against the Courageous Conservative PAC days after the speaker’s race. The freshman from Waco said the PAC, which is based in Virginia and chaired by Texas conservative Chris Ekstrom, sent a text message to his constituents claiming he had agreed to vote for Burrows for speaker, labeling him a “turncoat,” and publishing his phone number.

Curry said when his cell phone number was publicized, he was inundated with messages, some of them threatening. His family grew concerned for their safety. He sued, alleging the PAC violated Texas election laws by failing to register as a PAC with the Texas Ethics Commission.

He also reported the incident to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the incident, according to the complaint.

Curry said the attacks were misplaced because he was supporting Cook all along. He thinks he was targeted by the group for not being more publicly supportive of their candidate.

“If they want you in their camp, they want you solidly in their camp,” Curry said in an interview. “And I wasn’t really willing to come out and jump out and scream on the corners for Cook.”

Ekstrom declined to comment on pending litigation but told the Tribune he is frustrated that allegations of so-called “dark money” controlling the House are betrayed by the fact that Burrows won.

“I think President Trump needs to get directly involved in 2026 & save Texas Conservatives from themselves, frankly,” he wrote in a message. “I have zero confidence in the current powers-that-be.”

As the legislative session continues, at least two lawmakers have filed a bill that would require “mass text message campaigns” to include a disclaimer identifying who paid for the political advertisement and slapping a $10,000 fine on each individual message sent that violates the disclosure law.

Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, filed the identical legislation. Neither responded to a request for comment.

But the day after the bills were filed, McDonald, the lawyer who sued to help end the ban on outside spending in the speaker’s race, railed against the bill on social media.

“These bills don’t just impact ‘text messaging,’ he wrote. “They’re poorly conceived, and even more poorly drafted, and will have the effect of impacting speech rights for Texans of all stripes.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/13/texas-speaker-race-house-tim-dunn-dustin-burrows/.

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