Mayes Middleton: The Votes Without the Words

Who is Mayes Middleton, and why is he on this page?

Because of the office he is running for. Middleton was born in Wallisville in 1981, took finance and Plan II at the University of Texas and a law degree there in 2008, and became president of Middleton Oil Company – independent oil and gas on the Gulf Coast and in South Texas, with ranching in five counties and a seat on the board of First Liberty National Bank – when his father died in 2013.^[1] For fifteen years before he ran he was one of the state's largest Republican donors, more than $300,000 of it to Empower Texans, and when he ran he paid for it: about two million dollars to unseat Representative Wayne Faircloth in March 2018, a primary he lost in Galveston County by 83 votes and won on Chambers.^[2][3] In the House he chaired the Texas Freedom Caucus from January 2020; in the Senate, from January 2023, he has sat on Business and Commerce and State Affairs, the two committees through which every mining, custody, gold, and reserve bill in this site's record has passed.^[4][5][6][7] The Attorney General of Texas is the state's chief civil litigator and its consumer-protection enforcer, and the office's own record on the asset is on the Texas Attorney General and Bitcoin. This page is the man who wants it.

How has he voted?

With the industry, nine times out of ten, and the exception is instructive. On April 23, 2021, Parker's HB 1576 – a sixteen-member Work Group on Blockchain Matters to study the technology and report – passed the House on the Local and Consent Calendar, and the journal lists Middleton, then chairman of the Freedom Caucus, among twenty members “recorded voting no.”^[8] Eighteen days later HB 4474, the bill that actually changed the law by writing virtual currency into the Uniform Commercial Code, passed on the same calendar with seventeen recorded noes; he was not among them.^[9]The pattern held in the Senate. On April 12, 2023 he was deemed yea with the whole chamber on Kolkhorst's brake on the miners and Johnson's registry, and on May 15 voted for the commingling ban, 31–0.^[10][11] On March 6, 2025 he voted yea on SB 21 as it passed 25–5, and on March 19 yea on SB 6, the large-load law, of which he was one of eight bipartisan coauthors.^[14][16][17] In the last week of the session he signed on as a co-sponsor of HB 1056, gold and silver specie as legal tender, and voted yea at every stage as it passed 18–12 in a session that ended before one in the morning of May 28; on May 30 he voted yea on the reserve's conference report, 23–8.^[18][19][15] Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which opposed both the reserve and SB 6, scored both votes against a senator who otherwise earns a 92.^[34] The bills, and the members who wrote them, are on Tan Parker and Bitcoin, Charles Schwertner and Bitcoin, Phil King and Bitcoin, and Lois Kolkhorst and Bitcoin.

What has he written or said?

Nothing, on this subject. The author reports for four sessions list 79 and 87 bills under his name in the House and 222 and 255 in the Senate, and none concerns digital assets, blockchain, mining, central bank digital currencies, or specie; the nearest are two 2025 bills on how governmental entities may invest.^[21][22][23] He was not a coauthor of SB 21 or of its January precursor, not a coauthor of the Senate's 2023 anti-CBDC resolution, and not a coauthor of Parker's SJR 67 or of HJR 175 – the constitutional right to a mutually agreed medium of exchange – both of which died in Business and Commerce, his committee, without a hearing.^[13][12][20] Of thirty bills he co-sponsored in 2025, HB 1056 is the only one on money.^[24] His Senate press room holds one release, on an unrelated bill.^[27] His campaign site's issues page addresses consumer protection, foreign threats, ESG, and “DOGE Texas”; its news page holds three posts; its endorsements list no blockchain or crypto organization; and his April 15, 2025 announcement – “I believe in public service, not self-service” – does not mention the asset.^[25][26] Nor does any debate transcript, candidate guide, or Tribune profile located. A senator on the committee of jurisdiction for six years, running for the state's chief legal office in the year the state bought its first bitcoin, has left no sentence on the subject in the public record.

What is the campaign?

Largely his own money, and a coin flip. He announced one week after Ken Paxton entered the U.S. Senate race, pledging “at least $10 million”; the first finance report showed the ten-million-dollar personal loan and $156,000 from others.^[25][28] By the March 3 primary it was about fifteen million of his own, and he led Chip Roy 39.1% to 31.6% into a runoff in which Roy said of the money flowing “into groups that then endorse him” that “it just don't smell right to me.”^[29][2]He won the runoff on May 26, 55.2% to 44.8%; Dan Patrick and Angela Paxton endorsed him, Ken Paxton did not formally, and Trump did not at all.^[30][31] The July report showed $5.2 million in new loans, $3.25 million spent, and $118,000 on hand against Johnson's $291,000; ReconMR's September poll had it 45 to 44.^[32][33] Crypto political committees spent nine million dollars in Texas this cycle, in federal runoffs; none of it touched this race, and no crypto or fintech donor appears in his reports.^[36] The Democrat across the ballot, who wrote the mining registry and cut the donors out of the reserve, is on Nathan Johnson and Bitcoin.

The honest counterweight: the silence, the money, and the kiosks

Three things, and the first is the page. A voting record with no words behind it can be read two ways – as a legislator who follows his caucus and his committee chair on a subject he has not studied, or as one who has a view and sees no advantage in stating it – and nothing located distinguishes them. The 2021 no is the only vote that suggests a disposition, and it was cast against a study group by the leader of a caucus that voted against many. Second, the money. A nomination financed by more than twenty million dollars of the candidate's own funds is legal and, in Texas, not unusual; what it removes is the ordinary evidence of who wants him in the office, and on this subject that evidence is nil in both directions – no crypto money for him, none against.^[2][36] Third, the kiosks. In July the Tribune reported that Texans lost $56.8 million to crypto-kiosk scams in 2025, roughly 1,200 victims, that the largest operator had gone bankrupt citing litigation and enforcement, and that the 2027 session would fight over it; the story quoted the Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker, and two representatives, and neither nominee for the office that enforces the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.^[35] A page about the candidate has to say that the question he will be asked first, if he wins, is one he has not been asked yet.

The fair reading is that Middleton's Bitcoin record is a reliable yea and an empty page, and that the yea is real: the reserve, the definition, the custodians, the mines, the gold, and the grid all have his vote, and on two of them his vote cost him with the scorekeepers he otherwise satisfies. What Texas would get in an Attorney General Middleton, on this subject, is whatever he decides once he is asked. The record says only that he has not been.

Where does the Middleton record stand today?

As of September 2026: the Republican nominee for Attorney General, on the November 3 ballot against Nathan Johnson in a race polling within one point, holding Senate District 11 through the campaign.^[33][7] The reserve he voted for twice is in the hands of Comptroller Don Huffines, on the same ballot. The office he seeks, and what it has and has not done with the asset in eleven years, is on the Texas Attorney General and Bitcoin; the statute-by-statute record they all sit inside is on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline. This page is the vote without the speech.