Anyone who has been tracking the rise of Christian nationalism should know of Patriot Mobile and its chief communications officer, Leigh Wambsganss. She, the company she represents and that company’s political action committee each had starring roles in investigative journalist Mike Hixenbaugh’s book They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms and the NBC podcast “Southlake.”
Southlake — an affluent suburb northeast of Fort Worth, Texas — has been called Ground Zero in the attacks on public schools by Christian nationalists.
Like the fictional character Delores Umbridge in the Harry Potter stories, Wambsganss and other women who perpetuate Christian nationalist ideology (think Kristi Noem and Karoline Leavitt) enjoy the spotlight serving as mouthpieces for cruelty dressed up in Christian symbols and rhetoric. They present themselves as do-gooders who are just concerned about the common good, but underneath these women are not what they appear to be.
If you scratch just a bit on the well-curated façade, another image begins to appear. In the case of Wambsganss, we see a woman driven not by the religious sentiment she says she espouses, but rather by a Machiavellian personality intent on political and cultural domination at any cost.
From Loretta Leigh Bowman to Leigh Magee
In the digital age, it’s relatively easy for someone who desires the spotlight to curate their online presence in a way that perpetuates the image they wish to project. This is why, when researching Wambsganss, I wanted to know who she was and where she came from before her rise to prominence in extremist circles. I turned to scanned copies of print newspapers and archived property records to trace her rise.
Before Wambsganss was known for her divisive work in Southlake, Texas, she was known as Loretta Leigh Bowman from Lawton, Okla.
In 1988, she was a finalist for the Miss Oklahoma USA contest. That year she also had a role in the horror film Offerings (released in 1989). The film’s marketing description reads: “Ten years ago, the local kids pushed John to the brink and he’s been in a sanitarium ever since. But now he’s free … free to release all those savage frustrations on his long-lost ‘friends.’ And he can’t wait to have them all wrapped up!”
Sometime after the film’s release, she relocated to Colorado. In 1993, she married firefighter David Magee of Palisade, Colo., and took the name Leigh Magee. At the time of their engagement, the pair lived in an apartment in Clifton, Colo.
Their engagement announcement in The Daily Sentinel out of Grand Junction was modest: “George Bowman of Lawton, Okla. and Barbara Harrison of Cache, Okla., announce the engagement of their daughter, Leigh, to Dave Magee, son of Gary and Kay Magee of Palisade. … A Nov. 27 wedding is planned.”
Four months after their wedding, in March 1994, the newlyweds purchased their first home — in Grand Junction. This move from Clifton to Grand Junction is an important detail for Wambsganss’ entry into divisive local politics. But before she made the local press, her husband Dave Magee was featured in a story about local firefighters battling fires in Utah.
Leigh Magee, provocateur
Beginning in April 1995, Leigh Magee and a group she formed and co-chaired called “Concerned Citizens Against Incorporation of Clifton” began showing up regularly in The Daily Sentinel.
Claiming to be a “grass-roots level” movement, Magee and the group said they represented a small enclave called Fruitvale that did not want to be incorporated with the nearby community of Clifton. Rather, according to the group, Fruitvale wanted to be annexed by the bigger town of Grand Junction. At issue was a commercial corridor that provided tax revenue for the Fruitvale community. Magee’s group claimed if Fruitvale incorporated with Clifton, that community’s property taxes would go up because Clifton simply wouldn’t be able to provide city services otherwise.
Those in favor of Fruitvale being incorporated into Clifton rather than Grand Junction wanted their little community to stay together rather than see the big city of Grand Junction take the profitable business area and leave the residential area of Fruitvale without that revenue. The group proposing keeping their community together convinced Grand Junction’s City Council to table the proposal to annex Fruitvale until Clifton had finished the incorporation process.
The issue was to be put to a vote in November 1995, and in the lead-up the fight over the future of Fruitvale got heated. Interestingly, Leigh Magee is quoted as saying: “A silent majority doesn’t win elections. People going to the polls to let their voice be heard is the only way we, as citizens, can protect our property from the preposterous idea of Clifton incorporating us into their proposed city.”
“Magee and the others leading the effort to keep Fruitvale from incorporating hadn’t lived in Fruitvale for years.”
Magee later reused this idea of a “silent majority” in the culture wars she leads in Texas.
By October, the group advocating for Fruitvale to incorporate with Clifton had requested the Mesa County District Attorney to investigate Magee and her group for their “scare tactics” that may, in fact, be “criminal” for being in violation of state statutes that prohibit “false statements relating to … questions submitted to electors.”
The article in The Daily Sentinel on this turn of events specifically cites misleading “mailers” sent to residents. Speaking on behalf of residents for Fruitvale’s incorporation with Clifton, April Pinkerton said of Magee and her group’s tactics: “Our fear is that they are trying to instill anxiety and fear to determine the outcome of the election. The contention of our group is that the facts are not honestly being presented to the public.” Magee’s group denied the allegations.
Finally, in a letter to the editor on Oct. 15, 1995, a resident pointed out that Magee and the others leading the effort to keep Fruitvale from incorporating and instead be annexed by Grand Junction hadn’t lived in Fruitvale for years. Of course, Magee and others didn’t want the businesses of Fruitvale to remain with the residents of the community — Grand Junction would benefit from swallowing up that lucrative area.
Had that revelation and the true motives of those opposed to Fruitvale incorporating been known sooner, it might have made a difference. But with only a month left until the election, it didn’t. In the end, voters decided they would rather be annexed by Grand Junction than incorporate. Leigh Magee and her group had won.
From Leigh Magee to Leigh Wambsganss
Six months after the battle over Fruitvale, David and Leigh Magee purchased a home in Fort Worth, Texas. It was co-signed by her mother and stepfather, Barbara and Paul Harrison. Three months later, they sold their home in Grand Junction.
Even while starting a new life in North Texas, Magee maintained ties (at least on paper) to politics in Grand Junction. In its annual listings of contacts for Congressional representatives, Magee was listed in The Daily Sentinel in 1996 and again in 1997 as the area representative in Grand Junction for third Congressional district Rep. Scott McInnis.
Dave Magee also made the press in his new hometown of Forth Wroth when he was featured in the social coverage provided by the Fort-Worth Star Telegram on the Euless Firefighters Association-sponsored golf tournament in August 1996.
Andrew Wambsganss
In nearby Southlake, a young, single attorney named Andrew Wambsganss was breaking into the world of politics. In an article on aging city council members in the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, the 29-year old Wambsganss, who was serving on the Southlake City Council and as mayor pro tem, noted that as a council member with so many commitments, “your social life suffers for it.”
In March 1997, GOP officials in Tarrant County (which includes Forth Worth, Southlake and other towns) announced the formation of Metroport Republicans, a club for Northeast Tarrant and Denton Counties. The article in the Star Telegram notes: “Andrew Wambsganss, a Southlake precinct chairman, another advisory council member, said the club is needed ‘to get the word out’ to local Republicans. ‘It’s long overdue’ Wambsganss said. ‘In the last election, there wasn’t a good way to get together outside of service club meetings. The area is overwhelmingly Republican, but there isn’t a good way to reach supporters.’”
Presumably the club kicked off right away, and it was just the kind of thing Leigh Magee, Republican provocateur, would have been drawn to.
In November of that year, David and Leigh Magee sold their home in Fort Worth and purchased one in Haslet, a smaller town straddling Tarrant and Denton counties. Less than five months later, one of them had filed for divorce.
Divorce in Texas — even in 1998 — had a minimum 60-day waiting period from the time someone files to when the divorce is discharged. David A. Magee and Loretta L. Mage had their divorce discharged on June 11, 1998, which means one of them filed in April, less than five months after purchasing the Haslet home.
In January 1999, the mortgage on the Haslet home was transferred into the name of Loretta Leigh Bowman. Eight months later, on Sept. 4, 1999, Loretta Leigh Bowman of Grapevine married Andrew Lee Wambsganss of Southlake. According to the wedding announcement: “The bride was given in marriage by the Honorable Leon Wambsganss.”
The person who gave her in marriage was not her own father but her new father-in-law, a former independent Baptist missionary who had become a municipal judge.
Leigh Wambsganss, increasingly extremist
While working as a Realtor, Leigh Wambsganss continued to make her mark in political spheres. In Texas, that often means affiliating with some sort of charity.
The first mention of Wambsganss in this capacity was in the Star Telegram’s social pages in 2004. Andrew had been elected mayor of Southlake while Leigh was serving as chairwoman of the first annual gala for Grapevine Relief and Community Exchange, known as GRACE. Two months later, after the gala raised more than $200,000, Wambsganss was praised as a “fund-raising natural.”
In 2006, Wambsganss participated in a 10-hour concealed handgun course and was quoted in the article about it. But what is most interesting is the description of the course being offered:
After the Pledge of Allegiance, a prayer and a Bible verse read aloud, retired Southlake Department of Public Safety Officer and Eagle Masters company President Malcolm Jackson began a PowerPoint overview. … Sixteen Southlake area residents, one-third women, appear, as noted in Isaiah 40:31, neither weary nor faint. They are training so that they can carry a gun legally.
Anyone familiar with Christian nationalism will recognize within this description of the course all the markings of this extremist ideology.
In a 2007 article on the “First Ladies of Colleyville, Grapevine and Southlake,” Wambsganss spoke at length about her love of politics and her desire to run for office one day, “I love it. I think once it’s in your blood, that it’s in your blood, it doesn’t get out.” The paper noted that all possibilities for office were on the table.
Increasingly, Wambsganss was in the news for taking hostile positions against all sorts of local governance issues. While serving as first lady of Southlake in 2008, she was the vocal opponent of a local civil service bill — supported by Southlake police — that would have held Southlake police and firefighters to state standards. Wambsganss offered her reason for opposing it: “The No. 1 issue that people had a problem with was local control. People in this community saw through this law.”
Racism at Southlake Carroll High School
In 2018, a video went viral showing white Southlake Carroll High School students chanting the “n” word at school. In 2019, a second video went viral with students, again, chanting racial slurs. And, in January 2020, three students were arrested for spray painting racial slurs on the school building.
Over those three years, in the glare of the national spotlight, the school district hosted public meetings to begin addressing the issues students of color and other marginalized groups were having at school in this affluent, predominantly white suburb.
“Wambsganss led the charge in the fight against the ‘woke’ liberals attempting to address racism in the public school district.”
After the third incident, in the summer of 2020 — during the height of the pandemic shutdown — the school board presented a plan to address the culture of the district that included diversity and inclusion training and a student code of conduct.
The backlash was instant and fierce and is covered by Mike Hixenbaugh’s book and podcast. The simmering conflict also offered Wambsganss an opening to take her divisive political activism to the national stage.
Although her own two sons attended the conservative Grapevine Faith Christian School nearby, Wambsganss led the charge in the fight against the “woke” liberals attempting to address racism in the public school district. Similar to her involvement in the fight over the future of Fruitvale in 1995, even though she didn’t live in the town, Wambsganss saw no issue with inserting herself into the school board battle that ensued while her kids attended school elsewhere.
Wambsganss dusted off her “concerned citizen” playbook from the Fruitvale fight and redeployed it in Southlake. She co-founded a group called Southlake Families (now Southlake Families PAC) to back challengers to the school board members who had helped create the five-year Cultural Competency Action Plan to address racism and bullying in the schools. The group even produced fake newspapers to be mailed to all Southlake residents, reminiscent of the efforts Wambsganss and her “Concerned Citizens Against Incorporation of Clifton” group used in the fight over Fruitvale.
The school board candidates backed by Southlake Families took over the school board in 2021, and Southlake became the model for right-wing advocates across the country. Wambsganss was immediately hired by the conservative Patriot Mobile to head its political action committee — a role she still holds today.
The new school board and the new superintendent trashed the plan for the cultural competency for the school. Students who had experienced racial and gender discrimination at the hands of their peers at Southlake Carroll High School appealed to the Biden administration, and the Department of Education opened an investigation.
The newly minted right-wing school board fought the investigations and became the darling of Christian nationalist legal advocacy groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and Texas Values, which promote “Judeo Christian” values and the rights of parents to raise their children without “woke indoctrination.”
Patriot Mobile
Her work with Patriot Mobile is a natural fit. The mobile virtual network operator based in Grapevine, Texas, uses AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to deliver wireless services on 4G and 5G networks. The company describes itself as “America’s only Christian, conservative wireless provider” and is a regular financial supporter of conservative political causes.
Patriot Mobile says “a portion of every dollar earned is contributed to causes that support the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the sanctity of life and our military, veterans and first responder heroes. As a company, Patriot Mobile is on a mission to uphold the values of our Founding Fathers — principles that built this great nation.”
Groups supported by Patriot Mobile include:
- Turning Point USA
- Concerned Women for America
- CPAC
- First Liberty Institute
- National Rifle Association of America
- Gun Owners of America
- Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America
A bigger agenda
With the reelection of Donald Trump, Wambsganss, Patriot Mobile and Patriot Mobile Action are now leading the charge to insert Christian nationalism into all facets of public life — ironic given their repeated charges of woke indoctrination and its infringements on their rights.
Wambsganss recently released a video for Patriot Mobile Action supporting another slate of right-wing school board candidates. She also testified in support of Texas Senate Bill 240 defining biological sex and who may use which spaces in various types of facilities. Patriot Mobile Action also came out in support of putting the Ten Commandments in every classroom in Texas.
Wambsganss continues to assert that her Christian values are the motivation for her advocacy. But scratch the surface and she — like so many of those dressing up their arrogance and political motivations in Christian rhetoric — is simply another two-bit political hack seeking worldly domination.
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and is the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas. She is a spiritual director and a recent master of divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.
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