Spending by Major Republican PAC Dries Up

A major Republican PAC has apparently cut down on its spending in the past few months, in the first reported figures since a scandal involving a meeting between its president and a "notorious, antisemitic, Nazi sympathizer."

The Defend Texas Liberty PAC, created in 2020, has been a major donor to influential Texan Republicans including Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and the state's Attorney General Ken Paxton. It gave Patrick $3 million in loans and donations before he presided over Paxton's acquittal in impeachment trials in front of the Texas Senate, The Texas Tribune reported.

According to new campaign finance reports analysed by the newspaper, the Defend Texas Liberty PAC spent $10,000 supporting just one candidate, state Representative Steve Toth, in the last two months of 2023. In the same period in 2022, the group gave around $110,000 to candidates and political action committees it supported, and a year earlier in those months, it spent some $85,000.

The publication reported that the PAC received no new donations from Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two West Texas oil billionaires who it said have previously given more than $100 million to Defend Texas Liberty and other groups.

Newsweek, which hasn't been able to source the original campaign finance reports, contacted Defend Texas Liberty on social media to comment on this story.

The data is the first published since a Texas Tribune report in October 2023 claimed the PAC's then-president, Jonathan Stickland, hosted a meeting with Nick Fuentes at the headquarters of a Forth Worth consultancy firm that he owns. Fuentes has been called a white nationalist, a Holocaust denier, and he has advocated having "a homeland" for white people.

In response to the report, 61 House Republicans called for donations to the group to be redirected to pro-Israel charities and Republican Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan condemned the meeting.

"Jonathan Stickland, the president of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, fraternized for six hours with a notorious, antisemitic, Nazi sympathizer who denies the existence of the Holocaust," Phelan said in a statement shared on X, formerly Twitter.

"This [is] not just a casual misstep," he added. "It's indicative of the moral, political rot that has been festering in a certain segment of our party for far too long. Antisemitism, bigotry and Hitler apologists should find no sanctuary in the Republican party. Period."

He called on GOP politicians to return their donations. Later in the month, Stickland's name was removed from Defend Texas Liberty's website and Luke Macias, who had previously served as the group's director, became the president. The PAC also issued a statement denouncing Fuentes.

However, it isn't known whether this debacle contributed to the PAC's reduction in spending, or whether other factors have been involved.