Attorneys for Clayton Tucker, the Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, claim that Republican candidate Nate Sheets is not eligible to serve under state law.
The Texas Agriculture Code requires a potential agriculture commissioner to have been engaged in "the business of agriculture" for five of the past ten years. The law excludes both beekeeping and honey manufacture, the business in which Sheets made his name, from that definition, as Tucker attorney Mimi Marziani said in a letter to state Republican Party Chair D'rinda Randall.
Further, Marziani argued, Sheets has only owned and operated Honey Rock Ranch, the property he mentions on his campaign website, since May 2022, putting him under the five-year minimum in any case.
"The chair has a statutory duty, once presented with a public record bearing on eligibility, to review it and, if it establishes ineligibility, to declare the candidate ineligible," Marziani said. "What that would mean at this point is that, actually, Mr. Sheets would say on the ballot — voters could still vote for a Republican candidate — but Mr. Sheets would not be able to assume the office even if he won."
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, said that — as a matter of policy if not of law — it is far too late to exclude Sheets from the race.
"What Clayton Tucker is formally doing with this complaint is following a line of attack that Sid Miller, who lost to Sheets in the Republican primary, made back in the spring," Jones said, "and that is that Sheets really doesn't have that much experience in the agricultural industry, especially when we compare him to our past agricultural commissioners, who generally have been active farmers or ranchers."
Sheets, who defeated incumbent Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in the Republican primary, responded by noting that Honey Rock Ranch was not his only agricultural property. He said he has owned Nature Nate Farms, a 12-acre property in McKinney, near Dallas, where he has practiced production agriculture and bottled honey since 2012.
"So, I have far or exceeded the requirement both on the landownership side but also on the production side," Sheets said.
Sheets countered that Tucker does not meet the qualifications for the office, pointing to Tucker's financial statement. It shows Tucker's primary employment not as farming or ranching but as an employee of the Trade Justice Education Fund, a sustainable trade policy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. Tucker is also the secretary of the Texas Farmers Union, an advocacy organization for family farmers and ranchers.
"Clayton Tucker does not own any land. His grandmother owns land," Sheets said. "Nor has he been in production agriculture, nor has he been making a living from it, because he’s been out trying to get to be a politician."
The state agriculture commissioner has the responsibility for overseeing food safety in Texas, as well as feeding Texas school children through the public-school lunch system.
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