Few Democrats hold local office in the conservative parts of Texas, and Republicans have been eager to replace one who seemed particularly vulnerable: a longtime district attorney in a sparsely populated area of deep red, oil-rich ranches that lie about 250 miles east of El Paso.
They immediately ran into a problem finding a candidate to oppose the incumbent. There were only 16 practicing lawyers in the three counties that make up the deep-red district, including the present Democratic officeholder, Randy Reynolds, who some said was not an effective prosecutor.
But everyone they approached said no.
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Desperate for a challenger, they turned to Sarah Stogner, an oil-and-gas lawyer who, on paper, would seem to be an unlikely candidate to boost the Republican Party in what ought to have been one of its strongholds. She has never tried a criminal case. And she has made her mark in Texas oil law mainly for suing Chevron over environmental damage from abandoned oil wells.
One of her biggest claims to statewide fame was a TikTok video she made in 2022, during her campaign for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, the government agency that regulates the oil industry, in which she rode a pump jack nearly topless.
At first, Stogner, too, said no.
But concerns about crime and potential human trafficking in the area prompted Stogner to step up. Her entrance as a Republican challenger means that for the first time since 2008 there will be an actual contest for the top prosecutor job in a corner of Texas where fears about crime are often addressed by carrying a sidearm.
Stogner, 40, who describes herself as leaning libertarian and supports limited government, admits that she might have seemed an unusual choice to become the Republican standard-bearer in such a conservative area.
“I can’t stand Donald Trump,” she said, ticking off her problems with the Republican presidential nominee and politics in general. “I hate the parties. I think it’s a duopoly run by oligarchs that totally bastardizes what America was built on.”
But Texas Republicans, it seems, were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“I met her at the meeting place of all Texas: the Dairy Queen in Fort Stockton,” said Wayne Hamilton, head of Project Red TX, the group that recruited Stogner and has put in about $9,000 to support her campaign, the bulk of what has been spent in the race so far.
He said he was not bothered by her legal sparring with oil companies or her comments about Trump and Wayne Christian, the Republican she challenged in the 2022 primary for his seat on the railroad commission. Nor was he troubled by her appearance in the pump jack video.
“Would I have known about Sarah Stogner without that? Probably not. Would anybody?” he said of the video. “There’s this idea, among some people, that all Republicans have to think, act and speak a certain way, and they all have to do it in lockstep. And that’s just crap.”
Stogner said she made it clear that what they saw was what they would get.
“I told them, ‘I’m not changing who I am,’” she said, navigating a flatbed pickup over ranch roads near Monahans in what has often been her uniform: red coveralls with a unicorn patch and a rotating collection of trucker hats with irreverent messages, including “Hello I’m a Unicorn.”
Stogner’s trajectory has been unusual, but it is also reflective of a certain kind of West Texas mystique and American promise: If you’re willing to work hard, live in a rugged environment and take a few chances, things happen.
Her story also reflects several crosscurrents in rural life in Texas oil country: the lack of legal representation in broad swaths of the area, the surprising remnants of Democratic control in ruby-red counties and the growing bipartisan concern over the region’s aging oil-field infrastructure — corroding pipes, many attached to long-abandoned wells, extending thousands of feet into the earth.
“It’s a ticking time bomb,” Stogner said.
On a recent weekday, she drove her pickup through several areas where contaminated water is flowing out of old wells.
One of them is Lake Boehmer, a human-made body of sulfurous water that was created by years of uncontrolled bubbling up from a failed well. Another was the spot where a well blew out spectacularly in 2022, creating a towering geyser, a nightmare version of Old Faithful. At another location nearby, a sinkhole that she said had emerged around an old well has warped the roadway.
Through social media posts and videos, Stogner, who has about 60,000 followers on TikTok, has been one of the loudest voices in a growing chorus of West Texas residents trying to compel oil and gas companies and the state government to do something about environmental contamination from aging, unused wells.
It was largely by chance that she became so deeply involved in the issue.
Born in Alabama, she had worked as an oil-and-gas lawyer in Louisiana before a job for her husband in West Texas brought her and their young daughter to the Permian Basin in 2017.
She struck up a friendship on Twitter with Ashley Watt, the owner of a 22,000-acre ranch near Monahans whose father had been a prominent oil-and-gas lawyer. As Stogner and her husband were getting divorced, Watt told Stogner that she could stay on her property.
Not long after Stogner arrived in 2021, one of the wells on the ranch connected to Chevron blew out, ejecting contaminated water that killed nearby vegetation. Watt has since sued the oil company.
A spokesperson for Chevron said the company had successfully plugged wells on Watt’s ranch in the past “without any lawsuit or court orders,” and would continue to “respond appropriately to any potential concerns” in the future, in coordination with the Texas Railroad Commission.
Watt’s lawsuit was one among several. Landowners across the region have grown angry about contamination from abandoned wells, and many of them are conservative; both factors could give Stogner a boost in her run for district attorney.
“We’re worried about our water aquifers,” said Laura Briggs, a rancher with orphaned oil wells on her property who has become friends with Stogner. Along with her husband, Briggs owns the local newspapers in the biggest nearby towns, Pecos and Monahans.
In an area where ranches can be hard to come by — because so much of the land is owned by oil companies — Briggs said they were able to find theirs after a bit of grim luck: The owner was widowed and ready to downsize after a pump jack fell on her husband and crushed him.
But buying the ranch exposed Briggs and her family to the challenges of living in oil country, where most landowners do not own the lucrative rights to the underground minerals or oil, and whoever owns those rights can come onto any given ranch to drill.
Briggs has tangled with people running what she said was an oil-related investment scam on her ranch. She described finding one of her dogs shot, and being shot at herself from the road.
The brazenness of some crime in the district — which includes Ward, Reeves and Loving counties — was part of what motivated Stogner, who said she usually carried a handgun with her. “There’s a lot of human trafficking, there’s a lot of domestic violence,” she said.
A Texas Monthly article published in 2008 took Reynolds, the incumbent district attorney, to task for a relatively low prosecution rate for cases of drug trafficking, theft, assault and robbery brought to his office by law enforcement.
More than a decade ago, he faced scrutiny for letting a sex abuse case at a state-run school languish. It was ultimately taken over by the attorney general at the time, Greg Abbott, who is now the governor.
After that scandal, Reynolds faced an opponent in the Democratic primary and won. He has not been opposed since.
Reynolds did not respond to a request for comment about the campaign or his approach to cases.
Stogner said that if elected, she did not anticipate immediately trying to use the office to go after oil companies over the environmental impacts of aging oil wells, in part, she said, because it can be hard to prove such cases in criminal court. But she didn’t rule it out either.
“Maybe, eventually,” she said.
But some of those involved in the fight over abandoned wells appear to be relishing what lies ahead for Stogner, including Ronald Green, a hydrologist who has worked with her. “Erin Brockovich is going to pale compared to this story,” he said.
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