If you’ve ever wondered what happens to some formerly lauded chairs of the Texas GOP, look no further than Florida man Allen West. A mere four years ago, the former congressman from the Sunshine State was on a stunning upward trajectory in Texas politics. He came to Texas searching for a cause and early in the pandemic found it: effectively wielding a megaphone to bully party leaders into adopting his brand of far-right conservatism. There was the time, for instance, when he and a handful of far-right Republican officials protested outside of the Governor’s Mansion, in October 2020, openly criticizing Governor Greg Abbott for taking too many COVID precautions. (Abbott would, ultimately, make Texas one of the first states to reopen the economy and drop mask mandates).

West has always had a reputation as a “firebrand”; a motorcycle-riding bad boy whose rise to prominence began when he staged the mock execution of an Iraqi police officer while stationed in Baghdad (a violation of Army rules, for which West faced court martial but got away with a slap on the wrist). Just months before protesting Abbott in 2020, and buoyed by the state’s conservative grassroots voters who saw in him a savior from the more moderate establishment, he became chair of the Texas GOP, sailing to victory by a wide margin; the devil-may-care insurgent, taking repeated shots at the governor, was now running the show.

Wherever West went, however, controversy followed. In August 2020, shortly after he became the state party chairman, he adopted a motto for the Texas GOP—“We are the storm”—a popular rallying cry among followers of the debunked QAnon conspiracy theory. (West, for his part, denied that the slogan was connected to the theory and claimed that it instead came from a different quote he often recites at speaking events.) Once again demonstrating his disdain for COVID precautions, he was reprimanded in November 2021 for “flicking” a face covering off someone who accosted him for not wearing protective gear at a Dallas airport. Just one month before, West had been hospitalized with the respiratory virus.  

In retrospect, maybe West’s firebrand persona was too hot to handle. His reign as chair lasted only eleven months. In that brief window, West advocated for Texas’s secession from the union over the 2020 election results and called his vice chair, Cat Parks, “a cancer” (Parks is a cancer survivor). He resigned to chase bigger and better things—or so he thought. He mounted a primary bid against Abbott ahead of the 2022 election. But this time, a loyal base of grassroots activists wasn’t enough, not to best a powerful incumbent. West got walloped. Since then, it seems, he’s been looking for whatever crusade du jour could bring him relevancy—at least in the eyes of the far right.

Two years later, the party that West once chaired for eleven tumultuous months has never been more powerful or more radical. This year, more than one dozen candidates backed by members of the far right prevailed in the March primaries and subsequent May runoffs, cementing the party’s rightward march. And in May, the Texas GOP elected a new chair, Abraham George, a close ally of oilman and Christian nationalist Tim Dunn. The party has no plans to moderate anytime soon, and it has West to thank for steering it in that direction. 

That’s because the party was, arguably, remade in West’s image. West was, in many respects, the first glorified agitator to take the helm of the Texas GOP. Before 2020, the role of party chair was fairly sedate, largely devoted to fund-raising and catering to the majority of the Republican party rather than to its rightmost fringes. While leading the party, West was a regular critic of Abbott. And like West’s successor, the pugnacious Dallas attorney and former state legislator Matt Rinaldi, West routinely harangued House Speaker Dade Phelan, of Beaumont, as a “traitor” for courting Democrats in his bid for the gavel. The party continued in West’s direction and is still tracking further rightward.

But while his party is soaring, West has been left in the dust. Where is he now? Earlier this year, he ran successfully for chair of the Dallas County Republican Party. He went from heading up the largest state Republican Party in the nation to running the party in a blue swath of North Texas where county-level politics are largely dictated by Democrats. He is, in short, defanged. But that won’t stop him from trying to further the right-wing agenda in whatever capacity he can.

Last week, West requested an audit of the county’s election system, focused exclusively on elections held from the 2022 cycle to the present. If he has his way, according to a press release he sent on the matter, that might mean increased video surveillance of election procedures at the polls in November. The Dallas County elections department didn’t respond to an interview request regarding whether it’ll take up West’s request.

West declared in a statement that “there has never been a serious third-party examination and analysis of Dallas’s voting system equipment, processes, procedures, and protocols.” He went on to imply that the audit will help restore trust in Dallas County’s election system—though it’s not clear that it was ever lacking. West cited “recent issues with voting systems equipment, processes, operating procedures, and protocols with elections in Dallas County.” But he stopped short of claiming that problems with how Dallas’s elections are run had an impact on actual races—the audit is not meant to question the results of specific races but is instead “a procedural audit” to ensure that Dallas County is following the rules. It is perhaps worth noting that in 2022, Republicans across the state annihilated Democrats up and down the ballot, with one of the few exceptions being that the minority party picked up one hotly contested state House seat in Dallas. 

West says he isn’t playing politics. But it’s hard to see how that can be true. A state audit of the 2020 presidential election found that Dallas’s election systems are far from perfect but turned up no proof of widespread fraud. In Harris County, anchored in Houston, an audit of the 2022 election results revealed some discrepancies that experts have stressed are not unusual or cause for alarm. But such fears have fueled Texas’s Republican voters since Donald Trump claimed that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was “stolen” from him. In a 2021 poll from the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, 31 percent of Republicans said they believed that voters who aren’t eligible in Texas elections “frequently” cast ballots. Another plurality—35 percent—were under the impression that this happens only “sometimes.” (Democrats, by comparison, were less likely to think this way. In fact a majority, 53 percent, said this “rarely” happens.) 

West’s request comes at around the same time that a group of conservative grassroots activists are calling on Abbott to convene a special session on “election integrity.” It seems that West is trying to model his advocacy after the hard-core restrictions for which the state party is now advocating. But from his seat in Dallas County, the firebrand’s political maneuvering is more sound and fury than flame throwing.