Until this year, Senate District 31 had long been held by Republican Kel Seliger, whose steadfast opposition to vouchers helped turn him into a target from ultraconservative political action committees like Defend Texas Liberty and the now-defunct Empower Texans. Both PACs drew the vast majority of their funding from the families of Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, a pair of billionaire oil and fracking magnates who’ve expressed the view that government and education should be guided by biblical values.
“They set out to make an example of me,” Seliger said.
The largesse from billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks has made its way into local politics across Texas. Courtney Gore, a Republican school board member in Granbury, says it’s part of their strategy to build support for vouchers.
When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools.
Gore broke from the group shortly after taking office in January 2022, when
she concluded that the materials she had warned about on the campaign trail were not present in Granbury schools.
She claims the men and other leaders of the far-right faction in Hood County, home to Granbury, dismissed her findings. They continued to pummel the district over books and curriculum, supported school board candidates who sought to remove a growing number of titles from library shelves, and worked to derail three bond elections that would have funded new and renovated buildings for the overcrowded district.
