This is bonkers, and I am here for it.
Sheriff Dave Landersman said he started hearing about the group aiming to take over his county a few months ago. It began with locals reporting unfamiliar faces around the Loving County courthouse and the new community center in this sparsely populated, but oil-rich area near the New Mexico border.
It wasn’t that residents never saw newcomers. Thousands of workers come and go every day, servicing the Permian Basin oil and gas boom. But groups of Black women and children were unusual; the 2020 U.S. Census had counted no African-American residents here. Many of the recent arrivals were from out of state and seemed surprised by the harsh West Texas conditions — “city people,” Landersman said.
Keionta Hinton, the owner of Fat Boys Cafe and known as Miss Kay, said her first contact was in June, when two women, two men and a girl entered the restaurant. She likes to talk to customers over Louisiana soul food, the diner’s specialty.
“We’re here to take over your county,” she recalled one of the women telling her. “I’m going to be one of your commissioners.”
“She was very serious,” Hinton said. “Not playing around.”
Moving voters into a community to gain control of its government might be considered a far-fetched strategy if it weren’t for one fact: It is occurring in Loving County, which has a long tradition of doing exactly that.
In recent years, the community of fewer than 100 residents has been riven by bitter family feuds. To gain advantage in attaining and holding power, opposing sides have tried to game the voter roll, registering far-flung family members or offering residences to visitors for the purpose of claiming their vote.
The upshot: Loving County’s tiny electorate, its history of loose voter registration and the tens of millions of dollars of oil money splashing into its treasury annually has made it both attractive — and vulnerable — to an organized group of people wanting to wrest control.
“This is the perfect place to try something like this,” acknowledged Constable Brandon Jones. “It’s the chickens coming home to roost.”
In late June, Chief Deputy Larry Pearson drove northwest out of Mentone to find the new group’s settlement so the department could have a GPS position in case of a 911 call, a necessity in the nation’s least-populated county. About 35 minutes down rough oil company roads, he found an RV and what looked like a still unframed house.
A second visit revealed a cluster of RVs, tents and generators. As Pearson drove away, he received a call from a man identifying himself as Dr. Malcolm Tanner threatening legal action.
Backgrounding Tanner wasn’t hard. Tall, charismatic and a self-described “entrepreneur, philanthropist, educator” and “visionary leader,” Tanner leads an organization called Melanated People of Power, which he has described as a movement seeking political and economic opportunity for those traditionally disenfranchised. He boasts a sizable social media presence — 244,000 Facebook followers and 70,000 on TikTok. His posts explained Loving County’s newcomers.
“I’m out here in Texas. Loving County, Texas,” he said in a mid-July Facebook reel viewed nearly 2 million times. “If you want to get a home, and stop paying rent, your mortgage or even the taxes on it, we’re going to build y’all a home. Right here. For free. We’re hoping to have a hundred homes out here, with the intention of putting 2,000.”
In a video posted in July to TikTok, Tanner, who lists an Indiana address on Loving County appraisal records, summarized his longer-term intentions.
“Not too often do you see a brother that looks like me come into the county and take the entire county over,” he said. “Well, I have taken the entire county over, out here in Loving County, Texas. When these elections hit in 2026, we’re going to wipe the board. Everybody that I selected will be elected.”
At the cafe, Hinton said she has counted about 30 new arrivals as of late August, from Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Houston. The group recently attempted to register more than two dozen new residents to vote using a Mentone P.O. Box, according to Landersman, who doubles as the county voter registrar.
Tanner declined to comment. When Houston Chronicle journalists visited the group’s settlement to interview the newcomers, a resident called Tanner, who in a phone call accused them of trespassing and then sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Chronicle.
A day later, he filed a civil rights complaint against Loving County and its sheriff’s department in federal court seeking $450 million in damages. The county has denied wrongdoing and asked for the case to be dismissed.
You really need to read the rest. One minor quibble is that 70,000 TikTok followers really isn’t all that much. One source I found says that some 67K accounts have at least 100,00 followers, while another 42K have between 50,000 and 100,000. It’s not nothing, but it’s nowhere near the top of the charts.
Anyway. On the one hand it would be hilarious for a bunch of folks from all over the place move into Loving County and vote its entire county government out. That would be far from the strangest thing to happen in this weird, tiny county, but it would be the funniest. On the other hand, this whole thing has deeply strange vibes, and it would hardly be a surprise if a significant number of the people who were enticed to move there came to regret that decision. All I can say for now is that I hope the Chron keeps up its Loving County coverage. Every virtual trip there is just wild.
The end of the ability to register to vote in Texas at any address other than your residence might be on the horizon, and Loving County could be the catalyst.
When you register to vote, you are legally required to register at your residence, whether that be a home, apartment, or under a bridge at 59 & McGowan. There are a few exceptions for survivors of domestic violence and other rare cases, but that wouldn’t apply to those attempting to takeover Loving County. That also means no P.O. Boxes.
You can, however, use a different address as your mailing address, including a place or business or P.O. Box.
That doesn’t mean people don’t violate that and register at their vacation homes or place of business, anyway. I don’t know how often that happens, but it certainly was a massive issue in Loving County.
Last I checked, Loving passed Kalawao County, Hawaii as the least populous county in the US. Historically,Kalawao County was used to quarantine people suffering from leprosy and it still has restricted access. There is a significant gap between them and the 3rd least populous.
Loving passed Kalawao due to an earlier crackdown on non-residents claiming to live there so they could vote.
@ken roberts I have heard (I am not a lawyer) that Voter Registrars in Texas don’t have full leeway with which to make a determination that a submitted residence address on a VR application is in fact non-residential and to reject an application based on that determination. I don’t have the patience or expertise required to examine the Texas Election Code to verify the accuracy of that hearsay. The article here regarding Loving County and the seemingly amorphous status of residential address there made me think of this in that context.
You may have to “register at your address”, but if you’re 15 miles from your nearest neighbor, where is your address?
When I lived at the house I grew up in, my drivers license used to say, “4.5 west of Charlotte on Hwy 97, 1st left past 2nd bridge”, but mail wouldn’t get to me there, it would only get to me at PO Box 100. No one got residential mail delivery, everyone had a PO Box. UPS deliveries were left at the feed and seed store, or sometimes a disabled lady in town would accept packages for her friends who lived out of town. And this was in a town with a population 13 times that of entire Loving County.
One friend who lived about 20 miles away had an address of “Hindes Route Box X, Jourdanton”. Jourdanton is in Atascosa County, and Charlotte is between Jourdanton and where this man’s rural delivery box was. He lived in another county entirely. The town closest to him was in the same county he lived in, but they didn’t service the area he lived in. “Closest to him” was still a good 15 miles away.
I went to school with a kid whose house was a few miles from the road. Even if he had had a street address back then, it would have just labeled a spot on the road. It wouldn’t have gotten anyone to his house. Even though his family didn’t have much money, they lived on a big ranch that had cattle but was mostly managed for game. His dad managed it, and his mom fed and cleaned for the various hunters who hunted there.
Once “911 addresses”, as we call them, came out and we all got assigned some address, that theoretically helped people find us, but it turns out most GPS couldn’t find our address, they could only find Hwy 97 in the general area. Even now, I’ve been to numerous addresses in rural Texas that GPS will not get you to.
Loving County doesn’t have a lot of cell towers, which means GPS might not work through much of the county.
I’m sure this is an ambitious experiment, but I doubt the people will last more than 2 election cycles. Loving County is remote. Having a vehicle is a must, and there’s very little to do that doesn’t involve cattle, goats, wild animals, creosote, and working outdoors. Loving County does not suit those who are not comfortable with solo activities and finding fun in nature. I’m not even sure if the county has a movie theater. Since my family’s home, a mere 60 miles southwest of San Antonio, doesn’t have access to cable TV, I doubt Loving County has cable. Some people probably have satellite, which is also the only kind of internet you could get in such a remote place. Satellite internet is slow and expensive, starting at around $100/month. Sure, people could share a satellite, but that would slow the already slow connection even more.
Loving County is hot. Air conditioning is expensive.
And even if they don’t have to pay for their house (and somebody will pay the property taxes), they still have to have money for food and to pay for their satellite and electricity. That generally requires a job. Jobs are few and far between in Loving County. People may drive 100 miles or more, each way, to get to work.
So if this project just brings in people from the city, who see “free house” and think they’ve got it made, they will either make an expeditious drastic adjustment to life in Loving County, or they will leave.