Pumpjack-riding Republican trolls her way across Texas in a campaign that’s anything but boring

It was another day of campaigning, and Sarah Stogner was already in a feud. “No, I do not have a problem with old white guys,” she said, bristling at the radio host on the line. The 37-year-old lawyer, a Republican candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, was seated on cushioned lawn furniture outside a brewery in Houston. It was raining. She rolled her eyes and clutched the phone. “I said, my dad’s an old white guy, but he doesn’t understand why I got up on the pumpjack. And I said, ‘Well, that’s because I don’t have a million dollars, and I can’t buy people’s attention.’” “So what I can do,” she said, “is I can use social media, and I can use the assets that God gave me, and I can call attention to it.” Her friend and an informal campaign advisor, Ashley Watt, began laughing in the next seat. “Now, if people have un-pure thoughts, that’s not my problem. That’s their problem. And that’s something that they need to get right with God on.”

This was Wednesday, and Stogner was in town to see Commission Chairman Wayne Christian, the incumbent she has narrowly forced into a May 24 runoff for the state’s powerful oil and gas agency. He was speaking at a cryptocurrency conference, put on by a group called Digital Wildcatters. “See” might not be the best word. Stogner was there to troll him. That’s a lot of what she does now, since sling-shotting from political obscurity into serious contention for a seat that few Texans understand or closely follow. But the agency has come under fresh criticism since last year’s deadly winter blackouts. The natural gas operators it regulates cut production as demand for power spiked, creating a scarcity that helped bring in record profits. Originally from Alabama, Stogner moved to Texas a few years ago with her then-husband, splitting time between Midland and Louisiana, where she worked for a law firm on insurance claims involving oil and gas. Last year, in the midst of a divorce, she moved onto Watt’s sprawling cattle ranch, and eventually took her on as a client in a fight against the Railroad Commission over several abandoned oil wells that have leached noxious wastewater onto the land. Watt says she has had to sell off her herd, and wants the commission to force Chevron, which drilled the wells, into cleaning up the mess. Watt says she’s frustrated with the agency’s reluctance to defend landowners and the resources they depend on. “You start talking about CO2 and global warming and maybe the sea will be two inches higher in 100 years — that I’m not too concerned about,” she said. “But if you start screwing up aquifers, especially for anyone that lives in West Texas and depends on well water, like I have nothing if I don’t have fresh water.”