The Establishment Lashes Out

Has it only been 5 days since my last report?  It seems like an eternity because so much has happened.

The big news is that the establishment is in a full court press against the grassroots in HD 17.  Let me count the ways.

• The Gerdes Campaign has delivered its second glossy mailer in so many weeks, this one bashing Biden for a “failure” at the border. (The one before that had Stan taking credit for the property tax cut finally passed in the second special session.)
• A mailer from Dade Phelan for Gerdes has hit the mailboxes of many in the district.
• I discovered while block walking myself this weekend that Gerdes has paid block walkers out for him.
• And the Gerdes campaign has launched two direct assaults on my candidacy in a one-two punch on Monday and Tuesday. I will talk about the Monday assault later after I know more.  The second assault was a doozy.  Most of this email will be about the second assault.

Early Tuesday evening, I saw a tweet by Patrick Svitek summarizing a Stan Gerdes press release criticizing a PAC that donated $10,000 to my campaign in the 2022 campaign and challenging me not to take any more money from them.

The Texas Tribune had dropped a Sunday evening October 8 story about an antisemite agent provocateur named Nick Fuentes having visited the office complex where the president of Defend Texas Liberty PAC (DTL), Jonathan Stickland, has his office.  A number of other conservative organizations office there, too.

Continuing the open warfare between Dan Patrick and Dade Phelan over the Paxton impeachment, Phelan jumped on the story Monday as the special session was starting and called out Patrick for taking money from Defend Texas Liberty PAC during the Paxton impeachment.  Patrick responded with his own flaming response the same day.

By Tuesday afternoon, Gerdes had issued a press release and placed it on his campaign Facebook page with the headline, “Conservative Stan Gerdes Statement on Tom Glass and Neo-Nazis.”  Here is the image of that release:

Stan also sent out an email to his supporters launching the assault.

Thanks to all of you who gave me the heads up on what Stan was doing.  Such updates are invaluable.  And thanks for the conversations and advice I got from you on how to handle.

I got an email from Patrick Svitek of the Texas Tribune around 2 pm this afternoon asking if I wanted to respond by his 4 pm deadline.  This is the reply I gave him:

Sunday morning, I, like other Americans, heard the dreadful news of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.  Our hearts break for those killed, wounded, harmed, or held hostage, and their families.

But the news I heard the next day was almost as terrible.  I heard that Nick Fuentes had to come to Texas to meet with someone – I don’t know who – to discuss something – I don’t know what.

I first heard about Nick Fuentes when he tried to set up President Trump at Mar-a-Lago last year.  Due to that event, I learned that Fuentes is a craven, despicable, and vile human being. I condemn him and his toxic, antisemitic ideas and anyone associated with him.

I also condemn attempts by Dade Phelan and Stan Gerdes to exploit this tragedy for political gain.  Their pathetic attempts are nothing less than an attempt to distract the voters’ attention from the baseless, failed Ken Paxton impeachment debacle.

My campaign will stay focused on what the GOP voters of HD 17 want which the House leadership and Gerdes failed to deliver – border security, election integrity, a path to eliminating property tax, stopping our groundwater from being drained, dealing with rapid growth, monetary freedom, and a pushback against globalist destruction of the Texas economy.

I welcome a comparison of the grassroots funding of my campaign and the establishment elitest funding of Gerdes’ campaign.

After I sent this in, I saw a tweet by Brad Johnson of The Texan who said that Dan Patrick has also released this about Tim Dunn, the largest contributor to DTL:

I spoke with Tim Dunn, a principal funder of Defend Texas Liberty PAC, and he has told me unequivocally that it was a serious blunder for PAC President Jonathan Stickland to meet with white supremist Nick Fuentes. He has further assured me that he is certain that Mr. Stickland and all PAC personnel will not have any future contact with Mr. Fuentes. He stated emphatically that everyone at the PAC understands that mistakes were made and are being corrected.

And there you have it.  They say that If you are catching flak, you are over the target.

The actions of Gerdes show that he has solidly linked his fate with the fate of Dade Phelan and the Austin swamp. Most of you, of course, are not surprised by this because you know the backers, money and endorsements that installed him in 2022 to do just that. The Paxton impeachment told us this, too.

Gerdes is a representative NOT of us to Austin, but of the Austin swamp to us.

And he has the substantial financial resources of the swamp to send lots of glossy mailers, have his attack-dog consultants devise and launch attacks, and to blanket the district with business-as-usual advertising to the low attention GOP primary voters claiming that he is a conservative on multiple issues.

Buckle up, grassroots!  It’s going to be a vicious bumpy ride!

Thomas Paine said in The American Crisis:

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: — ’Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

For the grassroots to regain control of the Texas House from the swamp, we must all contribute a lot of effort and financial resources.

Because the financial resources we need to get the word out to counter the big-buck establishment money machine are limited, we are going to step up in numbers to do organized outreach to our neighbors.  I plan to fire up that volunteer leader organization soon.

If you want to help coordinate an activity or your neck of the woods on a volunteer basis in this campaign, please let me know.  I hope to be setting up an organizational meeting soon to get that effort launched.

And of course, if you have not done so, chip in a few bucks to tomglass.org/donate.

And BTW, if you can’t correctly diagnose the problem, you can’t solve it.  Gerdes’ business-as-usual formulation that Biden “failed” on the border is wrong for two reasons.  First, Biden hasn’t failed because he has never tried to secure the border.  Biden and his Deep State handlers started from the beginning to deliberately violate federal law and open the border, subsidizing the cartels in the human, sex, child, and drug trafficking business.

Second, the failure is that Texas leadership has not stepped up to have Texas secure the border – even if necessary, in opposition to the federal lawbreaking and interference with our operations.  Dade Phelan killed the best border bill this session by agreeing to a ridiculous point of order by open borders Democrat Rafael Anchia. A Dade Phelan follower is not going to get the job done at the border to protect Texans.