Bay Area Houston

CNN aired a segment titled Deep in the Pockets of Texas. It focused on two billionaires funneling money into various candidates and PACs. Here is a breakdown of their contributions in Texas.

Farris Wilks. Wilks is the owner of an oil company in Cisco Texas. Over the last 8 years he has donated over $10 Million to various candidates, elected officials and PACs. $2,481,000 to the Texas Right to Life PAC, $201,000 to the Texas Home School Coalition, $273,000 to that fat bastard Jonathan S. Stickland, $425,000 to Ken Paxton, $453,444 to Mike Lang nearly his entire campaign fundraising activity. 

Farris and his wife donated $1,125,000 to Jon Francis in his losing effort for a State House seat. Francis raised $1,435,905 with $80,000 in loans. 

He donated $1.8 Million to the now defunct Empower Texas and $2.2 Million to Defend Texas Liberty PAC which couple with 2 other donors accounted for most of the donations.

Timothy Dunn. Dunn is an oil and gas executive. He donated a total of over $18 Million over the last 8 years. He financed the down defunct Empower Texas for a total of $7,727,500. $5,365,000 went to Defend Liberty PAC. $670,000 went to Ken Paxton.

$2,481.000 was donated to the Texas Right to Life PAC and $407,000 to State Representative Tony Tinderholt who has been married 5 times, twice to one person. 

He donated $1,700,000 to Shelley Luther in her failed attempt at a State House seat. She is the hairdresser that defied quarantine orders during COVID. $1,200,000 was to pay off her personal loan for the campaign.

I expected Alexandra Mealer to be flush with money but the details are disturbing.

On her latest report filed in July Mealer raised $764,544 which isn’t a bad haul, but just 4 individuals gave over half of her entire fundraising efforts. Each gave $100,000 including the wife of Jim MAGAt McIngvale, Hassenflu of Fidelis Realty Partners, David Modest of Vega Energy, and David Weekley of Weekley Homes. David Modest is on the Board of Texans for Lawsuit Deform. (Reform)

Three other individuals, Ned Holmes, Flores, Pitcock gave $111,000. Seven total individuals gave 67% or $511,000 out of the total $764,544.

This is what we are up against. 

Some folks have been talking about how much HEB has donated to elected officials in Texas so I did a quick search. Here is what I found.

Charles C. Butt the CEO of HEB has donated over $23 Million since the year 2000. Of that $23 Million, $10.8 Million was donated to the Charles Butt Public Education Political Action Committee, a group which advocates for Public Education. He also donated $1.5 Million to Texas Parent PAC that also advocates for public education.

There are a few donations that raises red flags such as the $1.2 Million he had donated to Greg Abbott, his last donation of $100,000 coming in 2020. Maybe he has had second thoughts with Abbott advocating for vouchers. He also donated $31,000 to Senator Schwerter who was caught sending a dick pic to a student. $300,000 was donated to HILLCO PAC, a right wing group. 

So overall most of his donations are to pro-public education organizations but he has donated to some anti-public education officials such as Governor Greg Abbott. The entire list of donations can be viewed here.

I’ve had a boner on this issue for sometime.

Over the last few elections a number of organizations and candidates have published “voting guides” or endorsement cards for various candidates. The guides such as the one issued by Fort Bend United looks official, expensive, and as if it came from Harris County. (it didn’t) And then there is the epic mailer that was sent to over 100,000 voters by Eric Dick running for Houston City Council. I’ve beat that dead horse long enough. You can read about the outcome here:

So after a couple of years of investigation and a preliminary and formal hearing, Dick was fined $30,000 and was referred to the State Bar. (Dick is an attorney) This fine was the 2nd highest fine accessed by the Commission, second to the fine of $75,000 against Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole.

Dick’s mailer looked as if prominent Black elected officials had endorsed a slate including him. They hadn’t. None of them had. This wasn’t the first time for Dick. During his previous run for City Council he took pictures of himself with elected officials and sent a card that implied they had endorsed him. (They didn’t)

So, what can be done? We need a “Don’t be a Dick” bill. A bill that would make it illegal to imply, suggest, or otherwise make one believe that an individual has endorsed someone without their expressed consent to do so. Currently there is a law in place that makes it a crime to alter a video in an attempt to deceive voters.

This is needed for these fake and/or misleading endorsements. Until then, don’t be a dick.

“It’s like a nightmare isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse. Doesn’t it?” –The Color of Money

The Final Order from the Texas Ethics Commission can be found here.

After the 2019 Houston City Council elections I filed an ethics complaint against City Council candidate Eric Dick. My complaint was fairly simple. He failed to put a “Political ad paid for by….” disclaimer on a mail piece he sent out and he failed to identify who he was paying money to. Usually a complaint like this will end in a settlement with a small fine and with no admission of guilt along with a promise to not do it again. According to the final order issued by the Texas Ethics Commission I couldn’t have been more wrong….

The mailer in question looked as if prominent Black elected officials had endorsed a slate of candidates, including Dick. It was created by the Harris County Black Democratic News an organization that was also caught up in this scheme and eventually fined $6000. Unfortunately it is not against the law to publish a deceiving endorsement so that issue was not considered by the Ethics Commission.

The Final Order:

So after a couple of years of investigation and a preliminary and formal hearing, Dick was fined $30,000 and was referred to the State Bar. (Dick is an attorney) This fine was the 2nd highest fine accessed by the Commission, second to the fine of $75,000 against Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole. The Final Order sheds more light on the entire process and went far beyond what I had expected. From the order:

• The TEC offered to settle for $10,000. Dick offered to settle the complaint for $2500 with no admission of guilt. The TEC countered with a fine of $5000. A day later the printer of the mailer responded to a subpoena with data that made the TEC staff rescind the offer. Dick should have accepted the offer.
• Dick had claimed, under oath, that he had nothing to do with the mailer, yet the data provided by the printer showed that he paid over $20,000 for over 100,000 mailers and was directing the printer on every aspect of the job.
• The TEC sent a list of questions to Dick. His lawyer, Chris Carmona, offered to provide the answers at a cost of $900.
• Dick finally responded to the request and provided a document dump of over 11,000 pages. 
• After claiming his reports were accurate concerning payments of over $125,000 to PFS, the Famous Group, WS Services, and Blaze Campaign Consulting he changed his statement saying he had actually never paid anyone for any services. The original complaint claimed these entities did not exist and the addresses listed on the ethics report were storage facilities. The TEC agreed.
• Subpoenas were issued to the printer owner, Dick, and the owner of Harris County Democratic News. Neither showed to the hearing.
• Carmona claimed that Dick was under a “protective order” issued by Harris County Civil Court at Law No 1 and could not attend the formal hearing but that order had been withdrawn once the Judge learned Dick was under a subpoena. (Can this get any more weird?)
• The data provided by the printer clearly shows Dick paid for the mailers, which he denied.

We have seen this before and it’s just not cool.

An organization called the Organization to Elect Better Leaders has posted some Facebook ads against Judge Briones who is running for Harris County Commissioners Court. It seems there is only one person behind the ads and the organization, Benjamin Chou, who is running against Briones.

The Facebook account for the organization was created May 4th and was sending ads on May 10th. There is no organization listed under the Texas Ethics Commission or the County, or Federal sites. They do have a website but it is generic and offers little information.

Chou is claiming in the ad that Briones is unethical and offers an article as proof from the Houston Chronicle, an article that I could not find. I have asked Chou to direct me to a copy of the article but have not heard back. It seems like it is a made up headline and if true would be uh….unethical. The Texas Legislature passed a bill a few years ago making it a crime to doctor a video in a political ad. I’m not sure if that pertains to fake headlines such as the one promoted.

Choe is a young upcoming candidate associated with the socialist group Working Families Party, one that is supported by Senator Bernie Sanders and supports far left candidates running as “Progressives”. Many of his donations are from socialist supporters.

It is sad when candidates have to stoop to win.