Head of Texas’ largest business organization accused of sexual assault in lawsuit

by Kayla Guo and Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune
November 24, 2025

An unidentified woman accused Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business, of sexually harassing and assaulting her before retaliating against her through his perch atop the powerful business group when she rejected his overtures, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Travis County.

The woman, identified in her court filing as “Jane Doe,” was described on social media by her attorney, Tony Buzbee, as the founder and executive director of Texas Venture Alliance, an advocacy group for startups and entrepreneurs. She is seeking more than $10 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleges that Hamer pursued the woman using his status as head of the Texas Association of Business, or TAB, offering to help advance the woman’s advocacy group and connect her with important people. Hamer also serves as chairman of the Texas Venture Alliance, according to the group’s website, and the two organizations partnered in September 2024 to launch an initiative promoting entrepreneurship in Texas.

In a statement, TAB Board of Directors Chair Bill Jones said the organization was aware of the lawsuit and was putting Hamer on administrative leave “while it conducts a full internal investigation.” Jones added that Megan Mauro, TAB’s vice president and chief of staff, would serve as the group’s interim CEO.

In a 13-page filing, the unidentified woman’s lawyers cast Hamer as the latest in a long line of “unscrupulous men in power” who “have attempted to improperly use that power to coerce those with less power to get what they want.”

“In this matter, the prime perpetrator used his vaunted and respected status to engage in a sexual relationship with a much younger woman by offering incentives available to him by virtue of his position,” the lawsuit continues. “When she at some point refused his advances, he coerced, begged, harassed and ultimately assaulted her.”

Hamer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The legal filing also names TAB as a defendant, arguing that the group was “vicariously liable” for Hamer’s actions by allowing him to remain in his position as CEO despite “knowledge of his prior behavior and complaints,” and by failing to adopt policies to prevent such actions.

The Texas Association of Business is among Texas’ most influential business groups, serving as the state’s de facto chamber of commerce and routinely lobbying members of the Legislature on a wide array of business issues.

Hamer often appears alongside the state’s top leaders at public functions; just last week, he moderated a “fireside chat” with Gov. Greg Abbott, during which the two discussed Texas’ economic future and TAB gave Abbott an award.

Spokespersons for the state’s top three elected officials — Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows — did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations leveled against Hamer.

The lawsuit alleges that Hamer “groomed” the unidentified woman and entered into a relationship with her beginning in 2022. He then “began to view Doe not as a colleague or someone working alongside him with similar goals for Texas, but as someone he could manipulate for his personal pleasure,” the filing says.

Hamer sexually assaulted and harassed the woman multiple times, the lawsuit alleges, including in May by attempting to remove her pants and “mount” her. When the woman pushed him away and left the room, the lawsuit states that Hamer “followed. He would not stop.” Hamer later apologized, according to the lawsuit, telling the woman that he was “disgusted with himself” and offering to go to an ATM to give her money so she would “forget about it.”

“She did not accept his monies; she did not forget,” the lawsuit continues.

Hamer is accused of making unsuccessful sexual advances on the woman on two other occasions after the May incident: in June in Denton, and in October in Washington.

When the woman rejected his overtures, the lawsuit states, Hamer launched a “smear campaign and actively tried to damage Doe’s reputation, credibility and professional relationships.”

“His message was clear; his intentions straightforward,” the lawsuit alleges. “If Doe would not give him what he wanted personally, he would use his status to make sure Doe did not advance professionally.”

Hamer allegedly retaliated against the woman by redirecting a planned donation to the Texas Venture Alliance from an unidentified “Texas organization,” ensuring the money was rerouted to other entities, including the Texas Association of Business. Hamer also helped form an “in-state competitor whose mission mirrored TVA,” then assisted that organization in competing for the same funding as TVA and “copied, stole and passed off Doe’s ideas and business plans” to the copycat group and to TAB, according to the lawsuit.

The filing also notes that the woman is TVA’s sole employee, and that her salary depends on the organization’s revenue and her boss — Hamer.

After the woman’s rejections, Hamer’s behavior turned into “sinister intimidation,” the lawsuit continues, accusing Hamer of “stalking Doe at conferences or events, following her in and out of hotels, following her throughout hotel hallways barefoot or in his pajamas and turning friends and business contacts against her.”

Aside from accompanying elected officials to public events, Hamer is a registered lobbyist who frequents the Capitol during legislative sessions, lending his support for or discouraging passage of proposed legislation.

This year, he testified in support of a measure — Senate Bill 30 — that sought to limit the amount of damages accident victims could claim. The bill died during the Legislature’s final hours, despite a lobbying campaign from TAB and other powerful business groups.

The first introduced version of SB 30 would have capped damages at $250,000 for mental or emotional pain resulting from an event that caused someone personal injury, such as sexual assault.

The allegations of sexual misconduct are the latest to rock the Capitol. In 2023, Rep. Bryan Slaton, R-Royse City, resigned on the eve of a Texas House vote to expel him after an investigation found that he had provided alcohol to a 19-year-old staffer before having sex with her.

Two years before that, a false date rape allegation cast fresh attention on a culture of sexual harassment under the Pink Dome. That culture was well-detailed in numerous media reports during the 2017 legislative session that led to reforms that the state’s elected leaders later acknowledged fell short.

Among the lawmakers accused of wrongdoing was Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, who gave up a committee leadership post after the University of Texas at Austin investigated allegations that he sent lewd messages and a sexually explicit photo to a graduate student. The university later said that evidence did “not support a finding” that Schwertner had violated Title IX by sending the messages.

Schwertner was once again elevated to hold a committee chair in 2021 and has since carried a number of major bills in the upper chamber. Among them was SB 30 — the personal injury lawsuit payouts cap.

Disclosure: Texas Association of Business has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Abbott sets Jan. 31 special election runoff for North Texas Senate seat

by Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune
November 17, 2025

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday set Jan. 31 as the special election runoff date for Senate District 9 in North Texas, where voters will decide who will fill the seat vacated by Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a union leader, machinist and Air Force veteran, and conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss will face each other in the January runoff after winning the most votes in the Nov. 4 election, with Rehmet nearly pulling off an outright win with 47.6% of the vote. Wambsganss won 36% of the vote, and former Republican Southlake Mayor John Huffman fell in last with 16%.

The Tarrant County-based district voted for President Donald Trump by more than 17 points last year, and the combined GOP tally outweighed Rehmet’s vote share earlier this month, making the seat likely to remain in Republican hands.

Still, Rehmet’s near-victory in the red district sparked Democratic hopes that a blue wave driven by turnout and backlash to the Trump administration could be bubbling ahead of the 2026 midterm election. Even if he loses in January, Democratic strategists said, Rehmet’s first-place finish in November gave the state party a desperately needed boost of energy, especially coming out of a highly competitive county that has become something of a political bellwether.

Wambsganss, who spent around $1.4 million on her campaign ahead of the Nov. 4 election, has since consolidated Republican support, rolling out new endorsements from Hancock, U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne of Irving and several state lawmakers. She was previously endorsed by Trump, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — the president of the state Senate.

The winner of January’s runoff election will serve out the rest of Hancock’s term through the end of 2026. Wambsganss has indicated she also plans to run in the March primary for a full four-year term that would start in 2027.

Earlier Monday, Abbott also set Jan. 31 as the runoff election date for Texas’ 18th Congressional District based in Houston.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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But as reproductive rights loom over the election season as a key issue for voters, Cruz is uncharacteristically quiet.

The Texas Republican, running for a third term in the Senate, is locked in a tight race against U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, who has made restoring access to abortion and blaming Cruz for the toppling of Roe v. Wade central to his campaign.

This past week, Allred’s campaign, boosted by an influx of cash from Senate Democrats, began airing an ad on TV and streaming platforms across the state that blasted Cruz for his anti-abortion record.

Texas has banned almost all abortions — including in cases of rape and incest — since Roe was overturned. Since then, Cruz has been more careful about how he engages on the topic. He has repeatedly called abortion a state issue, while offering more vocal support for in vitro fertilization.

Cruz, through a spokesperson, declined a request for an interview. The Texas Tribune reached out to his campaign eight times over six weeks to ask about his positions, posing nine initial questions via email and several follow ups on topics ranging from his past support for a national abortion ban to how he squares his belief in fetal personhood with his support for IVF — a process which routinely involves the disposal of fertilized embryos.

Cruz’s campaign did not respond directly to questions, instead providing links to previous statements he had made on the topic in other interviews. Those statements did not address several specific questions.

While Democrats have not won statewide in Texas in 30 years, the issue could pose a risk for Cruz, who squeaked to victory in 2018 against Beto O’Rourke by less than three percentage points. Though polling shows Texans prioritizing issues like border security and the economy over abortion, more Texans believe that the state’s abortion laws are too strict, and Democrats are banking on the issue boosting turnout nationwide in a presidential election year.

Abortion ban

When the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, Cruz celebrated the decision as “nothing short of a massive victory for life” that would not outlaw abortion across the country, but leaves “abortion policy up to the states and returns power to the American people.”

“This is a momentous day, and yet the fight for life doesn’t end with the Dobbs decision,” he said in a statement after the ruling. “It simply begins a new chapter. I’ve been proud to stand for life in the U.S. Senate, and I will continue to do so as we navigate the path ahead.”

Republicans have faced scrutiny in recent months about their past efforts to pass a federal abortion ban, with Democrats warning that former President Donald Trump would press for further restrictions.

In 2021, before Roe was overturned, Cruz cosponsored a 20-week federal abortion ban, which included exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. He cosponsored a similar ban at least six times over his Senate career. He did not sign onto a 15-week ban when it was introduced in September 2022. In 2023, he co-introduced a bill that would allow states to exclude medical providers that perform abortions from state Medicaid funding. None of those measures advanced through Congress.

Cruz did not respond directly to a question about whether he still supports a federal ban. But in a past interview his campaign provided to the Tribune, he said that abortion policy is up to each state.

“Questions of what the rules of abortion are will be made by state officials in Austin, the state legislature, the governor. And the situation we have right now, every state makes different rules,” Cruz said in an August interview with WFAA.

Trump, during the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, said on social media for the first time that he would veto a national abortion ban, after backing a series of shifting positions over the course of his third campaign for the White House.

Abortion exemptions

Cruz declined to directly answer whether he thought Texas should add carveouts for rape and incest and if he thought the state’s exception to save the life of the mother was working.

In the WFAA interview, he pointed to legislation he has supported with those exceptions, while reiterating that the decision would be made at the state level.

But during his 2016 presidential run, Cruz said at a town hall in Wisconsin that he did not support an exemption for rape.

“When it comes to rape, rape is a horrific crime against the humanity of a person, and needs to be punished and punished severely," Cruz said. "But at the same time, as horrible as that crime is, I don't believe it's the child's fault.”

Texas law allows abortions only in instances where the life of the mother is at risk. Critics, including Allred, say that exemption is unclear and has resulted in women — such as Kate Cox, who was denied an emergency abortion by the Texas Supreme Court after finding out her pregnancy was no longer viable — being unable to access necessary medical care.

When asked if he thought the law needed clarifying or changing, Cruz’s campaign pointed to an interview he sat for on CNN. When asked during that interview if he agreed with the court’s ruling in Cox’s case, he said the Texas Supreme Court “was right” to direct the Texas Medical Board to “set the rules.”

“I think there’s a very good argument that she fell under that exception,” he said. “But what the Texas Supreme Court said in its opinion is it asked the Texas Medical Board go in and set clear rules.”

The Texas Medical Board adopted guidance in June for how doctors should interpret the state’s new abortion laws, but declined to provide a list of cases in which an abortion should be permitted.

IVF

This year, Cruz has become increasingly vocal about his support for IVF, which he calls a “miracle.”

In February, a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court sparked a nationwide panic about the future of access to IVF. That decision said that frozen embryos should be considered people, and that anyone who disposed of them could be liable for wrongful death. The Alabama Legislature subsequently passed a law to protect fertility treatments.

In May, Cruz introduced a bill with U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, that he said would protect IVF on the federal level by excluding any state that bans the treatment from federal Medicaid dollars.

“It simply does what needs to be done: safeguarding the right of couples to grow their family if they choose to use IVF, because this should not be a political issue,” Cruz said on the Senate floor in September describing his bill.

The bill, which Democrats blocked, would not create a statutory right to access fertility treatments. Critics panned it as lip service and “incentivizing far-right, anti-choice policymakers in deep red states to defund health care for low-income Americans” without barring them from also outlawing IVF.

Cruz voted against Democratic legislation that would create a federal right to access fertility care, saying the bill infringes on religious freedoms — though the measure does not require medical professionals who may oppose IVF to provide any treatments.

Cruz also did not respond to a question asking if he supported an idea Trump floated to make IVF free for all Americans. Trump did not explain how that proposal would be implemented.

Allred said he would support the Democratic IVF bill, which was backed by two Senate Republicans, and he cosponsored a related measure in the House to federally protect fertility treatments.

Cruz did not respond to questions about whether he believes an embryo created through IVF constitutes a person.

In 2015, during his presidential campaign, Cruz signed a pledge to back a personhood amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would “guarantee a constitutional right to life for every innocent human being, from earliest biological beginning until natural death.”

He embraced personhood measures in February 2016, before ducking questions about the topic a couple of months later.

Cruz has argued that his support for IVF is not inconsistent with a belief in fetal personhood by pointing to states that have adopted both personhood amendments and IVF protections.

“There are three states — Alabama, Georgia and Missouri — all of which have adopted personhood amendments, and all of which protect IVF,” he said on the Senate floor in June. “The Democrats maintain that IVF is in jeopardy, and yet the facts are precisely to the contrary.”

After the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, IVF providers paused treatments across the state. Most resumed services once the Alabama Legislature passed protections for fertility treatments. But that law did not address the question of personhood, and simply provides immunity to IVF providers and patients.

Filibuster

At the same time, Cruz has characterized Allred as an extremist on abortion and accused him of supporting “abortion literally up until the moment of birth.”

Allred’s campaign rejected that claim as a scare tactic, providing a statement he made to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in response to Cruz’s allegations.

“I find it offensive that Ted Cruz would knowingly misstate not only my position but what has been the standard in this country for the last 50 years,” he said, saying a return to Roe would allow states to restrict abortions after viability while also leaving the decision of whether to have an abortion to patients and their doctors.

Meanwhile, Allred has tried to pin the end of Roe and subsequent state abortion bans on Cruz’s support for anti-abortion state lawmakers and his position on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which advanced three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices.

“He is singularly responsible for what’s happening in our state,” Allred said.

Allred has been a consistent abortion rights advocate throughout his tenure in Congress.

After he was elected to the U.S. House in 2018, Allred cosponsored and voted in favor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would create a federal protection for abortion access. The bill passed the House in 2021 and 2022 but died in the Senate. Allred has also spoken out against local efforts to ban the use of roads and highways to obtain an abortion out of state.

“We have to restore freedom to Texas women and Texas families,” he said. “And the way we do that is going to be at the federal level.”

If elected to the Senate, Allred said he would support changing the filibuster to enable passage of a federal abortion protection law. The Senate requires 60 votes to move forward on any legislation — a threshold meant to protect the minority party’s power and foster bipartisanship, but which has stymied Democrats’ efforts to pass abortion and voting rights legislation over Republican resistance.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, recently reiterated her support for carving out an exception to the filibuster for abortion legislation — though institutionalists warn that lowering the threshold to a simple majority would be a slippery slope that could lead to less durable reforms and sap the minority’s leverage when the other party comes into power.

Still, Allred argued that the Senate now exists in an “ahistorical period in which the filibuster is being abused,” and that the chamber ought to return to a rule that required any senator blocking a bill to speak on the Senate floor for the duration of their filibuster.

The Texas Tribune answering reader questions about 2024 elections. To share your question or feedback with us, you can fill out this form.

Correction, Oct. 7, 2024 at 12:39 p.m.: A previous version of this story mistakenly referred to Colin Allred's title as U.S. Senator. He is a member of the House of Representatives and he is running for a seat in the senate.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/07/ted-cruz-texas-abortion-colin-allred/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A state district court judge on Monday denied a request by Attorney General Ken Paxton to block a Bexar County plan to mail voter registration forms to county residents ahead of the November election, saying the request was moot.

Bexar County attorneys argued in a hearing before Judge Antonia Arteaga on Monday that there was no reason for the court to issue an injunction because the forms were mailed last week, according to the San Antonio Report. Paxton’s office submitted an updated request before the hearing asking that no additional letters be sent out.

“The target of the mailing — qualified individuals who recently moved to or within Bexar County — have received those forms, and perhaps have already returned them,” said Bexar County Assistant Criminal District Attorney Robert W. Piatt III.

Ryan Kercher, deputy chief of the special litigation division in the attorney general’s office, argued that the plan could result in ineligible people registering to vote. Paxton appealed the decision on Monday evening, claiming Bexar officials "expedited" the mail out to take place before the hearing.

Voter registration applications are returned to county offices and are reviewed to confirm eligibility.

Here’s what you need to know.

The background: Bexar County officials voted on Sept. 3 to mail voter registration forms to eligible county residents, defying a threat by Paxton to “use all available legal means” to shut down the program. The Bexar County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 to approve the $393,000 outreach contract with Civic Government Solutions, an outside firm.

Paxton sued Bexar County officials in state district court on Sept. 4, seeking an emergency order to block the program. But his office later did not show up at court to request the order, according to News 4 San Antonio.

The lawsuit is part of an ongoing feud between the state’s Republican leaders and Texas’ largest counties, which are run by Democrats, over initiatives to proactively send registration applications to people who are eligible but unregistered to vote. Harris County leaders weighed a similar plan but ultimately did not follow through.

Paxton warned Harris and Bexar counties, which include Houston and San Antonio respectively, against such efforts on Sept. 2, claiming they would run afoul of state law and risk adding noncitizens to the voter rolls. Paxton separately sued Travis County, which includes Austin, for a similar issue.

Why Texas sued: In its lawsuit, Texas argued that counties do not have the authority to send out unsolicited voter registration applications and that Bexar County officials failed to go through a competitive bidding process before awarding the contract.

Local Republican activists slammed the Bexar County deal as an illegal waste of taxpayer money that would disproportionately register Democratic voters, citing past comments from the contracted firm’s leaders indicating support for Democratic candidates.

In a letter to Bexar county officials, Paxton added that the outreach proposal was “particularly troubling this election cycle” because of the uptick in illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden, whose policies he said have “saddled Texas” with “ballooning noncitizen populations.”

Paxton, without evidence, has routinely accused Democrats of adopting more liberal immigration policies to draw on noncitizen votes to win elections. He falsely told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck in August that Democrats’ plan was to “tell the cartels, ‘Get people here as fast as possible, as many as possible.’”

Only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote under both federal and state law, and data shows that instances of noncitizen voting are exceedingly rare.

What Bexar County says: Democratic commissioners, backed by a county legal official, called Paxton’s legal threats misleading and unfounded.

Civic Government Solutions’ chief executive, Jeremy Smith, said that the outreach efforts would be strictly nonpartisan — as required by the contract — and pose little risk of registering noncitizens.

He said that the company uses a mix of public records and county data to identify people who could have recently moved and are unregistered, and he noted the checks in place to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote.

When voter registrars receive applications, they send them to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, where they are checked for eligibility against Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration data. In addition, local voter registrars work with their county district attorney’s office to check citizenship status using responses from jury summons questionnaires.

Broader impact: The lawsuit was the latest in a series of moves by Republican leaders in Texas who say they are trying to keep the state’s election systems and voter rolls secure ahead of the highly charged November elections.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced in late August that Texas officials had removed roughly 1 million people from its voter rolls since 2021 — though election experts noted that such maintenance is a routine part of complying with state and federal law, and warned that Abbott’s framing of the action could be used to undermine trust in elections.

Abbott’s office said the names scrapped from the voter rolls included more than 6,500 noncitizens who shouldn’t have been registered, and about 1,930 of those had a voting history. Voter watchdog and voting rights groups have questioned the figure, noting that Texas has incorrectly flagged people as noncitizens in the past.

Paxton’s office also recently conducted a series of raids as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar counties, a move the League of United Latin American Citizens cast as an effort to “suppress the Latino vote through intimidation.” In addition, Paxton has probed what appear to be unsubstantiated claims that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers asked the Justice Department last week to investigate the recent spate of election-related actions, saying they were “sowing fear and will suppress voting” among communities of color. On Sept. 4, five Democrats from Texas’ congressional delegation joined the chorus of calls for federal action — among them U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Houston, who argued for “a swift and thorough investigation.”

Disclosure: The Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/16/ken-paxton-bexar-county-voter-registration-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.