The Completely Predictable Resurrection of Jonathan Stickland

Observers thought Jonathan Stickland’s seven-hour tête-à-tête with white supremacist Nick Fuentes last fall would derail his career as a political kingmaker. Alas, it was only a speed bump.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024

         Last month, former pest exterminator, state House representative, and fixer for the right-wing moneybags who rule Texas politics Jonathan Stickland formed a new consulting entity, RaTmasTeR Holdings LLC. According to filings with the Secretary of State, Matt Rinaldi is listed as the group’s organizer.

         Alert Readers may recall these names from a little kerfuffle last October in which Stickland was caught in flagrante delicto with avowed neo-Nazi and professional white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his office in Fort Worth.        Stickland was then the titular head of Defend Texas Liberty-PAC (DTL-PAC), the principal political contribution laundering vehicle for billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. In Stickland and DTL-PAC, Dunn and Wilks had found a kindred spirit willing to advance their goal of pushing Texas politics as far to the Christian right as possible. Over the summer, DTL-PAC had contributed $1 million and loaned another $2 million to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick just after he’d been chosen to preside over the impeachment trial of Corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose cause DTL-PAC championed relentlessly through the summer.

(Neo-Nazi provocateur Nick Fuentes follows Defend Texas Liberty PAC president Jonathan Stickland out the door of Stickland’s Pale Horse Strategies consulting firm on Friday, October 6, 2023. Credit: Azul Sordo for the Texas Tribune)

         Fuentes, it turned out, had been meeting with Stickland all day – and it wasn’t their first meeting. Sometime during those meetings, then-Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi also visited the building, but he denied meeting with Fuentes and condemned his extremist politics.

(Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi entering the offices of Pale Horse Strategies in Fort Worth on Oct. 6, 2023. Credit: Azul Sordo for the Texas Tribune.)

         On the theory that consorting with neo-Nazis is bad, Stickland’s meeting was quickly condemned by Democrats and even some Republicans. House Speaker Dade Phelan condemned Fuentes and Stickland, asking legislators who’d received money from DTL-PAC to return it.

         But in a tribute to how far the Texas GOP is off the rails, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said he’d talked with DTL-PAC’s principal funder, Midland billionaire Tim Dunn, who told him Stickland had made “a serious blunder” and that “mistakes were made.”

We all know what this means – meeting with Fuentes wasn’t the blunder, getting caught was.

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         Still, the optics were, as they say, bad. Accordingly, Dunn and Wilks started another PAC , Texans United for a Conservative Majority, which spent at least $2.5 million on GOP primary races this spring. Most of this largesse was focused on defeating 14 incumbent GOP legislators whose only sin seemed to be that they opposed Governor Greg Abbott’s voucher schemes. The effort was successful, with seven anti-voucher members beaten and five more – including Speaker Dad Phelan – forced into runoffs next month.

         And so, the game of Whack-a-Mole continues. Pale Horse Strategies becomes RaTmasTeR Holdings and DTL-PAC becomes Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC. The players are the same, but the names are changed to protect the guilty.

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More Reading … Texas Monthly has this superb profile of Tim Dunn in its March issue.