During the last weeks of his 1998 race for Texas lieutenant governor, Rick Perry was tied with Democrat John Sharp, and many expected him to lose. That’s when James Leininger, an archconservative San Diego multimillionaire, and two other Texas tycoons stepped forward with a $1.1 million loan for a last-minute media blitz. It was more than 10 percent of the total Perry raised for that race, and it probably was decisive—Perry won with 50.4 percent of the vote. “I congratulate Leininger,” Sharp later told The Austin Chronicle. “He wanted to buy the reins of state government. And by God, he got them.”

In Texas political circles, the fact that Perry owes his career to Leininger is well known

Leininger also helped bankroll the transformation of the Texas GOP from a merely conservative party to one dominated by religious fundamentalists. Partly because of his influence, the Texas political culture that Rick Perry emerges from is significantly more right-wing than the one that shaped George W. Bush. And now that Perry is running for president, Leininger is working to make sure that national conservative Christian leaders coalesce behind him

Get ready America, the Voodoo Christian Dominionists are coming for you in the guise of conservatives in cowboy hats waving guns, flags and bibles.