It was this time last year that we published our original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile of Tony Tinderholt, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, a man who hangs out with anti-immigrant militia groups and talks about arming Americans all along the U.S./Mexico border to stop Mexicans from taking “free stuff” and “thieving”. His solution to the immigration crisis is “people are going to die and that’s the only thing that is going to stop migrants from taking the lifeblood of our country.” Tinderholt has also told open-carry advocates in his district to call him immediately if the police even question them for wandering around with a firearm. Best of all was Tinderholt’s reaction to a Texas probate judge ruling that the state must comply with the Supreme Court’s rulings on same sex marriage… Tinderholt tried rallying against the judge for this, but in his effort online to do so, named the wrong case and the wrong judge. Making his crusade to protect the sanctity of marriage on Christian principles even more ridiculous and hypocritical is the fact that Tinderholt has been divorced four times, and is on his fifth marriage by the age of 44. When we last left him, he also was under an ethics investigation for “misplacing” $15,000 in campaign funds, something that is not shocking when you consider that back in 1999, one of his ex-wives and employees were embezzling money from a child care business he ran to buy crack cocaine (at least it was without Tinderholt’s knowledge).
But since we last wrote about Tony Tinderholt, his early career as a legislator has gone much like you would expect, given our first look at him. He gleefully voted for a law to allow the concealed carry of firearms on college campuses, and got right back to almost ironically trying to defend marriage from those pesky gay folks by co-sponsoring a “religious freedom” law in Texas.
Now, Tinderholt has powerful allies in Texas politics, considering his run in 2014 was supported by Ted Cruz and Dan Patrick. The backing of those powerful allies hardly led him to a dominant victory in that election, though, and in 2016 he faced a challenge for his seat to represent Texas District 94 from attorney Andrew Piel. Piel, who actually ran to Tinderholt’s left (I’m honestly not sure it’s possible to run to his right) was out-fundraised by Tinderholt by a 4 to 1 margin, and was defeated in the GOP Primary election. So I’m loathe to report that I’ll have to update this wanker’s profile in both 2017 and 2018, and hope maybe someone upsets him in that mid-term year.
(In a completely editorial comment, I still can’t handle how much he resembles Jared Lee Loughner’s mug-shot.)