A honey company founder and a Democrat from a Lampasas ranching family vie to succeed Sid Miller as agriculture commissioner

Texans will choose a new agriculture commissioner for the first time in more than a decade, and the two men on the ballot agree on little beyond being fifth-generation Texans raised in the Hill Country, The Texas Tribune reported Thursday.

Republican Nate Sheets, 56, founded the honey brand Nature Nate's and now runs Honey Rock Ranch, about 10,000 acres in West Texas. He defeated Commissioner Sid Miller in the March primary after Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed him, and the Tribune describes him as having a solid base among North Texas suburban voters.

Democrat Clayton Tucker, 35, grew up in Lampasas, works on his family's ranch, is secretary of the Texas Farmers Union and has built grassroots support by showing up at community fights over data centers. He would be the first Democrat to hold the office since 1991.

A Texas Southern University poll last month had Sheets ahead by 6 percentage points, but found most likely voters did not know enough about either man to form an opinion. Rice University political scientist Mark Jones told the Tribune that is generally good news for a Republican, since such voters tend to fall back on party.

What the job covers

The Texas Department of Agriculture has a two-year budget of $1.8 billion. Besides aid to farmers and ranchers and rural infrastructure grants, it runs the National School Lunch Program in public schools, oversees SNAP and WIC benefits, checks the accuracy of scales at grocery stores and meat markets, and houses the state's rural health office.

Where they stand

Sheets says he wants to make farming and ranching profitable again. He backs trade policies that protect producers, wants harsh chemicals out of food, calls himself part of the Make America Healthy Again movement and wants to expand the state's Go Texan program into a marketplace linking shoppers with local producers.

Tucker wants school lunches made and processed in Texas, wants to take on the large companies he says dominate agriculture, such as Tyson Foods and John Deere, and also wants harsh chemicals out of food. He has made data centers a centerpiece even though the commissioner has no direct say over them, promising impact studies on the water and power they use.

Sheets has said he worries about data centers encroaching on farmland, opposes tax breaks for them and wants county commissioners to have some local control. Tucker calls him "Data Nate."

Sheets calls Tucker a hypocrite for owning stock in Energy Transfer, which has a deal to supply natural gas to an AI data center; Tucker said he did not know of the link when he bought the shares and will probably sell. The Tribune noted Sheets owns stock in Riot Platforms, a data center developer.

Eligibility fight

Texas law sets four ways to qualify for the office, most of them requiring at least five years in agricultural business, ranching or an agricultural agency or group. Lawyers for Tucker have asked the Republican Party of Texas to review whether Sheets qualifies, arguing he has owned his ranch one year short of five and that a honey business is not agricultural.

Sheets disputes that, saying he has owned Nature Nate's Farm since 2012 and has worked in agricultural production for 30 years, and he blames Miller, who raised the same claim in the primary.

Sheets in turn says Tucker is the one who does not qualify, pointing to a financial statement listing his job as a community organizer and noting that the family ranch is not in Tucker's name, which Tucker does not dispute. The Tribune reviewed a state timber registration and photos going back to 2018 that Tucker provided to show he has worked the ranch.

The state GOP did not respond to the Tribune.

Early voting runs Oct. 19 to 30, and Election Day is Nov. 3.

Sources

The Texas Tribune