Tensions between the anti-abortion groups in the state burst into the open in February. | Getty Texas anti-abortion group tacks to the right, dividing state Republicans

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Right to Life’s attempts to move the state Legislature further to the right are faltering this election season. And that may be just fine with some conservative and rival anti-abortion groups.

The group's political action committee spent $2 million backing 17 challengers to incumbent state House and Senate lawmakers. Only three won their March primaries. Meanwhile, the group's attacks on lawmakers with strong anti-abortion records and free spending are stirring questions about whether it's more beholden to deep-pocketed donors and their agendas than to its core mission.


"Clearly there was a lot of money and a lot of power to be had," said Kyleen Wright, who heads Texans for Life, another anti-abortion group. "As a requirement ... it required purging people that didn’t have sufficient loyalty to their organizations."

Tensions between the anti-abortion groups in the state burst into the open in February, when the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops warned its congregations not to follow Texas Right to Life's political endorsements, in part because it said the group mischaracterized some of the bishops' positions and put out a misleading legislative scorecard. The group's influence among sitting state legislators also is waning because of its support of challengers that hold what are viewed as extreme views on a range of social issues.

“I basically ignore them now,” said Republican state Rep. Charlie Geren, who supported a 20-week abortion ban, an abortion ban on fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome and a host of other anti-abortion measures in his nearly two decades as a state lawmaker.

Geren won the primary for his Fort Worth-area district seat by defeating Bo French, whose campaign was almost completely funded by Texas Right to Life and an affiliated conservative group Empower Texans. The groups put out mailers and billboards questioning Geren’s conservative and anti-abortion credentials, even though Texas Right to Life gave him an 89 percent “pro-life” rating in its most recent scorecard.

“I thought we were getting along and then they stick a knife in your back,” said Geren, who has the backing of other anti-abortion groups in the state. “I don’t have any reason to talk to those people. None whatsoever.”

James and Elizabeth Graham, a Houston couple, run at least four entities affiliated with Texas Right to Life, which was started by James' father, who passed away in 2014. The groups include a 501(c)4 advocacy arm, two nonprofits and a political action committee.

The group argues that lawmakers like Geren aren’t sufficiently dedicated to banning abortion in circumstances such as when a fetus is unable to survive outside of the womb and are soft on end-of-life issues, such as regulating do-not-rescucitate orders at hospitals.

“The moderate wing,” Emily Kebodeaux Cook, general counsel for Texas Right to Life, said in an email, “has demonstrated a lack of commitment to saving vulnerable babies and patients.”

Geren, for example, voted against an amendment in the last legislative session that would have removed the exception for severe fetal abnormalities — such as cases when a fetus is missing a brain or heart and won’t survive outside the womb — in the state’s 20-week abortion ban.

“Texas Right to Life is known for our fearless and unflinching commitment to advancing Pro-Life issues and candidates, whether it is popular or not," Luke Bowen, the group's political director, said in an email. "It takes guts to challenge an incumbent, and we are proud to have supported all of our endorsed candidates who chose to go head-to-head with incumbents who failed to fight for Life when it was politically unpopular.”

Texas Right to Life’s political action committee raised $2.5 million so far this year, up from $500,000 in 2016. Nearly $2 million of the total came from Dan and Farris Wilks, west Texas fracking billionaires who also bankrolled the campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as other Texas PACs such as Empower Texans and the Texas Home School Coalition that back tea party conservatives in the Texas legislature.

The group’s tax-exempt advocacy arm called Texas Right to Life Committee Inc. raised $1.4 million in 2016, the latest available data, but donor information isn’t made public for such 501(c)4 organizations.

The group directly funds candidates and also spends on campaign materials such as billboards, radio and Facebook ads and flyers.

It also spends large sums on salaries and overhead.

In 2016, the advocacy arm spent $685,530 on salaries and benefits for its 38 staff members — James and Elizabeth Graham reported taking salaries of nearly $130,000 each from its entities. It reported spending about $21,000 on campaign expenses that year and $354,276 so far this year, nearly 75 percent for voter guides to benefit Gov. Greg Abbott who didn’t face major primary challengers, according to filings with the IRS and the state.

In the most recent filing for June 2018, the group’s PAC reported more than $200,000 in unitemized expenses on its American Express card.

Texas Right to Life has waded into a host of issues unrelated to abortion as its financial fortunes skyrocketed, becoming more entwined with other conservative groups such as Texas Values and Empower Texans.

Its wrap up of the 2017 state legislative session expressed support for bills that would have restricted transgender access to bathrooms and one that bans so-called sanctuary cities.

"We now find ourselves on a similarly dangerous ground of pure discrimination — discrimination against the privacy rights of women and our valuable daughters, our children," said Melissa Conway, Texas Right to Life's director of external relations, at a rally last year supporting the bathroom bill, comparing the bill to abortion rights. "We are not neutral — not on the right to life, privacy or any new trend that serves as a gateway to predatory practices and that places both women and our daughters in a vulnerable position in our society."

Cook argues that the group isn't straying from abortion or end-of-life issues.

“We took no official position, lobbied, nor did we alert legislators on [such] bills,” she wrote.

Still its candidate endorsements often have more in common with groups that have broad socially conservative agendas. In a mailing attacking Geren for example, Texas Right to Life criticized his efforts to pass a bill that would boost reporting requirements on nonprofits and his fiscal responsibility rating from another nonprofit called Texans for Fiscal Responsibility run by Empower Texans, which shares many of the same donors.

James Graham and Empower Texans’ Michael Quinn Sullivan co-host a podcast about Texas politics.

“Some of the people in their endorsements really raised the eyebrows of people,” said Joe Pojman, who heads another anti-abortion group called Texas Alliance for Life. “I think it’s unfortunate that they have chosen to endorse on issues unrelated to life issues.”

The rift between the anti-abortion groups dates to around 2013, when Texas lawmakers passed a sweeping anti-abortion law that was partially overturned by the Supreme Court three years later, according to Wright at Texans for Life.

She blamed Texas Right to Life for trying to tack on amendments that she said could have scuttled the bill’s passage.

Texas Right to Life later didn’t sufficiently defend lawmakers who voted for the bill, she said.

“They deceived us,” said Wright, who added her close relationships with the Grahams dissolved afterward.

“Voting to allow discriminatory abortions on babies who may have a disability or be ill may be okay with some pro-life organizations, but not ours,” countered Cook.

Since then, conservative donors have filled the coffers of Texas Right to Life. In 2015 the Wilks brothers gave the group’s political action committee $300,000, more than the PAC raised in all of 2012. That doesn’t include harder-to-track money that runs through the advocacy arm.

“Our donors partner with the lifesaving work of Texas Right to Life because we are uncompromising, effective and actually deliver on decreasing the abortion rate and saving vulnerable patients in Texas,” Cook said.

Texas Right to Life has notched some high-profile wins. In 2014, it helped knock off state Sen. Bob Deuell, even though he wrote portions of the 2013 anti-abortion law.

The group sued Deuell over a cease and desist letter he sent to radio stations about Texas Right to Life ads, which he says misrepresented his position on end-of-life issues.

But now, the group’s strategy may be backfiring.

Texas Right to Life endorsed challengers to four Republican incumbents who earned 100 percent ratings on its own legislative scorecard. Mayes Middleton was the only challenger who won, defeating state Rep. Wayne Faircloth in a Gulf Coast district that includes Galveston. Faircloth supported a ban on big donors being appointed to state boards.

“It’s a mystery to me why a group would have so much acrimony against people who have worked to produce so many good results for the state of Texas,” said state Rep. Byron Cook, who heads the State Affairs Committee, the gatekeeper for abortion bills in the Texas House.

Cook, a staunch anti-abortion lawmaker who is retiring this year, has repeatedly drawn the group’s ire during his primary contests.

“Their tactics hurt their cause,” he said. “In the end we are responsible for good policy and what’s right for the people of Texas.”

And even some of the primary victories it notched this year are putting safe Republican districts in play in the general election.

In one Dallas district, Texas Right to Life backed a politically inexperienced interior designer Lisa Luby Ryan over incumbent state Rep. Jason Villalba, who had the support of business groups like the National Federation of Independent Business and the Texas Association of Business, as well as a 90 percent rating on the group’s scorecard for the 2017 session.

Ryan, who also had the support of other socially conservative groups such as Texans for Vaccine Choice, lost the support of the powerful Texas Association of Realtors, which is backing Democrat John Turner in the general election, citing his “fiscally conservative” views.

“It’s obviously not going to be helpful to lose the realtors,” said Pojman, whose group backed Villalba in the primary. “Our ideal is that all pro-life groups be together.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report mischaracterized the status of a lawsuit Texas Right to Life brought against state Sen. Bob Deuell. It was withdrawn.

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