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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Tyler Hicks in Texas

RARE PHOTOS: Progressive texas organizers hail shock win as far right republicans left reeling | Rare Historical Photos

a man in a suit speaks
Taylor Rehmet, a Democrat and local union leader who won a runoff for state senate last month. Photograph: KXAS via AP

Chris Tackett started tracking extremism in Texas politics about a decade ago, whenever his schedule as a Little League coach and school board member would allow. At the time, he lived in Granbury, 40 minutes west of Fort Worth. He had noticed that a local member of the state legislature, Mike Lang, had become a vocal advocate for using public money for private schools – despite the fact that Lang campaigned as a supporter of public education.

With a little research, Tackett found that Lang had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn, billionaire mega-donors whose deep pockets and Christian nationalist views have consumed the Texas GOP. Tackett published his findings on social media, and soon enough, people started asking him to create pie charts of their representatives’ campaign funds. These charts evolved into the organisation See It. Name It. Fight It.

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