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By Robert Downen
The Texas Tribune
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Earlier than his unlikely rise to changing into certainly one of Texas’ most influential conservative powerbrokers, Jonathan Stickland was RaTTy — brief for “RaTmasTer,” the moniker by which he’d torment his many on-line associates and enemies.
He was barely a teen when he first began lurking on fantasy soccer and on-line gaming boards, dipping his adolescent toe into the web’s hate-filled, primordial soup. By the mid-2000s — and after dropping out of highschool, briefly following a girlfriend to Illinois and transferring again to North Texas to smoke weed and work in pest management — Stickland had gained minor infamy for his vicious insults and provocations.
“All the scene was fairly poisonous again then,” stated Adam Whitmer, who began enjoying Warcraft video games with Stickland below the identify “MaDrAv” twenty years in the past. “Racial, homophobic and xenophobic slurs have been the insults of the period. Nevertheless, we tended to both instigate it or take it too far. Our group’s fame was solely surpassed by RaTTy’s particular person fame.”
Stickland was in his 20s and struggling financially, with a brand new child and a younger spouse. He was a troll. However as a substitute of rising out of it, as many do, Stickland would go on to make a profession of it — one that will later put him on the map in Texas politics and finally assist ignite a civil battle between the Texas GOP’s far-right and extra average wings.
Stickland served 4 antagonizing phrases within the Texas Home, passing only one invoice however garnering fixed headlines for his stunts and habits. His antics solely endeared him to Texas’ Tea Occasion motion and its ultrarich funders, who by then had coalesced round an intense hatred of presidency and the “gum-it-up-at-all-costs” method to legislating that Stickland helped normalize amongst broad swaths of at present’s Republican Occasion.
By the point he introduced his retirement from the Legislature in 2019, Stickland was a people hero among the many state’s grassroots conservatives, and shortly parlayed his acclaim right into a job main a prolific political motion committee, Defend Texas Liberty, that has sought to purge the Texas GOP of moderates and push the get together towards extra hardline anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigration stances.
With Stickland on the helm, Defend Texas Liberty has unapologetically courted controversy, elevating a steady of far-right activists whereas doling out $3 million to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick earlier than he presided over the impeachment trial of their longtime ally, Legal professional Common Ken Paxton. Within the wake of Paxton’s acquittal, Stickland vowed scorched-earth main campaigns in opposition to Home Speaker Dade Phelan and different Republicans, and ready to cleanse the get together of anybody not in lockstep together with his hardline, far-right imaginative and prescient.
“You and your band of RINOs are actually on discover,” Stickland tweeted at Phelan amid Paxton’s acquittal in September. “You may be held accountable for this whole sham. We’ll by no means cease.”
Stickland was nonetheless gearing up for retribution three weeks later, when The Texas Tribune reported that he had hosted infamous white supremacist and antisemitic web provocateur Nick Fuentes at his workplace for almost seven hours — a serious scandal that quickly escalated Republican infighting, raised issues in regards to the get together’s proximity to neo-Nazis, led to new revelations about racist trolls in Stickland’s orbit and prompted unsuccessful makes an attempt to drive him from the get together.
4 months later, neither Stickland nor his group has defined the assembly with Fuentes. Stickland declined a number of interview requests and didn’t reply to an in depth record of questions for this story.
On the boards that Stickland as soon as trolled, although, the response was feigned shock. Whitmer — who’d adopted Stickland’s meteoric rise to energy — stated he was equally unsurprised the place life took his previous Warcraft teammate.
“As soon as I noticed how he acted and carried himself, how he spoke, the waves he prompted, I knew that was simply the grownup model of RaTTy,” Whitmer stated. “He might have grown up, however he by no means actually modified.”
“I AM A LEGEND”
Stickland was born in Plano in 1983 and raised within the Southern Baptist custom. At 14, he started visiting on-line fantasy soccer boards, shortly adapting to the informal misogyny, homophobia and racism that have been typically attribute of early discussion board tradition.
All through the 2000s, Stickland was a bombastic and dedicated member of the boards, utilizing his greater than 3,300 posts to troll his detractors and regale his fellow fantasy footballers with demeaning tales about “dumb focking Asians” and “half bare wimmens” with “sensational titties” or, in a single occasion, give a play-by-play of his panicked try and cross a drug take a look at for a job through an over-the-counter detox drink that gave him a blue tongue and “bunghole in disarray.”
In Warcraft circles, he was a persistent antagonist, stated Whitmer, who offered a hyperlink to at least one 2006 outburst wherein Stickland seems to inform his “gay,” “euro trash” and “terrorist” opponents to slit their wrists earlier than including his signature sign-off: “I AM A LEGEND.”
“That was Jonathan,” Whitmer stated. “Everybody knew that for those who performed RaTTy, you have been in for a barrage of insults.”
In the meantime, on the fantasy soccer boards, Stickland continued to offer his on-line compatriots with mundane life updates that confirmed a distinct facet of him: That of a brand new husband and father, struggling to economize for the down fee on a modest house whereas making two-hour, roundtrip drives between his pest management job and the condominium he shared together with his new spouse, toddler little one and canine. It was a tough stretch, however Stickland appeared content material.
“I do take pleasure in it fairly a bit,” he stated of his job in September 2007, earlier than then advising different fantasy soccer customers on how one can fight pest infestations or use fox urine to scare away skunks.
Then, in December 2007, Stickland tumbled down a fateful rabbit gap. “I made a decision yesterday after some analysis and watching some clips on YouTube that I’m now voting for Ron Paul 08! Simply in case anybody provides a shiat,” he wrote in regards to the Republican congressman from Texas who had beforehand run for president as a Libertarian.
Two days later, Stickland was again to his previous habits, bragging about infiltrating an unsuspecting discussion board of insect hobbyists, the place he posted a hyperlink to Lemon Occasion, a graphic porn web site that was a favourite of 2000-era web trolls.
A number of weeks later, Stickland returned to the boards to announce that he had given his first political donation — to Paul — and volunteered to canvas for his presidential marketing campaign. Stickland was hooked by Paul’s guarantees to, in Stickland’s phrases, “abolish the IRS,” “construct a fence and shoot anybody who crosses it,” “finish abortion rights” and “restrict authorities by chopping nearly each single board we might identify.”
As Paul’s longshot bid faltered within the months after, Stickland grew more and more offended in regards to the two-party system that he believed existed solely to guard institution politicians and encroach on civil liberties.
“We is not going to hand you the White Home while you try and shove ###### down my throat within the type of a John McCain,” he wrote in a single heated, February 2008 argument with a fellow fantasy footballer. “Piss off and provides me my get together again.”
His rage solely grew over the subsequent two years, as was clear from his occasional, all-caps rants about authorities surveillance or his warnings of a coming apocalypse for which Individuals should put together to defend themselves.
Then, in 2011, Stickland attended a city corridor in Tarrant County with U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, and, in a transfer that will change his life, determined to confront the Republican congressman over his current vote to boost the debt restrict. Additionally within the crowd that day was Julie McCarty, then-leader of Tarrant County’s nascent Tea Occasion. A number of days after, Stickland later recalled, he was consuming a midnight bowl of ice cream when he obtained an e-mail from McCarty, asking if he’d think about operating for workplace.
“My spouse was leaning over me and began laughing,” he later instructed the Austin American-Statesman. “Then she stated, ‘Crap, you would possibly be capable to try this.’”
Stickland prayed on it, agreed to throw his hat within the ring and began knocking on greater than 7,000 doorways — dropping 50 kilos alongside the best way. Backed by McCarty and different Tea Occasion-aligned teams, he cruised to victory within the Republican main after which trounced his opponent, a Libertarian Occasion candidate, within the 2012 common election for Texas Home District 92.
Even he was stunned by his quick rise, telling the Fort Value Star-Telegram that he had by no means imagined “writing payments and amendments and all that stuff,” and was “watching fairly a little bit of video to see what a state consultant really does.”
He was 29, and headed to Austin with a promise to go away with the chamber’s most conservative voting file.
Bridge builder, bomb thrower
Within the first weeks of the 2013 session, Stickland forged himself as a bridge builder, unwavering in his opposition to abortion or authorities enlargement however nonetheless dedicated to bipartisanship. He collaborated with liberal, pro-abortion rights Sen. Wendy Davis on laws to extend excused absences for schoolchildren with army dad and mom; and in an interview on the time, he stated Rep. Mary González — an El Paso Democrat and the Home’s first openly-LGBTQ+ lady — was certainly one of his “greatest associates.”
“I am attempting to not get too wrapped up in a number of the political stuff,” Stickland stated on his first day as a lawmaker. “Proper now, I am simply centered on making quite a lot of associates, attempting to not make any enemies, and speaking to folks about my legislative agenda and constructing coalitions.”
In a current interview, González acknowledged she was as soon as pleasant with Stickland, and that the 2 bonded as younger newcomers to the statehouse. A decade later, she sees their relationship a lot in another way.
“He capitalized on bipartisanship again then, however now assaults anybody who works in direction of bipartisanship,” she stated.
As he reached throughout the aisle, Stickland additionally shortly confirmed his conservative bona fides, proving unafraid to critique veteran Republican lawmakers, together with Home Speaker Joe Straus. Stickland proposed laws to offer state tax breaks to “religiously-based companies,” together with Interest Foyer, that confronted fines for not offering contraception to employees below the Reasonably priced Care Act. He joined dozens of GOP lawmakers in demanding that the Boy Scouts of America uphold its ban on homosexual members. He slammed his fellow Republican lawmakers as hypocrites after they sought a brand new regulation that’d permit them, however not on a regular basis residents, to hold handguns into hospitals, church buildings and bars. To the applause of civil liberty teams, Stickland efficiently pushed for an modification that tightened regulation enforcement’s entry to personal residents’ emails.
And he employed as his chief of employees Tony McDonald, a current College of Texas at Austin graduate who’d spent his school profession trolling campus liberals with stunts reminiscent of an “affirmative motion bake sale” that charged white college students extra for items. Stickland caught with McDonald amid criticism for weblog posts wherein he known as for “literacy assessments” for Black Obama voters, amongst different posts that have been criticized as racist or homophobic, however described by McDonald as “hilariously superior conservative issues.”
By the top of his first session, Stickland had delivered on his promise to be the chamber’s most conservative member. He’d carved out his fame as a sterling libertarian, wanting to kill something that didn’t align with the “liberty manufacturing unit” that he nicknamed his workplace.
And, maybe extra importantly, he determined he most popular bomb-throwing to bridge-building.
“I did not come down right here to make a ton of associates,” Stickland stated because the 2013 session winded down. “I got here down right here to combat for what I imagine in.”
Large cash
The subsequent yr, Stickland once more cruised to reelection regardless of sturdy opposition from the state’s largest regulation enforcement teams, certainly one of which labeled him “one of many worst state representatives in Texas historical past” over his opposition to a ban on the sale of the hallucinogen salvia, and to a invoice that will have made it a misdemeanor for an grownup to “knowingly trigger bodily contact with a baby {that a} cheap individual would regard as offensive and sexual in nature.”
He returned to Austin in 2015 able to outrage and battle. That session, Stickland was the lone vote against a invoice that made “revenge porn” a felony. He was faraway from a committee assembly and later investigated by the Texas Rangers for itemizing witnesses who weren’t in Austin as supporters of his invoice to ban pink mild cameras. When Deliberate Parenthood supporters rallied on the Capitol and tried to foyer lawmakers in opposition to cuts to a program that offered free breast and cervical most cancers screenings to low-income girls, Stickland hung an indication exterior his workplace that proclaimed him a “FORMER FETUS.” And, to the ire of each side of the aisle, he used the Home flooring to grandstand and prod lawmakers, later pushing video clips of these exchanges out to his social media followers.
In 2016, Stickland once more gained reelection, regardless of a few of his previous catching as much as him. Through the marketing campaign, his opponent, native pastor Scott Fisher, unearthed a few of Stickland’s previous discussion board posts — together with one wherein the 25-year-old Stickland stated “rape is non existent in marriage.” Fisher’s marketing campaign additionally sought to hyperlink Stickland’s feedback to his votes in opposition to increasing the rights of sexual assault survivors, which Stickland known as “ludicrous.”
Stickland apologized for the posts, saying he had “been a distinct individual for a really very long time” and that it was “troublesome to look again at how careless I used to be on the fantasy boards.”
The scandal didn’t shake his help among the many grassroots and McCarty, who criticized Fisher for “attacking a brother in Christ for his previous sins.”
By then, Stickland had already cemented his standing amongst grassroots conservatives, stated Zachary Maxwell, who met Stickland round 2014 whereas engaged on the marketing campaign of Sen. Konni Burton, R-Colleyville.
“He was seen as a uniter — any individual who’d been within the trenches for a very long time, who knew the ins and outs and will combination data and donations,” recalled Maxwell, who later labored for Rep. Mike Lang, the then-leader of the conservative Home Freedom Caucus. “I don’t suppose all that was true, however he definitely made folks imagine that.”
Certainly one of Stickland’s appeals, Maxwell stated, was his mastery of “moneybombs” wherein a handful of megadonors would match — or typically triple — the sum of money donated by smaller donors in one-day fundraising blitzes. The technique helped Stickland elevate gobs of cash whereas touting himself as a grassroots, small-donor-supported outsider, Maxwell stated.
Take, for instance, an Oct. 14, 2016, “moneybomb” for Stickland: Forward of the fundraiser, Stickland promoted the one-day drive by posting movies of him arguing in opposition to an ethics reform invoice within the Home that had been opposed by megadonors and darkish cash teams through the earlier legislative session. After the 24-hour “moneybomb” ended, Stickland touted on Fb that his marketing campaign had raised $299,000 from 367 donors — little question a formidable haul, however much less so upon nearer examination. Marketing campaign finance disclosures from that day present that roughly two-thirds of the funds got here from simply 5 ultrarich businessmen and conservative donors, led by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the 2 West Texas oil billionaires who now fund Defend Texas Liberty.
Dunn, Wilks and the opposite three donors have been on the time bankrolling a distinct political motion committee, Empower Texans, that by 2015 had emerged as a serious drive within the Texas Legislature, donating thousands and thousands of {dollars} to ultraconservative candidates — together with Paxton as he efficiently ran for legal professional common — and urgent lawmakers to assault Home management, specifically then-Speaker Straus, from the fitting.
Stickland was Empower Texans’ man within the Home: Throughout his first two years as a legislator, he obtained simply $3,700 from the group and its funders. That quantity climbed to almost $200,000 between 2013 and 2014. And from 2016 by means of 2018, they gave Stickland greater than $850,000 — in comparison with $508,000 from all different donors mixed. By the top of his profession, Empower Texans and its major financiers gave Stickland $1.15 million — almost half of the full contributions he obtained over his time as a lawmaker.
Maxwell, who later labored for Empower Texans, recalled a shift in Stickland as his ties to the group deepened. Each publicly and behind the scenes, Maxwell stated, Stickland grew to become a “complete nuisance,” way more involved with garnering outrage and annoying fellow legislators than he was with serving to grassroots conservatives.
“In some unspecified time in the future he realized it is a sport,” Maxwell stated. “He discovered that there was cash in it so long as you retain your head down and beat the drum.”
In 2019, Stickland handed his very first invoice — a ban on pink mild cameras — and shortly after introduced that he wouldn’t search reelection, saying that he had “decided it’s not within the Lord’s will.”
“As an alternative,” he instructed supporters in an e-mail, “I intend to dedicate extra time to my household, my church, and my enterprise.”
Defend Texas Liberty
His retirement from the Legislature got here at a pivotal second for the state’s ultraconservative motion, which by then had been suffering from infighting and minor scandals. In 2019, McCarty was closely criticized for Fb posts wherein she stated she might “definitely perceive” the motives of the racist gunman who murdered 22 folks at an El Paso Walmart that yr. Her group rebranded because the True Texas Undertaking across the similar time, and continues to work intently with Stickland.
In 2020, McDonald — the previous Stickland chief of employees who went on to work for Empower Texans — was roundly criticized after the unintentional launch of unedited podcast audio wherein he and Empower Texans vp Cary Cheshire mocked Gov. Greg Abbott’s use of a wheelchair. Each have been suspended. Not lengthy after, Empower Texans was formally dissolved and its media web site, Texas Scorecard, was spun off right into a separate entity.
In March 2020, Defend Texas Liberty was registered with the Texas Ethics Fee.
Since then, Defend Texas Liberty and Stickland have functioned because the north star in a constellation of teams, actions and political places of work which have obtained tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} from Dunn and Wilks, two West Texas oil tycoons who have been key funders of Empower Texans. In 2022, Stickland additionally based a consulting agency, Pale Horse Methods, which has since obtained greater than $830,000 from Defend Texas Liberty.
With Stickland on the helm, the state’s far proper has vowed scorched-earth campaigns in opposition to these within the Texas GOP who they declare are RINOs — together with sterling conservatives and one-time allies who’ve publicly defied Defend Texas Liberty, reminiscent of Reps. Briscoe Cain and Jeff Leach.
Chief amongst their enemies has been Home Speaker Dade Phelan, who Stickland and his allies have perpetually accused of working with Democrats to harm fellow Republicans. On the similar time that he’s lobbed such accusations, Stickland has achieved precisely that — repeatedly attempting to enlist a 20-year-old abortion rights activist, Olivia Julianna, to “collab” or amplify assaults in opposition to Phelan to her greater than 1 million followers on varied social media platforms.
“Thought we’d each be capable to admire Phelan stinks,” Stickland wrote in a message to Julianna together with a hyperlink to a video that claimed the speaker was drunk whereas presiding over Home enterprise in Could.
“Get bent,” she replied, in keeping with screenshots of direct messages she offered the Tribune.
In the meantime, Stickland has continued to put a preeminence on outrage and trolling: He nonetheless works intently with McDonald; and gave a bonus to Shelby Griesinger, the present Defend Texas Liberty treasurer who has shared QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories, after a few of her social media posts have been criticized as racist.
“Anytime progressive leftists are dropping their minds I do know you’ve achieved nicely,” Stickland wrote in an e-mail to Griesinger, a screenshot of which she included on her TikTok. “Maintain kicking the hornets subsequent… Your Christmas bonus simply obtained larger.”
Stickland was equally happy after Ye, the rapper previously often known as Kanye West, posted a collection of brazenly antisemitic screeds on X in 2022 that ended with him promising to go “demise con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”
“The left is freaking out, will overreact, and make issues worse. Grateful for these ‘difficult authority,’ by asking questions,” Stickland wrote in a put up the identical day that tagged Ye and Elon Musk, who on the time was being criticized for X’s failure to fight skyrocketing antisemitism.
Stickland’s habits continued by means of the top of final yr: He and his allies recruited Kyle Rittenhouse, the gunman who fatally shot two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, to work for Pale Horse Methods; employed two far-right activists with documented histories of antisemitic and white nationalist views; controversially partnered with a shadowy firm that pays Gen Z influencers to do undisclosed political advertising; and supported anti-immigration activists who despatched fortune cookies to lawmakers amid debate over a invoice to ban Chinese language twin residents from proudly owning property in Texas and, in December, despatched mailers to voters in Phelan’s district that shamed him for associating with Muslims.
The techniques have persistently been criticized by fellow conservatives, who say that Stickland and his allies care far much less about advancing conservative coverage than they do creating chaos and bringing in “sure males” reminiscent of Bryan Slaton, the previous Royse Metropolis consultant who was faraway from the Home final yr after getting a 19-year-old aide drunk and having intercourse along with her.
“They don’t want folks which might be really efficient,” stated Sheena Rodriguez, founding father of Alliance for a Secure Texas, which advocates for stronger border safety. “The people who they put ahead all look the identical. All of them sound the identical. They’re all nuts. They don’t seem to be severe folks.”
Rodgriguez first obtained concerned with the state’s grassroots motion round 2020, when she attended a coaching held by True Texas Undertaking. She finally spun off her personal group and, in late 2021, stated she was recruited by Defend Texas Liberty to endorse Don Huffines, the previous state senator and businessman who was difficult Abbott within the Republican main. Rodriguez stated she initially deliberate to endorse Huffines’ hardline anti-immigration marketing campaign, however determined to remain impartial. Not lengthy after, she stated, she obtained a telephone name from somebody within the Defend Texas Liberty orbit, who instructed her that she’d been branded as “uncontrollable” by Stickland.
A number of months later, she stated, she was within the exhibit corridor on the Texas GOP conference when she stumbled upon a sales space with promotional supplies and speaking factors that have been noticeably just like her group’s. Confused, Rodriguez stated she launched herself to the younger, bearded man there, who recognized himself as Chris Russo, founding father of a brand new group known as Texans For Sturdy Borders.
“‘Who’s funding this?’” she recalled asking Russo. “He was like, ‘The identical folks behind” Empower Texans.
Russo didn’t reply to a request for remark.
“RATMSTR”
On a sunny Friday morning a yr and a half after that Texas GOP conference, Russo steered his pickup truck into the car parking zone of Pale Horse Methods’ distant Tarrant County workplace. His passenger seat was empty; within the again seat, a scandalous passenger: Nick Fuentes.
[Leader of anti-immigration group Texans for Strong Borders also runs anonymous, hate-filled social media accounts]
By then, six years had handed since Fuentes attended the lethal “Unite the Proper” rally at which tiki torch-waving neo-Nazis and fascists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and leaving a number of counterprotesters maimed and bloodied. Quickly after, Fuentes dropped out of Boston College to focus full time on his racist YouTube present, intermixing his antisemitic screeds with irony and humor that shortly drew a big following of younger, far-right hatemongers united by their disdain for ladies and Jews.
Mirroring the Defend Texas Liberty playbook, Fuentes quickly centered his vitality on these throughout the GOP, hoping to tug the get together and mainstream acceptability additional to his views by attacking others from the fitting.
The technique was “a hostile takeover of the Republican Occasion,” to cite Laura Loomer, a outstanding white nationalist conspiracy theorist and Fuentes collaborator who Stickland praised in December.
When Fuentes arrived in Texas in October, he was greeted by previous associates and younger followers embedded within the Defend Texas Liberty orbit. Amongst them: Russo, who ran nameless, bigoted social media accounts as his group helped push anti-immigration insurance policies that have been adopted by Texas lawmakers final yr; and Ella Maulding, a die-hard Fuentes fan who’d not too long ago parlayed her far-right on-line celeb right into a job coordinating social media for Pale Horse purchasers.
There, on the Pale Horse places of work, Maulding stood within the car parking zone making movies for Texans For Sturdy Borders whereas Rittenhouse and others unloaded furnishings from a U-Haul and Fuentes and Russo sat inside. Later within the day, Stickland emerged from the constructing’s facet door and climbed into his truck. His hair was grown lengthy and and beard raveled — preparation for an upcoming function because the Jewish narrator in an area play depicting the lifetime of Jesus Christ — and Stickland was nearly unrecognizable as he steered previous a automotive with a reporter inside.
The truck’s license plate left little question who was driving.
“RATMSTR,” it learn.
This text initially appeared in The Texas Tribune.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and fascinating Texans on state politics and coverage. Be taught extra at texastribune.org.
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