Tim Dunn

Tim Dunn is the invisible kingmaker of Texas politics — a West Texas oil billionaire and devout Christian who, alongside Farris Wilks, controls the most feared political operation in the state. Their Defend Texas Liberty PAC and associated organizations have unseated dozens of "insufficiently conservative" Republican legislators through primary challenges, making them more powerful than either political party within Texas. Born in 1953, Dunn grew up in the Permian Basin oil country of West Texas. He built CrownQuest Operating into one of the largest private oil and gas producers in the region, accumulating a fortune estimated at $1.5 billion. But it's his political operation, not his oil wells, that makes him consequential. Dunn sees politics through a dual lens: oil-friendly deregulation and Christian nationalism. He funds both causes simultaneously, supporting candidates who will eliminate environmental regulations on fracking AND impose biblically-informed social policies on education, gender, and family law. His political organization, Empower Texans (now renamed Texas Scorecard), operates like an internal affairs division for the Republican Party — rating legislators on conservative purity and funding primary challengers against those who fall short. The Defend Texas Liberty PAC, jointly funded by Dunn and Wilks, was embroiled in scandal in 2023 when its executive director, Jonathan Stickland, was caught in a six-hour meeting with Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist. The meeting was recorded on security cameras at Stickland's offices. Despite the scandal — and widespread Republican condemnation — the PAC's political influence barely diminished. Dunn and Wilks continued funding it, and the PAC continued running primary challenges. Dunn's influence in Texas is often compared to the Koch Network's national reach, but with a more explicitly religious dimension. He funds school voucher campaigns, opposes public school sex education, and backs legislation rooted in biblical principles. His oil wealth funds his religious politics, and his religious politics protects his oil wealth — a self-reinforcing cycle of faith and finance. The contradiction: Dunn presents himself as a humble Christian servant, but his political operation operates through fear and intimidation. Texas legislators describe the Dunn-Wilks machine as a "shadow government" that punishes any deviation from orthodoxy. The man who preaches about servant leadership runs a political machine built on threats.