Rebuttal to Sid Miller from Nate Sheets

Rebuttal to Sid Miller from Nate Sheets

October 18, 2025

Sometimes races are black and white and easy to decide, but some require more thought and research — and prayer for wisdom and discernment. One of those that grassroots are debating is the race for Texas Agriculture Commissioner.  Both candidates (Sid Miller and Nate Sheets) were featured in an interview on our TTP@Home podcast, which we encourage you to watch here.  After the podcast aired, candidate Nate Sheets had more to say, and since we found it valid information (plus we knew we’d given him 11 minutes less air time) we’re sharing it with you below:

Thank you for taking the time to interview both Republican candidates for Texas Agriculture Commissioner. The Ag Commissioner’s office is one of the most powerful positions in state government. It oversees everything from school nutrition to consumer protection, from pesticide regulation to rural economic development. It touches every family, every farmer, and every community in Texas.
Sid Miller has held this job for ten years. He talks a good game when it comes to conservatism and spends plenty of time working the grassroots, but when it comes to his actual record in office, he’s all hat and no cattle.
Look, if it were just one headline, maybe folks could give him the benefit of the doubt that he could still be trusted to do the job. But this isn’t one headline. It’s thing after thing after thing—raising fees on farmers and ranchers, misusing public and campaign funds, utilizing DEI to advocate for political favors, asking a staffer to hide bags of marijuana and gummies from the DEA, hiring his consultant’s wife to a six-figure taxpayer funded job, slapping his own name and logo on taxpayer-funded gas pumps, and pocketing subsidies for himself — to name a few. At some point, you stop calling it controversy and start calling it what it is: corruption. This isn’t about politics—it’s about character and trust.
Miller wasn’t always a conservative darling. People forget that back in 2011, when now–Attorney General Ken Paxton challenged liberal House Speaker Joe Straus, Sid Miller didn’t stand with conservatives—he stood with Straus. Not only did he support him, he publicly defended and cheerleaded for him, dismissing legitimate grassroots concerns about Straus’s record. Miller was rewarded with a committee chairmanship for his loyalty.
Miller’s record on immigration tells the same story—talk tough when the cameras are on, do something different when it counts. He voted to give illegal immigrants in-state college tuition (HB 1403 – 77R -2001), a benefit paid for by Texas taxpayers and denied to American families from other states. At a “Friendship Exchange” with Mexican officials, Miller told the press, “If we’re going to build a wall, Mexico needs some input… I don’t want to cut off all migrant workers. It’s just not going to work for agriculture.” We have a border crisis in this country, and we don’t need statewide elected officials undermining it.
After losing his seat in the Texas House, Miller went straight to the lobby. According to the Texas Ethics Commission, he cashed checks as a registered lobbyist for at least 11 clients, including a predatory lender and a foreign surveillance company accused of helping governments crack down on free speech. That’s not conservative conviction—that’s political opportunism.
Texans deserve better. They deserve someone who serves the people, not themselves—someone who believes integrity still matters in public office.
And look, if folks like Sid because he sounds conservative and shows up at the right events, I get that. I’m a conservative too—a Christian, a veteran, and a businessman who built something real from the ground up. The difference is, I’ll bring integrity back to the Agriculture Department. Because corruption costs us more than we think.
Below are just a few of the false claims Miller made during his interview with True Texas Project, along with the verified facts and citations that set the record straight:
Chief of Corruption
CLAIM: “The so-called hemp license scandal was political. They accused my consultant of selling licenses for $25,000 apiece—but that’s absurd. The legislation itself caps the license fee at $100. They weren’t after him; they were after me. Investigators even told him, “Just give us something on Sid Miller and this goes away.” There was nothing to give. My consultant, Todd Smith, eventually took deferred adjudication—no conviction—and he’s now my Chief of Staff. He’s done an incredible job helping turn this department around.”
The Truth:
  • This wasn’t politics. It was corruption—plain and simple. Sid Miller’s top campaign strategist wasn’t “targeted”; he was caught. He didn’t just face accusations; he pleaded guilty to felony bribery for exploiting his access to the Agriculture Commissioner’s office.
  • The Texas Legislature set the hemp license fee at $100. Meanwhile, Miller’s consultant was shaking down farmers and business owners for $25,000 bribes—selling what should’ve cost $100 to those desperate to start legitimate businesses.
  • The arrest warrant spells out the details: text messages, bank records, and checks showing payments flowing directly into Miller’s consultant’s personal accounts. This wasn’t rumor—it was documented evidence of pay-to-play politics at the Department of Agriculture.
  • The people hurt most were Texas farmers and ranchers, the very folks the department is supposed to serve and protect. This wasn’t a paperwork mistake—it was a betrayal of public trust.
  • And instead of cleaning house, Sid Miller hired the same man—the one who pleaded guilty to bribery—to run the department as his Chief of Staff. That’s not accountability. That’s rewarding corruption.
  • Texans deserve a leader who understands that integrity is not optional—it’s the job description.
Raising Fees on Farmers and Ranchers:
CLAIM: “So when I got there, the department was $18 million in the red. Taxpayers were subsidizing all of these programs. For instance, Walmart and Buc-ee’s would pay half the cost of their fuel pump inspections, and taxpayers would cover the other half. The same was true for pesticide licenses and other programs — about half our funding came from the general revenue fund and the other half from fees we collected.So I changed that. I knew I’d catch heck over it, but I basically doubled the fees and stopped using taxpayer money to fund our programs. Now, if you’re part of a Texas Department of Agriculture program, your fees pay for that program. Taxpayers don’t. It’s just not right for taxpayers to subsidize Walmart, Buc-ee’s, or even a pesticide applicator or farmer. A farmer’s pesticide license went from $35 to $70 — it didn’t put anyone out of business.”
  • Since when is the conservative position to raise fees and grow government?
  • Sid Miller loves to claim he “fixed” a budget shortfall, but the facts tell a different story. When Miller took office, he went to the Texas Legislature asking for more money to fund his department. Lawmakers told him no, making it clear that the Department of Agriculture needed to live within its means and manage resources more responsibly.
  • Instead of tightening his belt, Miller went around the Legislature and increased hundreds of agriculture fees on Texas farmers, ranchers, and small businesses.
  • He didn’t just raise fees — he overshot them. According to a 2017 State Auditor’s Office report, Miller’s fee hikes generated $27.3 million in 2016 while the programs they funded cost just $20.8 million to operate — meaning his department collected $6.5 million more than necessary, a 31% surplus. Making matters worse, Miller was doling out over $410,000 in staff bonuses, many to his own political appointees
  • Those hikes didn’t just hurt “huge corporations” — they hit family farms, rural feed stores, and small-town applicators already struggling with drought and inflation. And they didn’t “fix” anything: the department’s financial strain came from waste and mismanagement in Austin, not from farmers underpaying for services.
  • Don’t take my word for it — take Sid Miller’s own word for it, five years later. In a May 2020 press release, Miller said: “State government needs to tighten its belt along with everyone else. While TDA is already a lean, efficient agency that pays its own way, I’ve directed my staff to cut 10% without affecting our farmers and ranchers or our rural communities.”
  • So which is it? Was the department broke and in need of higher fees — or “lean and efficient”?
  • Raising fees on hardworking Texans isn’t conservative — it’s lazy government dressed up as reform.
    Real conservatives cut waste, not checks written by farmers and ranchers.
Farm Fresh Program
CLAIM: “I think my biggest accomplishment with the largest impact is our Farm Fresh program. When I took office, public schools were serving zero locally grown products to our children. Last year, through our program, they bought $300 million of Texas-grown food.That’s significant because before, the food was ultra-processed—flash frozen, full of chemicals, dyes, preservatives, and salt. It was shipped to schools, thawed out, and put on trays. Instead of healthy kids, we had healthy trash cans. Now we’re feeding kids fresh, local food.”
Rebuttal:
  • Serving farm fresh produce in public schools began before Miller’s term — the USDA has tracked it’s growth since 2013. It was simply branded the “Farm Fresh Initiative” under Miller.
  • Texas schools reported $257.8 million in Texas‑grown purchases in SY 2022–23. The “$300M” figure appears to be rounded up.
  • The total budget for the Child Nutrition Program (state and federal) for the previous biennium is $4,981,877,570 — or roughly $2.5B per year. This means Texas-grown purchases only accounted for 10.35% of Texas expenditures on food. Nationally local purchases account for 16% of total food spending — so Texas isn’t leading — it is falling behind.
  • The Farm Fresh initiative and healthy-school-food rhetoric contrast sharply with his actual actions as commissioner. Sid Miller’s first official act as Commissioner was to grant ‘amnesty to cupcakes,’ followed closely by lifting long-standing bans on deep-fat fryers and sodas in schools—a reversal of decades of work to make school lunches healthier.
  • “What we’ve been doing for the last ten years hasn’t worked, the obesity rate in our school children has gotten progressively worse. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and we are no longer going to do that.” – Sid Miller (State of Agriculture Address 2015)
  • A decade later, he’s still saying the same thing — and Texas kids are still getting sicker. The truth is, Sid Miller hasn’t fixed the problem; he’s just rebranded it. We don’t need more slogans or photo ops — we need leadership that actually delivers healthy food, honest numbers, and real results for Texas families.
  • Miller is talking the talk on MAHA now because it is politically expedient but for all his talk about feeding kids “farm fresh,” nine out of ten dollars spent on school lunches in Texas don’t go toward Texas-grown food. That’s not putting Texas first — that’s putting politics first.
The Screwworm Threat
CLAIM: “So my plan is to put out a fly bait. We’ve have a proven fly bait. It was developed by the USDA. Kills 90% of the screw worms. You follow that up by sterile male flies. So far have not been get the USDA or the Texas Animal Health Commission that to do that, though, they want to use 70 year old technology, which is sterile male flies only. We don’t have we don’t have any. We don’t have enough. They want to build a new new factory, which will take four years. This week, we had a screw worm within 70 miles of Texas. So developing and applying this fly bait is essential, so we’re leading the charge. It would be resolved within 60 days if they would take my recommendation.”
Rebuttal:
  • This threat didn’t appear overnight: Since 2023, outbreaks of the flesh-eating screwworm have been spreading north through Central America into Mexico. By late 2024, Mexico formally notified U.S. authorities of confirmed detections near the Guatemala border. The danger has been building for years — and Sid Miller had every opportunity to prepare.
  • Leadership isn’t waiting until the threat comes knocking: While Miller was holding press conferences, the parasite was already less than 400 miles from Texas. In a July 2025 Texas House Hearing, he admitted, “the bait doesn’t exist — we’ll have to come up with it.”
  • Yet now he claims in his interview with TTP, that if the USDA “would just take his recommendation,” the crisis could be “resolved in 60 days.” Five minutes later in the same interview, Miller claimed he’s “a mentor to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.” If that were true, why can’t he get her to adopt his plan? Either he’s exaggerating his influence again, or the USDA simply doesn’t take his idea seriously.
  • Meanwhile, the threat keeps moving north: Mexico has reported confirmed outbreaks are now within a few hundred miles of the Texas border. The USDA estimates an outbreak here could cost Texas ranchers $1.8 billion in livestock deaths, treatment costs, and trade restrictions — not to mention devastating deer herds, wildlife, and family pets.
  • Sid Miller was caught flat-footed: When the first human case in decades was confirmed in the U.S., Miller still had no bait, no plan, and no results — only excuses. Texas deserves leadership that acts before disaster strikes, not after. Protecting our ranchers, food supply, and rural economy requires preparation, not press conferences.