Temple Stands Together demanded answers from City Hall. Its own campaign-finance records now leave a different set of questions unanswered.
Temple Stands Together was founded on a simple premise: local government should be watched.
Its Texas nonprofit filing describes the organization as a political watchdog dedicated to citizen education, lobbying, legal action and, when necessary, recall campaigns. During its effort to remove three Temple elected officials, the organization accused City Hall of failing its residents, organized petitions, held public meetings and demanded accountability from the people in power.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that; people should question government, and public officials should explain themselves.
Campaigns seeking to remove elected leaders are part of democratic government when conducted within the law. But transparency is not a principle that applies only to the people being protested. It applies to the protesters, too.
And several months after Temple Stands Together launched its recall campaign, its own public filings leave a remarkably basic question unanswered:
Which Temple Stands Together paid for the politics?
Two organizations. One name.
On May 8, Temple Stands Together incorporated as a Texas nonprofit corporation.
Darrel Joseph Royer II was listed as its organizer, registered agent and an initial director. Its stated purposes included social-welfare activity, political watchdog work, lobbying and explicitly “recall campaigns when necessary.”
Twelve days later, on May 20, a specific-purpose political committee — also called Temple Stands Together — filed a campaign-treasurer appointment for the explicit purpose of recalling Temple’s mayor and the councilmembers representing Districts 1 and 4.
Royer was again at the center of it, listed both as campaign treasurer and the person appointing the treasurer.
That overlap is not, by itself, illegal.
People can serve multiple organizations. Political committees and nonprofit corporations can coexist. The law does not prohibit people from participating in both.
But once two legally distinct entities use the same name, same leadership and same public-facing identity while participating in political activity, financial separation matters.
Which entity paid which bills?
Which entity owned which accounts?
Which entity operated the website?
Which entity collected the money?
Those are not technicalities.
They are the difference between knowing who financed a political campaign and not knowing.
The campaign that appears to have started before the committee
Temple Stands Together’s political committee was formally appointed May 20.
Its own later finance report, however, lists political expenditures dating back more than a month earlier.
The report identifies at least $1,906.22 in clearly legible political expenditures between April 14 and May 18, plus another April 27 yard-sign purchase whose amount is difficult to read in the available copy.
Those expenditures included:
- Yard signs.
- Petition sheets.
- Printing.
- A text-messaging service.
- More petition sheets.
- A town-hall venue.
The Texas Ethics Commission’s 2026 guidance says a specific-purpose committee must have a campaign-treasurer appointment on file before exceeding $1,140 in political contributions or expenditures.
That does not mean the filing itself proves an offense occurred.
The public report does not tell us who originally paid each bill, whether some expenses were personal advances, when particular expenditures were legally authorized, whether reimbursements occurred or which accounts ultimately funded them.
Those missing facts matter. But that is precisely the problem. A political committee’s own filing says political money was being spent before the committee’s appointment.
The public cannot tell from that filing alone whose money it was.
For an organization built around demanding transparency from government, that deserves an answer.
The website that did more than complain
Temple Stands Together’s recall website was not merely a page expressing dissatisfaction with Temple leadership.
According to material reviewed by The Directory, it published signature totals and targets, told residents where petitions could be signed, offered to send petition circulators to people’s homes, recruited volunteers and prospective candidates, promoted the May town hall and declared:
“We are recalling our city government.”
In other words, the website was part of the machinery of the recall campaign.
The political committee’s finance report accounts for signs, printing, SlickText and a venue.
What The Directory has not found in the schedules reviewed is an apparent expenditure or nonmonetary contribution for the website itself — domain registration, hosting, design, maintenance or similar expenses.
Someone paid for it. The question is who.
If the political committee paid for the website, where is the expense?
If an individual paid for it, how was that expenditure treated?
And if the nonprofit corporation paid for a website being used to facilitate a recall campaign, that raises a more complicated legal question.
Texas appellate courts have dealt with something remarkably similar before.
In Cook v. Tom Brown Ministries, an incorporated nonprofit used its website, facilities and personnel to assist in a recall effort. The court found, based on the facts in that case, that those resources amounted to prohibited corporate contributions connected to the recall.
That case does not prove Temple Stands Together violated the law.
It does make the ownership and financing of its website a question worth answering.
$3,491.62 with almost no names attached
The political committee reported $3,816.62 in total political contributions.
Of that amount, $3,491.62 — about 91.5 percent — was reported as unitemized contributions.
Unitemized contributions are not automatically improper.
Texas permits qualifying small contributions to be aggregated.
But electronic political contributions are treated differently. Texas Ethics Commission guidance requires political contributions made electronically to be itemized regardless of amount.
That matters because Temple Stands Together currently operates an online donation page using a Venmo QR code.
Scanning that code takes users to a recipient identified publicly simply as:
Temple Stands Together.
The Directory has not established who legally owns that account.
We do not know whether it belongs to the nonprofit, the former political committee or an individual.
We do not know which bank account is attached.
We do not know whether it was active during the recall.
We do not know whether political contributions passed through it.
And if political contributions were received electronically during the recall campaign, the obvious question is:
Where are they individually reported?
There may be a straightforward explanation. The public record does not currently provide one.
And then there is the text-messaging operation
One of the more unusual entries in the committee’s own finance report is a $340.05 payment to SlickText.
The committee itself categorized the May 1 expense as:
Political. Advertising. Text Message Service.
May 1 matters.
It came seven days before the nonprofit corporation was formed and 19 days before the political committee appointed its campaign treasurer.
So who was operating the political text-messaging program?
Who owned the SlickText account?
Who paid the bill?
Where did the subscriber list come from?
What messages were sent?
Did those messages contain the political-advertising disclosures Texas law may require for qualifying mass communications?
The Directory has not obtained the actual messages, so it cannot answer the disclosure question.
Again, there may be perfectly lawful answers.
But somebody has the records. The public filings do not.
The committee dissolved. The politics did not.
On July 13, Temple Stands Together’s recall committee filed a Statement of Dissolution.
The filing states that no further reportable committee activity was expected and acknowledges that dissolution terminates the campaign-treasurer appointment.
The recall effort ended.
Temple Stands Together did not.
Its website now promotes “PETITION ROUND #2: Change the City Charter.”
The organization encourages residents to circulate petitions, tells supporters to “Help us win,” advocates a “YES” vote and seeks changes to Temple’s recall rules and term limits.
This is legally different from the recall campaign.
Texas law treats ballot measures differently from recall elections, and the continued activity does not establish that the dissolved recall committee is improperly operating.
But it creates another version of the same question:
Who is paying for this campaign now?
The nonprofit corporation?
A new political committee?
Individuals?
Some other lawful structure?
Temple Stands Together has been remarkably clear about what it wants voters to do.
It has been less clear, at least in the public records The Directory has reviewed, about which legal entity is asking them to do it.
A watchdog should expect to be watched
Temple Stands Together has spent months scrutinizing Temple officials.
That is its right. In many circumstances, it is healthy. Citizens should question government spending. They should examine contracts. They should criticize councilmembers. They should petition. They should organize. They should demand records.
But the credibility of a transparency movement depends upon its willingness to live by the standard it imposes on everyone else.
If you ask City Hall where the money went, you should be prepared to answer where your own money came from.
If you demand that officials disclose who is behind a decision, you should be willing to identify which legal organization is behind your political campaign.
If you insist that government follow the rules precisely, your own paperwork should not require the public to reconstruct your organization from multiple entities, missing expenses and unanswered financial questions.
That is not retaliation. That is accountability.
Questions Temple Stands Together can answer
The unanswered questions are not particularly complicated.
Who paid the political expenses incurred before May 20?
Who owns the Discover and Chase accounts referenced in the campaign filing?
Who paid for and controlled the recall website?
Who owned and funded the SlickText account?
Were electronic political contributions received during the recall, and if so, where were those contributions itemized?
Who owns the Venmo account currently soliciting donations under the Temple Stands Together name?
Which legal entity is financing Petition Round #2?
Were funds or resources ever transferred between the nonprofit corporation and the political committee?
The Directory has identified records that could answer most of those questions: bank statements, payment-platform records, credit-card statements, reimbursement records, vendor invoices, website billing records, SlickText records and the ledgers supporting the committee’s contribution totals.
Temple Stands Together may be able to answer every one of these questions tomorrow.
If it can, it should.
What we are not saying
There is an important line here.
The records reviewed by The Directory do not establish that Temple Stands Together or anyone associated with it committed a crime.
There may be lawful explanations for the pre-appointment expenditures.
There may be lawful explanations for the website.
There may be lawful explanations for the unitemized contributions.
There may be lawful explanations for the Venmo account and the current charter effort.
Journalism requires leaving room for those answers.
But it does not require pretending the questions do not exist.
The same public records Temple Stands Together would presumably cite when questioning City Hall now raise questions about Temple Stands Together itself.
And perhaps that is the simplest test of a watchdog’s commitment to transparency:
Does it still believe in transparency when the questions are pointed in its direction?
Temple Stands Together wanted Temple residents to look harder at their government.
Fair enough.
Now the public should be allowed to look just as closely at Temple Stands Together.
Because transparency cannot mean:
For thee, but not for me.
Editor’s Note: The Directory News contacted Temple Stands Together before publication and provided the organization an opportunity to respond to the questions raised in this reporting. No response was received by the publication deadline. If a substantive response is received, this story will be updated accordingly.