On the Friday before the Texas primary election day (with early voting all but over), Donald Trump visited Corpus Christi and—among other things—dished out a long list of last-minute endorsements for his preferred GOP candidates mired in competitive races.
One surprising name on that list was Sid Miller. Surprising because one would have expected Trump to throw his weight behind Miller, the bombastic Texas Agriculture Commissioner and one of the president’s most steadfast champions in the state (Trump once called him his “man in Texas”), much sooner. For months, Miller had found himself as something of an underdog in the toughest primary fight of his career, up against a strong challenger fully backed by his powerful political nemesis, Governor Greg Abbott.
Nevertheless, Miller tried to squeeze all the juice from that endorsement that he could in the final stretch before Tuesday, saying it was proof that Republicans simply need to “Stick with Sid.”
But early Tuesday night, it was clear that this was all too little, too late. Miller was getting his cattle rousted by his challenger, Nate Sheets, a businessman who purveys a successful line of honey products.
As of 11:00 pm, Sheets was beating Miller by 5 points. Sheets declared victory—as did Abbott.
Miller’s apparent defeat marks one of the very rare instances of a statewide executive-branch Republican incumbent getting toppled in a Texas primary. Apart from an upset defeat of one-term Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton back in 2020, the last time an incumbent lost was back in 2014 when tea-party insurgent state Senator Dan Patrick toppled his weakened boss, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst.
That Trump’s endorsement only came in at the last second for Miller wasn’t the first sign that the rancher and former rodeo roper from Stephenville was in trouble. In recent sessions, he’d allegedly found himself at increasing odds with Republican leaders in the Legislature—seeing his authority at the Ag Department clawed back.
He’s also been in a bit of a political cold war with Abbott since at least 2020, when he joined a lawsuit against the governor over his COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and briefly considered waging a primary challenge against him in 2022—and took shots at Abbott over the governor’s handling of the power grid and decision to initiate state inspections of trucks at the U.S.-Mexico border, among other things.
Heading into his bid for reelection to his fourth term as Texas’ top ag man, Miller seemed unbothered by the threat posed by Sheets—who has billed himself on his campaign website as a “veteran, agriculture entrepreneur, family man, and Trump conservative.”
Miller said: “Texas is littered with the political bodies of my previous opponents.” That’s perhaps a bit of an overstatement—but he did beat his last primary challenger, conservative state Representative James White by nearly 30 points in 2022. His opponent this time around was surely no match either—Miller said Sheets had “never milked a cow, sheared a sheep, or shod a horse.”
And it’s not like Miller hasn’t had any vulnerabilities. In his second term in office, Miller’s political consultant was indicted for bribery for trying to sell hemp licenses that were controlled by Miller’s office. (The ag commish was never implicated himself, but he did later hire the consultant on as the agency’s chief of staff.)
When Abbott announced his endorsement of Sheets, he zeroed in on Miller’s ethics concerns. “Texans deserve an Agriculture Commissioner who is focused on promoting Texas Agriculture, with zero tolerance for criminality,” Abbott said. “Nate Sheets is the true conservative champion for the job and is the leader we need to keep Texas the global powerhouse in agriculture.”
Abbott also took aim at a vote Miller took well a quarter-century ago as a state representative in favor of the Texas Dream Act to provide in-state tuition for undocumented students. That law was killed, with Abbott’s approval, last year by a joint legal maneuver between the state and Trump’s DOJ.
In the final stretch, Miller began to go scorched earth. Some of his allies created an opposition website dubbed “Soiled Sheets” that detailed Sheets’ professed struggles with marital fidelity, pornography, and alcohol. He also posted attacks on social media maligning the supposed purity of Sheets’ “raw” honey products—and more.
“He is a grifter and a conman. His honey is fraud. His campaign is fraud,” Miller posted. “He has shown over and over again that he cannot be trusted with the truth so he must never be trusted with power.”
In the end, however, it was Miller who appears to have electorally soiled himself. Thanks for the memories.
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