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The Wilks Brothers: Fracking Sugar Daddies For The Far Right
SUBMITTED BY Peter Montgomery on Thursday, 6/12/2014 11:18 am
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 extremist who believes the Bible should be a primary
textbook in Americas public schools, and that any politician who disagrees should
be voted out. Lanes events are usually closed to the media, but he has given
special access to the Christian Broadcasting Networks sympathetic David Brody.
Brodys coverage of the Iowa event included short video clips of comments by
brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who were identified only as members of Lanes
Pastors and Pews group.
CBNs Brody reported, The Wilks brothers worry that Americas declining morals
will especially hurt the younger generation, so theyre using the riches that the Lord
has blessed them with to back specific goals. One of those goals may be David
Lanes insistence that politicians make the Bible a primary textbook in public
schools.
Heres 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 heres
Farris: Theyre 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 thats not real, thats not
proper, its 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 shouldnt vote for politicians who promise free
this, free that. Like any number of Religious Right leaders, he saw Barack Obamas
re-election as a harbinger of the End Times and he believes God will punish America
for embracing homosexuality. Unlike all of them, hes on the list of the worlds
richest people.
Theyre 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
to the 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 Singapores sovereign wealth fund for $3.5
billion. Their share was reportedly 68% 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. The most 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,
and barely 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, the Billings Gazette reported that 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 62,000acre 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, they bought 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 the most expensive ski-accessible home in the
history of Snowmass Village, Colorado.
An Aspen newspaper reported in 2012 that Dan 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 have a world class recording studio installed in his 20,000square-foot home and to have his churchs audio-visual system similarly upgraded.
Members of the Wilks family have been philanthropists in their hometown over the
years, funding, for example, a community center and mobile emergency command
post for 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 Fathers Foundation. The Thirteen
Foundation has become a major funder to Religious Right organizations and to rightwing political outfits that are part of the Koch brothers 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.
Heres 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 organizations that are fighting legal equality for LGBT people, access to
contraception and abortion services for women, and promoting the Tea Partys
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 all part 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 Foundations 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 administrations 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 rightwing 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 year Vice President Tim Goeglein
called gay rights movement one of the great threats to our religious liberty.
President Jim Daly is reportedly scheduled to speak at 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 Gods 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.
Farriss brother Dan and his wife Staci each gave $55 million to their Heavenly
Fathers Foundation, according to the groups 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 th anniversary celebration in
May featured Mike Huckabee, and intriguingly, $100,000 to the Eastland County
District Attorneys 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.
A February 2013 report by the National Institute on Money in State Politics found
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 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 they 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 Rehbergs
campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Farris and Joann have
together given $10,400 toward Steve Dainess 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, state Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is running for governor, reported
nearly $31,000 in in-kind contributions from Farris and Dan 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 Californias 44th Assembly 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 place to 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 of
in the general election.
During the 2012 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commissions
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 FRCs
Washington, DC 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 Associations 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.
Wilks and the War on Women
As Kate Sheppard reported last August for Mother Jones, The Thirteen Foundations
2011 gift to Life Dynamics, a Texas-based anti-abortion group, funded a campaign
to mass-mail DVDs to lawyers encouraging them to sue abortion clinics into
oblivion. Crooks and Liars blogger Karoli has noted that Life Dynamics actively
engages in espionage against organizations serving women and operates
campaigns to harass doctors who perform abortions.
The more than $2 million that The Thirteen Foundation gave to Media Revolution
Ministries in 2012 allowed for a vast expansion of the group, which had only an
$80,000 budget the year before. The group, also known as Online for Life, says it
implements cutting-edge Internet and traditional marketing outreaches to connect

with abortion-determined women and men. In other words, they try to intercept
women who search for abortion information and send them to anti-choice
pregnancy centers.
Those funds may have been used to help pregnancy centers buy ads on search
terms like abortion clinics to intercept women who went online. NARAL ProChoice America cited Online for Lifes Google ads when it announced in April that
its investigations had led Google to take down ads from crisis pregnancy centers
that violated the search engines rules against deceptive advertising.
The Thirteen Foundation also gave $450,000 in 2011 to Care Net, a network of
Christian pregnancy centers whose standards of affiliation include this
requirement:
The pregnancy center does not recommend, provide, or refer single women for
contraceptives. (Married women seeking contraceptive information should be urged
to seek counsel, along with their husbands, from their pastor and physician.).
The Wilks are also backers of Open Door, a local Christian crisis pregnancy center
to which the Thirteen Foundation gave more than $90,000 in 2012. Farris and Joann
have also been benefactors of Texas Right to Life.
The Wilks Worldview
With the exception of the brief interaction with CBNs David Brody, the Wilks
brothers have generally been media-shy. But the worldview of Farris, the older of
the two brothers, whose foundation is backing the Religious Right and Tea Party
movements, is quite clearly revealed in the sermons he preaches.
In addition to his business ventures, Farris, the older brother, is also a pastor at the
church founded by his father, The Assembly of Yahweh (7th Day). The
churchs doctrine seems to be an amalgam based on the elder Wilks anachronistic
interpretations of the Bible. It combines biblical literalism with a heavy emphasis on
the Old Testament: The church celebrates its Sabbath on Saturday, follows the
dietary rules laid down in Leviticus, and celebrates Jewish holidays but not the
religious holidays of the Gentiles, which include Christmas, Easter, Valentines
Day, White Sunday, Good Friday, and Halloween. (I had to look up White Sunday,
which is a traditional Samoan holiday. Theres a significant Samoan community in
Texas). Women may not speak during worship.
The churchs doctrinal points align with the Religious Right on many policy issues.
Abortion is murder, including pregnancies resulting from rape and incest.
Homosexuality is a serious crime a very grievous sin.
A number of Farris Wilks sermons can be heard through his churchs website. Back
in November 2012, he was pretty despondent about the re-election of Barack
Obama: I do believe that our country died that Tuesday night, to all thats
honorable, thats good, thats ambitious, and that has justice. The old way of life
that we will take care of ourselves, we will be self-sufficient as much as we are able,
the pride in pulling your own weight, or paddling your own canoe. The sermon

includes small-government quotes from Thomas Jeferson, anti-socialist quotes from

Winston Churchill, and a bootstraps approach to poverty. The best way to get out
of poverty is to go to work, he says. That is one of the simplest ways to make it go
away.
Wilks said he was refreshed by biblical texts about the End Times, speculating
that the election went the way it did because maybe its time to wrap up some
things, maybe its time to move on to the next one thousand years. And he
warned of persecution against Christians:
I will tell you now that you need to be ready for a little bit more scoffing and ridicule
than maybe weve experienced in the past, because I think not only us but the
Christian community at large is coming under attack, not only in America but
throughout the world. We see it on the late night talk shows. One man in particular.
And some time you think, man, it would almost be nice if the judgment would
happen so we can see what would happen to those people. for the things they are
saying, which are so vulgar and violent against Yahwehhis mercy must be
inexhaustible to put up with that
Several months later, after his participation in the David Lane event in Iowa, Wilks
was feeling motivated to do more to impact the future of America. In a July 2, 2013,
sermon he referred to claims made by discredited Religious Right historian David
Barton about the countrys founders and Bartons assertion that many of our laws
come from the scriptures. And in a sermon he described as a study of Sodom and
Gomorrah, he laid out his belief that the country is facing a clear choice:
As most of you probably know by now, we are in a battle for our society. Will we
follow the secular religion of man, him being supreme, and evolving, or will we
submit to Elohim, who has the right to give us laws and commandments to follow
since he is the one who created us? Who is in charge? Is it man, or is it our creator?
He read scripture passages that referred to the story of Gods destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah in what he said was punishment for base and demented sexual
practices, the tolerance of which in America could bring about the end of our
nation. He warned that allowing same-sex couples to get married would soon lead
to bestiality being promoted and accepted. I do believe we live in a nation that will
start to vomit some of its people out, he warned. After reading a passage from
Isaiah in which the land and its inhabitants are cursed for their depravity, he said:
I fear that that is where we are as a nation. We have been in the blessed part of our
nation, but I think were coming to the point nowwere going to reap what we
have sown, and what we have sown has not been goodwhat it says here, that the
earth lies polluted under its inhabitants. Think of all the murder that has happened
in this country.all the babies that have been murderedthink of all the
perversions in the realm of sexual perversion of all kindsall the breaking of
Yahwehs covenant.and so you recognize that at some point Yahwehs going to
say its time to wrap up its time to move on to a kingdom of people that want to
serve me, that want to be redeemed, that want salvationwe have to draw some
lines in the sand for ourselves.

He also mocked environmentalism and the efort to save certain animals or the
polar caps. We didnt create the Earth so how can we save it? When you realize
that Yahweh is in control, its much simpler, he says. You can turn over some of
those responsibilities to him. Maybe the melting of polar ice is us getting a little
scorched here as a message from God.
Later last summer he returned to the Sodom and Gomorrah theme, denouncing the
gay pride movement as an example of lust and defiance of authority described in
the Bible. What were fighting against today is not a sexual revolution particular to
our own enlightened age, but its a return to pre-Christian pagan sexual immorality
or perversion.
And Farris sounded like the most extreme anti-gay Religious Right leaders in
portraying gay people as child predators:
If we all took on this lifestyle, all humanity would perish in one generationSo this
lifestyle is a predatorial lifestyle in that they need your children and straight people
having kids to fulfill their sexual habits. They cant do it by their self. They want your
children.But were in a war for our children. They want your children. So what will
you teach your children? A strong family is the last defense.
And, he said, they wont stop, predicting that pedophilia and bestiality will soon be
legal.
Just before Christmas he preached on spiritual apathy in America. He warned that
apathy is closing church doors in America just as liberalism and secularism. He
railed against people forgetting the Sabbath and spending too much time on
entertainment. He warned that God would lift his mantle of protection against the
U.S. because it is no longer protecting the family.
Earlier this year, Farris preached on Government That We Can Believe In. In that
sermon, he proclaimed that he loves America but that all nations fail at some point.
The founding fathers did a good job, but the nations cornerstones are now
crumbling: Its because of the lack of morality, the lack of continuity of one like
belief in our heavenly father those are the things that are bringing our nation to its
knees.
But this sermon focused less on sexual immorality and more on the threat of
socialism. Yahweh, he preached, is someone who respects private ownership and
the Torah is set up on the free enterprise system.
He said there are only two basic ideas in the whole world and those are free
enterprise and socialism. The U.S., he warned, is inching closer to socialism. You
either have more government or more freedom; the more money taken from you in
taxes, the fewer choices you have in life. He acknowledged that he has a personal
stake in this, saying he pays a huge amount in taxes.
He urged congregants not to vote for politicians who promise free this, free that,
saying that would lead us to become one of the poor nations of the world. Yahweh
never intended for us as a people to be afraid and reliant on government.

An Answer to Prayer?
Televangelist James Robison recently told participants in a Tea Party Unity
conference call that he is praying for a merger of the Tea Party and the Religious
Right. Its enough to make one wonder where Robison has been for the past few
years. There has always been a overlap between the Tea Party and the Religious
Right movements. And since the early days of the anti-Obama Tea Party organizing,
right-wing strategists like Ralph Reed and Rick Scarborough have been trying to
more fully merge the organizing energies of the two movements into an electoral
machine.
Groups like the Family Research Council and Heritage Foundation have worked hard
to limit the influence of libertarians in the conservative movement by portraying
social and economic conservatism as indivisible, while Republican activists like
historian David Barton have claimed that there is a biblical underpinning for the
far-rights anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-government agenda.
Maybe the miracle Robison was really looking for was a big pile of cash to fund his
next project. In which case, the answer to his prayers might be found in the person
of Farris Wilks, preacher, right-wing activist, and billionaire.
FILED UNDER
ORGANIZATIONS:
Heritage Foundation, Liberty Counsel, Life Dynamics, State Policy
Network, Wallbuilders, Heartbeat International, Media Revolution Ministries, Online
for Life, American Majority, Franklin Center for Government and Public
Integrity, Texas Right to Life Committee, Texas Home School Coalition, National
Institute of Marriage, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American
Renewal Project
PEOPLE:
David Barton, David Lane, Farris Wilks, Dan Wilks, Joann Wilks, Staci Wilks, Ted Cruz
TOPICS:
Anti-Gay, Anti-Choice, Values Voter Summit, Koch Brothers, money in politics
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