Texas Monthly’s owner, Houston investor Randa Duncan Williams, was a consistent donor to Republican causes until she wasn’t.
And when she wasn’t, it came right around the time she bought the magazine. Since taking over Texas Monthly, the publication’s leftwing drift has been noticeable.
As a result, some local leaders are crying foul.
“I remember when I used to buy Texas Monthly magazines in the airport when I was taking a flight back in the early 90s. I haven’t bought one in years because every time I pick one up, it is filled with radical leftwing opinion,” Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French told DX. “It has totally lost what was once a pretty good magazine. I am not surprised, though, because it seems all the media is just pushing radical leftwing bias 24/7.”
That opinion is a far cry from the excitement that came during the announcement of her ownership.
“Texas Monthly has a new owner. Two and a half years after the award-winning publication was sold to Genesis Park, the Houston-based private equity firm founded by Paul Hobby, it has been purchased by Texas Monthly, LLC, a newly formed affiliate of Enterprise Products Company (EPCO), a privately held firm also based in Houston. The chairman of both Texas Monthly, LLC, and EPCO is Randa Duncan Williams,” Texas Monthly’s website states.
Williams appeared to be a rock-ribbed Republican when she assumed ownership.
She donated to political causes between from 2002 to 2018, according to OpenSecrets.org. Williams donated to Greg Abbott in 2002 and the last political donation was in 2018 which was for Enterprise Products Partners a year before she assumed ownership of Texas Monthly. Williams has not donated ever since 2018.
Williams had previously donated to the Enterprise Products Partners LP, Political Action Committee before she took ownership of Texas Monthly. The PAC has donated heavily to Republican candidates such as Senator Ted Cruz and Craig Goldman for congress, according to the Federal Election Commission.
A trail of Williams’ political donations, right up to the abrupt stop, may have been a sign of the direction she was willing to steer Texas Monthly
Some of the more eyebrow-raising, left-leaning stories include features ranging from drag queen profiles to bashing Christians.
A sampling:
“Why Alyssa Edwards Is Forever a Texan,” was one report on a drag queen’s travels around the world and his influence in his profession.
“Edwards, forty, is a world-famous drag queen, star of a season of the reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race and, later, a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars. Though she didn’t win either season, she remains one of the franchise’s biggest success stories (she recently returned to All Stars as a “lip sync assassin”). She has 1.8 million Instagram followers and ranked fifth on Vulture’s 2019 list of the hundred most powerful drag queens in America,” the article states.
Another article appeared to take shots at conservative Christians under the provocative headline: “Who’s in God’s Army?”
“Christian nationalist rhetoric was on display at ‘Take Our Border Back’ rallies in Texas. But not all who followed along are equally devout,” reads the article.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Texas Monthly’s editor-in-chief, Dan Goodgame, was the speaker at From Day One’s conference in Austin this past 2022, which was focused on DEI.
The Dallas Express reached out to Williams and Goodgame for comment ,but did not receive an immediate response.
