January 21, 2016      12:19 PM
Speaker Straus to Empower Texans' new mega-donors: "Welcome to the fray"
At the TAB Conference, Straus encourages business leaders to get directly involved in the political and legislative process: “Don’t just leave it to the special interest groups or the special interest think tanks.”
Texas House Speaker Joe Straus did not
mince words on Thursday when he was asked about the new mega-donors to Empower
Texans.
“Welcome
to the fray,” Straus said of the Wilks Brothers following a brief
speech to the Texas Association of Business Conference in Austin.
Quorum Report was first to note that Farris and Dan Wilks of Cisco have now
joined Midland oilman Tim Dunn in
pouring money into Dunn’s Empower Texans and allied organization Texas
Right to Life. The Wilks sold their relatively small oil field services
company several years ago for a huge amount: $3.5 billion.
Ethics Commission filings show the low-profile brothers have now put $500,000
into the Empower Texans PAC and there is justified speculation about how
much they’re donating, if any, to the Empower Texans 501(c)(4) non-profit
which is also politically active but does not report its donors.
Straus
said groups like Empower are angry because “they don’t have a puppet they can
control” in the Speaker’s Office. Those groups are not focused on solutions
that will make Texas an even better place to live and maintain the state’s status
as a powerful economic engine, Straus said.
By Scott Braddock
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