Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy made it his mission last year to kill renewable energy tax incentives. In response, a political action committee backed by solar energy executives decided to try to do the same to Roy’s campaign for Texas attorney general.
This week, the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC notched a partial victory. On Tuesday, Roy was forced into a GOP runoff with Mayes Middleton, who topped a four-way primary with 39.1 percent to Roy’s second place at 31.6 percent.
The fledgling PAC, established just last month, spent more than $650,000 opposing Roy in the race, campaign finance records show. Each candidate had millions in their warchest.
The group targeted conservative voters on platforms like Rumble and Truth Social, with messaging saying Roy is “not MAGA enough for Texas.” The far-right congressman has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump for demanding concessions before voting with party leaders.
The solar-backed campaign marks a gloves-off moment in the renewable energy industry’s political strategy against its adversaries. The sector has been more explicitly making its case to conservatives since the Republican victories in 2024, and has been paying conservative influencers and Trump allies to help make its case.
The results from Roy’s race “send an unmistakable message to every politician in America: declare war on the clean energy industry, and we will bring the fight directly to your door,” the PAC said in a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News.
“Chip Roy entered this race with a seemingly insurmountable lead, name ID, and money,” the group said, adding that it “helped force a runoff where Chip Roy will fight for his political survival.”
A February poll from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs showed Roy leading the field by 10 points, but with 25 percent of voters still undecided.
‘Ideological combat’
The PAC teased that more is on the way, saying it’s “just getting started.” Its biggest donor so far is Chris Larsen, a philanthropist and cryptocurrency executive who founded Ripple Labs. He gave $250,000.
Other Republicans the group is considering targeting include Rep. Barry Moore in the Alabama Senate race; Reps. Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace in the South Carolina governor’s race; and Rep. Byron Donalds in Florida’s governor’s race.
“Our view is that solar is the cheapest form of energy. And it’s the future, both for Texas but also the nation and around the world,” said Michael Brune, who works for Larsen as CEO of Clean Break Fund, a climate-focused philanthropic and political organization.
“Chip Roy is the poster child for those who choose ideology over pragmatism. So we’re happy to join any effort to end his political career,” said Brune, former executive director of the Sierra Club.
Other big contributors include Aligned Climate Capital CEO Peter Davidson, MUUS & Company Chair Michael Sonnenfeldt, Nextpower President Howard Wenger and CleanChoice Energy CEO Tom Matzzie.
“People in my industry are trying to build the next generation of American energy. When politicians like Chip Roy choose ideological combat over governing, the public has every right to hold them accountable,” Matzzie said in an email.
He added: “Maybe the next time there is a vote in Congress a few politicians will remember that there is a group of us out there watching.”
Two previous leaders of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office donated: Jigar Shah, who led it under President Joe Biden, and Mark McCall, who led it under President Barack Obama.
Roy took note of the spending in the days before the primary. “A group out of California is bankrolling attack ads against me [because] I dared to fight the Green New Scam and protect the Hill Country,” he wrote on X, showing state campaign finance records for the group.
“Texans deserve to know where these come from, I won’t be wagged by leftists and sell out to their agendas,” he continued.
Roy’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
‘Bad on climate’
Roy emerged after the 2024 elections as a top advocate for rolling back as many clean energy tax incentives from the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and other pro-clean energy policies as possible.
“We must reject half-measures and deliver a full repeal of the IRA’s energy subsidies for the sake of American taxpayers and for the future of American energy,” he wrote in a May 2025 letter to colleagues with other conservatives.
“There’s a moral imperative, there’s also a national security imperative, that we undo the damage and prevent future damage of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is obviously weakening our grid … undermining the markets, undermining our ability to have reliable energy,” Roy said on a podcast in June 2025, when he was advocating for the House to cut off the incentives even faster than what it was planning on.
Roy mainly got his way, with nearly all clean energy tax credits now slated to end for projects that break ground after July or are placed into service after the end of 2027. He also got a promise from Trump to implement the credits’ phase-out in as strict a way as possible.
“Chip Roy had been particularly bad on climate,” said a person involved in the PAC’s work, who was granted anonymity to speak about its internal deliberations.
“There are folks in the climate space who looked at races and, in the same way that some other industries have done, said, ‘If you are an opponent to reform in our space, we’re going to come back at you.’”
Although the group’s messaging did not seek to boost Middleton, its conservative-focused ads ended up aligning closely with his ads. Roy and Middleton will go head to head in a May 26 runoff. The winner is nearly guaranteed to be victorious in the November general election.
