There are few Curtis Creeks in this life, so when you find it, keep its secret well… —Sheridan Anderson, The Curtis Creek Manifesto Let me tell you about these two men, Doug Deason and Luke Metzger. Two men who seem like they should be yelling at each other in a Buc-ees. Men who achieved something amazing together.
Actually, more salient: Deason is a Ken Paxton guy. And not just one of his guys but one of his big donors. Ken Paxton, yes, Texas’s embattled attorney general and current Republican candidate for United States Senate.
Paxton, charitably, isn’t the best candidate the GOP fielded these midterms, but Trump wanted him in the race, and Trump got what he wanted, and now Paxton is locked in the race of his life, at real risk of losing to a candidate whose party hasn’t won a Senate seat in Texas in thirty-eight years. Earlier in the race, none of the GOP donor establishment wanted to support Paxton. But Deason did, out of a mix of genuine friendship and an affinity for some MAGA priorities, especially the ones that want to see the branches of the federal government pruned back.
There’s also that: Deason is a major Republican donor. You’ll see stories that call him a “megadonor.” Unfair, perhaps. He prefers “activist,” and while his father was a billionaire GOP donor (Darwin Deason sold an IT company to Xerox for $6.4 billion in 2010, providing plenty of funds for his political interests), there are people who give far more.
Deason says in a two-year cycle he usually gives between $1.5 million and $2 million; Elon Musk has reportedly put more than $150 million behind Paxton in this race, via super PAC. But in Texas’s vast GOP machine, Deason greases many gears. He’s the executive director of Environment Texas, the state chapter of a nationwide environmental nonprofit.
Paxton “routinely sues the federal government to try and block environmental initiatives—for example, suing to undo clean-water protections,” Metzger says. Environment Texas describes itself with phrases like “guide our country onto a greener, healthier path” and “grassroots support” and “allow nature to thrive” and “infinite economic growth on a finite planet is neither wise nor possible.” When I met Metzger, he was driving his college-age son’s Chevy Volt, an early plug-in hybrid. When I met Deason, he was driving a blacked-out Ford F-150 Raptor, a pickup truck that is a sports car.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
