An Unholy Trinity Big Oil, Christian Nationalism & Ted Cruz

BY Peter Montgomery
The American Prospect, JUNE 13, 2014

Farris and Dan Wilks, principals in Frac Tech and listed among the world's richest people by Forbes, flank their father, Voy Wilks, at the 2007 awards banquet of the Cisco Chamber of Commerce.

Last June, presidential hopefuls Rand Paul and Ted Cruz traveled to Iowa for an event convened by David Lane, a political operative who uses pastors to mobilize conservative Christian voters.

Lane is a Christian-nation extremistwho believes the Bible should be a primary textbook in America's public schools, and that any politician who disagrees should be voted out. Lane's events are usually closed to the media, but he has given special access to the Christian Broadcasting Network's sympathetic David Brody. Brody's coverage of the Iowa event included short video clips of comments by brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who were identified only as members of Lane's Pastors and Pews group.

CBN's Brody reported: "The Wilks brothers worry that America's declining morals will especially hurt the younger generation, so they're using the riches that the Lord has blessed them with to back specific goals."One of those goals may be David Lane's insistence that politicians make the Bible a primary textbook in public schools.

Here's Dan Wilks speaking to Brody: "I just think we have to make people aware, you know, and bring the Bible back into the school, and start teaching our kids at a younger age, and, uh, you know, and focus on the younger generation." And here's Farris: "They're being taught the other ideas, the gay agenda, every day out in the world so we have to stand up and explain to them that that's not real, that's not proper, it's not right."

That was the first time we had heard of the billionaire Wilks brothers, who have become generous donors to right-wing politicians and Republican Party committees. While both Farris and Dan have given to conservative groups and candidates, it is older brother Farris whose foundation has become a source of massive donations to Religious Right groups and to the Koch brothers' political network. Farris also funds a network of "pregnancy centers" that refuse, on principle, to talk to single women about contraception. (Married women need to check with their husband and pastor.)

Like David Barton, Farris thinks conservative economics are grounded in the Bible. Like Mitt Romney, he says people shouldn't vote for politicians who promise "free this, free that." Like any number of Religious Right leaders, he saw Barack Obama's re-election as a harbinger of the End Times and he believes God will punish America for embracing homosexuality. Unlike all of them, he's on the list of the world's richest people.

Fracking Billionaires

Dan and Farris Wilks became successful working in and then running the masonry business that was started by their father; they have now turned the company over tothe next generation of Wilks men. But Dan and Farris really hit the big time when they got in on the ground floor with fracking, the controversial natural gas drilling technique that has boomed over the past decade.

The fracking boom has produced a surge in wealthy Texans.In 2002, the Wilks brothers created Frac Tech, which produced equipment used in fracking, or in industry parlance, "well stimulation services." In May 2011, Dan and Farris sold Frac Tech to a group of investors led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund for $3.5 billion. Their share was reportedly 68 percent of that total,and they showed up on the 2011 Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans with an estimated net worth of $1.4 billion each. Themost recent Forbes list put their estimated wealth at $1.5 billion each. (In our gilded age, that puts them near the bottom of the Forbes 400, andbarely gets them into the top 40 in Texas. But you can still do an awful lot with $3 billion.)

The Wilks brothers have gone on a land-buying spree out West, amassing huge holdings in Montana, Idaho, Texas, Kansas, and Colorado.In December 2012,theBillings Gazettereportedthat they had amassed more than 276,000 acres in Montana, or more than 430 square miles; more recent reports say they own more than 301,300 acres in the state. Among their purchases was the historic 62,000-acre N Bar Ranch, which had been listed for $45 million.

The brothers reportedly started building an airstrip that summer across from the N Bar Ranch headquarters to make travel to their property on their 18-passenger corporate jet a little easier. The Wilks brothers have proposed a land swap with the Bureau of Land Management to consolidate their holdings;last month their attorney said they were "blindsided"when BLM said it would not trade the 2,700-acre Durfee Hills after hunters complained about losing access to the land and its elk.

In January 2013, theybought a nearly 18,000-acre ranch in Idaho, which brought their total in that state to almost 36,000 acres. In 2011, Farris was reported to have paid $16 million for what was then themost expensive ski-accessible home in the history of Snowmass Village, Colorado.

An Aspen newspaper reported in 2012 thatDan owned two homes in Aspen, one worth $8.3 million and another worth $4.9 million. At the end of 2012 they bought the Advancial Tower,a 17-story skyscraper in Dallas reportedly appraised at $16.25 million. And last August, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the Wilks brothers had bought 122 acres of land in a business park in Southlake, Texas. Farris also reportedly paid to havea "world class" recording studio installed in his 20,000-square-foot homeand to have his church's audio-visual systemsimilarly upgraded.

Members of the Wilks family have been philanthropists in their hometown over the years, funding, for example, a community center andmobile emergency command postfor local fire departments. More recently they have distributing their wealth in support of right-wing causes and conservative politicians. According to Forbes,Dan has six children,Farris has 11.

A(nother) Foundation for the Far Right

The Wilks brothers and their wives have stashed a sizeable chunk of money in charitable foundations: Farris and his wife Joann created The Thirteen Foundation, while Dan and his wife Staci started Heavenly Father's Foundation. The Thirteen Foundation has become a major funder to Religious Right organizations and to right-wing political outfits that are part of the Koch brother's network.

In 2011, Farris and Joann each put $50 million into The Thirteen Foundation, and they started writing huge checks. In 2011 and 2012, the last year for which giving records are publicly available, the foundation gave away more than $17 million. Here's where much of it went:

Media Revolution Ministries (Online for Life) $2,242,857

American Majority Inc $2,114,100

State Policy Networks $1,526,125

Focus on the Family $1,400,000

Franklin Center for Gov't and Public Integrity $1,309,775

Life Dynamics Inc. $1,275,000

Liberty Counsel $1,000,000

Heritage Foundation $700,000

Family Research Council $530,000

Texas Right to Life Committee Education Fund $310,000

Texas Home School Coalition $250,000

Heartbeat International $197,000

Wallbuilders Presentations, Inc $85,000

National Institute of Marriage $75,000

These gifts amount to a massive infusion of funds into some of the most aggressive right-wing organizationsthat are fighting legal equality for LGBT people, access to contraception and abortion services for women, and promoting the Tea Party's vision of a federal government that is constitutionally forbidden from protecting American workers, consumers, and communities by regulating corporate behavior.

American Majority, the Franklin Center, the Heritage Foundation, and the State Policy Networks are allpart of the Koch brothers' right-wing political network, promoting policy attacks on public employees and their unions, outsourcing public resources for private profit, privatization of public education, and more:

• The Franklin Center, closely allied to the American Legislative Exchange Council and other right-wing groups, produces and supports ideological advocacy sites that that it pretends is "nonpartisan" journalism.
• American Majority trains and supports Tea Party activist networks.
• The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing propaganda behemoth masquerading as a think tank. It promotes Religious Right social conservatism and Tea Party anti-government ideology, arguing that the two are "indivisible."
• The State Policy Network comprises mini-Heritage Foundations – right-wing "think tanks" at the state level that work closely with ALEC and right-wing lawmakers.

The Thirteen Foundation's gifts are a boon to some of the most extreme Religious Right groups in the country. Among the recipients:

• The Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group affiliated with Liberty University, is home to right-wing legal activist Mat Staver and the increasingly unhinged Matt Barber. Liberty Counsel promotes extreme anti-Obama and anti-gay rhetoric, warning that the country is descending into religious tyranny and on the verge of revolution. Staver and Barber support laws criminalizing homosexuality and call the Obama administration's opposition to such laws in other countries "immoral."
• The Family Research Council, designated an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, hosts the annual Values Voter Summit, the annual family reunion for far-right religious and political groups and right-wing politicians. FRC and its leader Tony Perkins oppose equality for LGBT Americans and promote the myth of anti-Christian persecution in the U.S.
• Focus on the Family, founded by James Dobson, is one of the largest Religious Right groups in the country. Earlier this yearVice President Tim Goeglein called gay rights movement"one of the great threats to our religious liberty." President Jim Daly isreportedly scheduled to speakat the World Congress of Families' summit scheduled to be held in Moscow in September.
• Wallbuilders promotes the historical revisionism of "historian" David Barton, whose claims have been widely discredited but who remains influential within the Religious Right and the GOP. In addition to his "Christian Nation" history, Barton argues that the Bible opposes the minimum wage, progressive taxation, capital gains taxes, the estate tax, and unions and collective bargaining.

(See the section on the War on Women below for information about anti-choice organizations on the list.)

Other gifts supported Prime Time Christian Broadcasting, Inc., which runs God's Learning Channel, "a satellite network dedicated to bringing the gospel of the kingdom into the entire world and teaching everyone about the Torah and the true roots of Christianity"; the Wounded Warrior Project; and a number of local churches that seem to be affiliated with the church at which Farris is an elder. One gift that seems like an outlier was $50,000 to the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which funds legal services for the poor, advocates for immigration reform, and filed a lawsuit on behalf of a binational same-sex couple.

Farris's brother Dan and his wife Staci each gave $55 million to their Heavenly Father's Foundation, according to the group's 2011 990 form. That year the foundation reported $110 million in income but only $309,000 in disbursements, mostly to the Mountain Top Church in their hometown of Cisco ($287,000) with smaller amounts to a pregnancy center called the Open Door ($20,000) and to the American Diabetes Association ($2,000).

Its 2012 contributions were primarily to several churches but also included ministries that provide meals to the poor, a five-year pledge to a local domestic violence crisis center, $20,000 to the Open Door pregnancy center, $1.7 million to a drug and alcohol treatment center whose 30^thanniversary celebration in Mayfeatured Mike Huckabee, and intriguingly, $100,000 to the Eastland County District Attorney's office to cover "budget shortage."

Of course, individual contributions that Wilks family members make to advocacy organizations are not publicly reported.

In Politics, Paying to Play

The Wilks brothers made a bit of a splash in Montana when it was revealed that they were the top donors to 2012 Republican legislative candidates in the state. AFebruary 2013 report by the National Institute on Money in State Politicsfound that Dan and Farris Wilks and their wives "donated to more than 70 candidates, all Republicans, and generally gave the maximum contribution allowed by law to legislative candidates, $160 for a general election."

The report said that 70 percent of Montana Republican legislators got contributions from the Wilkses.(AP noted that all bills aimed at regulating fracking in the 2011 legislature were killed by Republican-led committees.)According to the Institute, 64 of the state-level candidates the Wilks family supported won-63 legislators and Attorney General Tim Fox.

The Wilkses also gave heavily to Dennis Rehberg, a former Republican U.S. congressman from Montana who gave up his seat to mount an unsuccessful challenge against Sen. Jon Tester in 2012, and to Steven Daines, the Republican who won the House seat vacated by Rehberg and who is now running to for U.S. Senate.

Collectively, Dan and Farris and their wives gave the Rehberg and Daines campaigns each $10,000 in 2012, with another $37,500 going to the Rehberg Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee that funneled money to Rehberg's campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Farris and Joann have together given $10,400 toward Steve Daines's 2014 reelection.

Their political giving has not been limited to Montana. In Texas, according to state campaign finance records, the brothers each gave $25,000 to Texans for Rick Perry in 2012. Farris also gave $2,500 to State Rep. Stefani Carter, the first Republican African American woman to serve in the state House; Farris and Joann also gave $5,000 to the failed Supreme Court campaign of Steve Smith.

Last year, Perry announced he would not run for a fourth term as governor. Earlier this year,Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is running for governor, reported nearly $31,000 in in-kind contributions from Farris and Dan Wilks for use of an airplane.Farris also gave $1,000 in January to the Texas Home School Coalition PAC.

This year, in the election for California's 44^thAssembly District,Dan, Staci, and Farris Wilks have given thousands to the campaign of Rob McCoy,a conservative evangelical pastor who is also backed by Rand Paul, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee. In the June 3 primary,the Wilks-backed McCoy came in second placeto Democrat Jacqui Irwin, a City Councilwoman from Thousand Oaks, beating the more moderate Republican candidate, businessman Mario de la Piedra. Irwin and McCoy will face off in the general election.

During the 2012 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission's database, the brothers and their wives together contributed $125,000 to the Romney Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee benefitting the Romney campaign and the Republican Party.

Joann also contributed $25,000 to the Faith Family Freedom Fund, a "soft money" fund run by a former Family Research Council executive and housed in FRC's Washington, D.C., building. The fund makes independent expenditures for or against candidates; in 2012 it spent in support of Todd Akin, George Allen, Steve King, and other right-wing candidates, and against Claire McCaskill, Tim Kaine, Barack Obama, and other Democratic candidates.

In 2011, Farris gave the National Republican Congressional Committee $2,500, and he gave $7,600 to the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund between 2010 and 2012. In 2010 Farris gave Nevada Senate candidate and Tea Party darling Sharron Angle $1000 and in 2008 he gave $2,500 to the McCain-Palin Victory Committee. ...

This article was produced by andoriginally published by Right Wing Watch, the blog of People for the American Way.