San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Patrick shows Texans his true self
Even before Oct. 6, Dan Patrick should have returned the money. The lieutenant governor had no business accepting $3 million from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC during the 14-week interval between the May impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by the Texas House and Paxton’s September trial in the Texas Senate, given that Patrick was tasked with serving as the judge for that trial.
Even before Oct. 6, Patrick’s blithe acceptance of funds from a pro-Paxton PAC carried the stench of political sleaze; an unspoken contempt for standards of judicial propriety.
On Oct. 6, however, that $3 million became something worse than sleazy. It became the offering of a group that associates itself with the most virulent forms of racism and antisemitism.
That day, Defend Texas Liberty leader (and former state Rep.) Jonathan Stickland hosted Nick Fuentes at Stickland’s Fort Worth office for more than six hours.
This is the same Nick Fuentes who has championed white nationalism, expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler, verbally threatened Jews and made light of the Holocaust.
Last Saturday, a day after Stickland and Fuentes hung out together, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a barbaric attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,200 people and abducting many more.
Even if that horrific attack hadn’t occurred, Patrick should have been sufficiently horrified by Defend Texas Liberty’s interaction with a neo-Nazi hatemonger to send back the $3 million immediately.
In light of the attack, and the pain that Jewish people around the world are experiencing, choosing to keep funds connected to Fuentes’ brand of antisemitism is unthinkable.
That was the point made Monday morning by Patrick’s arch-enemy, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, only hours before the Monday kickoff of a special session devoted to addressing taxpayer funded school vouchers, increased border security and COVID-19 vaccine mandate bans. Nearly 60 members of the House GOP caucus joined Phelan that day in calling on Patrick to return the money.
“It should not be that difficult to disavow yourself from this political action committee,” Phelan told Metroplex TV reporter Phil Prazan.
“It should be so easy to send that money back or give it to a charity and say, ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’”
Of course, Phelan is right. But Patrick hasn’t returned the money. Instead, his knee-jerk reaction was to attack Phelan and call for the speaker’s resignation. And Patrick doubleddown on Wednesday, dismissing the PAC leader’s meeting with Fuentes as a “blunder,” and saying he’d keep the group’s $3 million contribution, according to the Texas Tribune. This is only
the latest example of the dysfunction that’s become synonymous with our state’s top elected leaders.
Without a doubt, personal animus is driving the verbal volleys between Patrick and Phelan. Their hatred for each other is so extreme, they spent much of this year’s regular session feuding over the policy particulars of something they actually agreed on: property tax relief.
If not for their reciprocal disdain, the rhetoric between Patrick and Phelan this past week wouldn’t have been so charged. But the underlying issues would be the same: Patrick disgraced his office by accepting the Defend Texas Liberty money with Paxton’s impeachment trial pending. And he further disgraced it by holding on to the money after Stickland’s meeting with Fuentes.
Well before his gettogether with Fuentes, Stickland established himself as one of the most repulsive figures in Texas politics — an emblem of a faction of the Republican Party that prefers agitation to governance.
In 2019, during his tenure in the Legislature, Texas Monthly dubbed Stickland a “cockroach” who “accomplishes nothing but always manages to show up in the worst possible way.”
Stickland passed one bill in eight years: the banning of red light cameras. The bill’s success prompted this gem of a headline from the Austin AmericanStatesman: “It turns out that the Texas House hates red light cameras more than it hates Jonathan Stickland.”
Much like Patrick, Stickland does not play well with Texas House speakers.
In 2017, at a time when Patrick was making life miserable for then-House Speaker Joe Straus, Stickland described himself as “at war with the speaker.”
In May of this year, Stickland’s PAC targeted Phelan with a tweet promising to, “ensure that every Republican voter in Texas knows just what a sham the Texas House has been this session and just how absurd this Democrat-led impeachment effort is.”
But remember, the Paxton impeachment process was kick-started by Republican whistleblowers and it was moved forward by a committee with Republican leadership.
Facts, however, are little more than a nuisance for Stickland. And they don’t seem to hold much weight with Patrick either.
Even before Oct. 6, Patrick should have known better. After Oct. 6, there are no excuses.
The lieutenant governor has no excuse for
keeping Defend Texas Liberty money