Publish Feb 3 2026, Texas Monthly by Erin Benson
Sidebar: Texas Billionaire Tim Dunn backs Heidi Ganahl’s political plan to “Return Colorado to Red’.
https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2024/01/common-sense-institute-chairman-among-wealthy-conservatives-backing-heidi-ganahls-plan-to-retake-colorado/58780/
Texas Monthy, shared via Fair Use and Pad subscription.
“Since the beginning of his lengthy and oft-scandaled political career, Attorney General Ken Paxton has held one of the most valuable get-out-of-jail-free cards in Texas politics: the seemingly limitless support of Midland oil tycoon Tim Dunn. Whenever Paxton got into trouble, which was frequently, Dunn would be there to bail him out. In turn, when Dunn’s political operation went to war against the Texas Ethics Commission, Paxton, in his capacity as attorney general, refused to defend the agency. For nearly two decades, the Dunn–Paxton partnership seemed unshakeable. But a funny thing has happened in Ken Paxton’s run for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Tim Dunn has disappeared.
Dunn and Paxton both made their first big splashes in Texas politics in the same year, 2002, with similar objectives. Dunn, who would soon become the most influential and ruthless political donor in the state, wrote his first substantial political check that year—a $10,000 donation to Free Enterprise PAC, a group that sought to advocate right-wing causes at the Texas Legislature, among them prohibiting “homosexual marriages and adoptions” and requiring “a super majority to increase taxes.” Paxton, a first-time candidate for state representative who closely aligned himself with the religious right, was Free Enterprise PAC’s biggest single beneficiary in that year’s legislative elections.
It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. In late 2010, when Dunn was looking to unseat centrist Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, Paxton mounted a challenge. While unsuccessful, the bid signaled his ambition to be a leader of the party’s right flank. When Paxton ran for attorney general four years later, Dunn did everything in his power to make sure Paxton would be victorious.
Paxton had finished first in the Republican primary that year, but falling short of winning 50 percent of the vote, he entered a runoff with state Representative Dan Branch. A month out from the election, The Texas Tribune obtained documents showing Paxton had potentially violated Texas securities law in his work as a private attorney, leading to a fine from the Texas State Securities Board. For a moment, his career looked like it might be derailed. Then Dunn came swooping to the rescue. With two weeks remaining until Election Day, Dunn secured a $1 million loan for Paxton’s campaign. Paxton—flush with the cash—was able to go back on the offensive, spending heavily on advertising in the closing days. And on election night, Paxton trounced Branch by 28 percentage points.
From that point on, Dunn went from being merely a Paxton backer to his most vigorous defender. In 2015, after a Collin County grand jury indicted Paxton for securities fraud, Dunn wrote a heated op-ed in the Midland Reporter-Telegram claiming the attorney general was a victim of a witch hunt against strong conservatives. In 2023, when the Texas House impeached Paxton on articles of bribery and abuse of public trust among other charges, Dunn not only contributed to his defense but helped orchestrate a multi-pronged counteroffensive. Defend Texas Liberty PAC, which Dunn backed, threatened to primary any Republican state senator who voted to remove Paxton from office, and the group gave $3 million in loans and contributions to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who was presiding over the trial. After he was acquitted, Paxton campaigned against some of the key House members who impeached him. Dunn pitched in to fund their primary opponents.
But according to multiple sources I spoke with while reporting my recent Texas Monthly feature on the primary battle between Paxton and incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn, when Paxton approached Dunn about backing his Senate challenge, Dunn told him to stay out of the race. One source who is familiar with Dunn’s thinking told me, “Tim sat down and told Ken, ‘I don’t want you to be a senator; I want you to be a good attorney general.’” Dunn apparently saw Paxton’s challenge as a costly and unnecessary drain on resources that would weaken the party for the general election. (The billionaire, who seems to relish conservative internecine feuds and a good Republican primary throwdown, apparently likes Cornyn enough that, so far at least, he hasn’t seen a reason to spend heavily to oust him.)
After Paxton refused to back down, Dunn wasn’t pleased, according to the source. “When you look Tim Dunn in the eye and say, ‘Sorry, I’m doing it anyway,’ that doesn’t go all that well with him,” they said. (Dunn did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Paxton wrote, “You must be crazy if you think that myself or the Paxton campaign would respond to anything asked by a tabloid rag like the Texas Monthly.”)
Since announcing his candidacy for Senate without Dunn’s help, Paxton has struggled to raise money, with his total contributions declining from $2.9 million in the first fundraising quarter of his campaign to just $1.1 million in the quarter ending on December 31 of last year. (Cornyn and his allied joint fundraising committees raised more than $7 million last quarter.) Lone Star Liberty PAC, the key Paxton-allied super PAC, collected $2 million in donations in the second half of last year, a drop in the bucket next to the tens of millions of dollars in advertising already spent by several Cornyn-supporting super PACs.
It’s not as if Dunn has stopped his political giving altogether. At the national level, he has donated $5 million to a super PAC backing the campaign of Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Closer to home, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, a group he backs, has supported, among others, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, several state legislators, and the Tarrant County conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss, who lost her state Senate special election this weekend in a shocking upset to Democratic labor leader Taylor Rehmet. Dunn, a billionaire many times over, could help Lone Star Liberty PAC and any other outside group quickly close its fundraising gap with Cornyn without Dunn even noticing it was missing from his bank account. But while Attorney General Paxton has proved highly useful to Dunn, Senator Paxton, a backbench freshman who casts one of one hundred votes and has little sway over state policy, is likely a far less exciting proposition for the Midland oil man.
Dunn’s lack of support may very well not matter. Paxton still edges Cornyn in most polls, and with Houston Congressman Wesley Hunt also in the race, most political observers believe that no candidate will get above 50 percent of the vote in the March 3 primary, making a runoff between Paxton and Cornyn all but inevitable. (Hunt has been raising less money than Paxton and has far less name recognition than either candidate.) In a runoff, history and voting behavior will be strongly on Paxton’s side: In Texas Republican primary runoffs the more right-wing candidate usually wins.
Without Dunn, it’s hard to imagine Paxton would have been able to weather ethics fines, criminal indictments, and an impeachment (to say nothing of the fact he has remained a viable politician after two alleged extramarital affairs and his current divorce proceedings from his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton). Without Dunn and his statewide push to remake the Republican Party in his own far-right image, Paxton’s career might have topped out at state representative. Without Dunn, it’s easy to imagine the 62-year-old Paxton long gone from the Legislature, entering the last few years of his career as a solo practitioner with a law office in downtown McKinney. But Paxton had Dunn, and just as importantly, he used Dunn’s support to build a base of his own among the most conservative activists in the state. Now, for the first time in his political career, he may not need the billionaire’s money or support at all.”