Bay Area Houston

Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia easily beat his opponent in the Democratic Primary by 60 percentage points and will face former Commissioner Jack Mormon in the general election.

In this period covering 1/20/22 to 6/30/22 Garcia raised $787,949, spent $675,976, has no outstanding loans, and has a Cash on Hand balance of $1,897,179. Of the $787,949 about $160,000 came from 15 donations of $10,000 or more. The highest donation was $15,000. These donations account for about 20% of his entire fundraising for the quarter. 

Garcia’s opponent raised only $63,144 during the same period.

Yeow! The report submitted by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo for the period covering 2/20/2022 to 6/30/2022 was so large (over 800 pages) it would not download from the site. I was able to obtain a copy nevertheless. Not only is Hidalgo running for re-election she is also a marathon runner and she is running away in the fundraising campaign.

In this period Hidalgo raised $1,150,804, spent $569,065, has an outstanding loan of $1400, and has a Cash on Hand balance of $1,983,697. Of the $1,150,804 about $290,000 came from donations of $10,000 or more. The highest donation was $30,000. These donations account for about 25% of her entire fundraising for the quarter. Her opponent raised 70% of her total fundraising from just 7 individuals including 4 who gave $100,000 each.

The rest of her report was littered with 800 pages of small donations. The reports provided by the County Commission is not like the Texas Ethics Commission where a spreadsheet could be downloaded and analyzed. It is difficult to analyze due to the volume of pages and donations. (but I did it for you!)

In contrast, during her run in 2018 Hidalgo raised about $183,000 in her January 2018 report. 

Even with a poor accounting of fundraising, never “misunderestimate” the power of money in the Republican Party. With the party flush with billionaires and millionaires and with no limits on the amount of a contribution, Mormon could easily be right back in the game with just one single $1million donation. But not today. Not today.

In his July report Mormon raised $63,144, spent $19,585 and has a Cash on Hand balance of only $69,638. He has no outstanding loans. His largest donor was Richard Weekley for $9606. Weekley could easily drop a $1Million on his general election and just might. Other than that he had a very weak reporting period. His opponent in the runoff raised only $46,150. His opponents in the primary also had very weak fundraising results.

Mormon will face Commissioner Adrian Garcia who raised over $700,000 in the same period and has almost $2 Million Cash on Hand for the general election.

That was quick!

Judge Briones, candidate for Harris County Commissioner, responded to a negative Facebook ad posted by her opponent in the Democratic Primary Runoff, Benjamin Chou. Chou created a Facebook page, Organization to Elect Better Leaders, as well as a twitter account which has 0 followers. According to the page the OTEBL “The mission of the Organization to Elect Better leaders is to make transformative change in our political system by electing ethical leaders.” The hypocrisy makes hypocrites look bad. 

According to Briones Chou might have violated a number of Ethics Commission rules such as not putting on a “Political Ad paid for by…” disclosure on the ad, not registering as a PAC, not appointing a treasurer, and not identifying the source of donations. Now I believe if the amount spent is below $500 for the entire campaign these rules may not apply but then again I do not know about PACs. Whoever is advising him should read the rules of the Ethics Commission. His Facebook page and account was created by Human Age Digital who should also know the rules of the Commission.

This entire mess looks like a rookie campaign.

This is interesting.

A group called the Conservative Republicans of Texas published an endorsement mailer for the 2022 Republican primary with comments from Steven Hotze, the founder, and Jared Woodfill, the President of CROT and the former Chair of the Harris County Republican Party. 

The endorsements include Don Huffines who ran for Governor (lost), Money Mays Middleton who ran for Senate District 11 (won), Eric Dick who ran for Harris County Treasurer (lost) and Vidal Martinez for Harris County Judge (in a runoff). All of these candidates are considered to be extreme far right wing.

Since Jan 1, 2021, CROT raised $641,000 with Defend Texas Liberty PAC donating $150,000 (more on them in a separate post) Huffines $126,500, Money Mayes Middleton $50,000 Eric Dick and Vidal Martinez both donated $50,000. 

The largest donors of $2500 or more totaling $484,600 include:

I just couldn’t resist.

The Harris County Republican Party was expecting a win by Eric Dick to be the nominee for Harris County Treasurer. Instead he got trampled by 30 points even after being endorsed by the Houston Chronicle. According to his ethics reports, Dick spent over $208,000 of his own money for political advertising in his losing cause. 

His opponent, who has no idea of what the office actually does, raised about $78,000 including a personal loan of about $22,000. The Chronicle has this to say about him:

No doubt that plenty of voters in the Republican primary will agree with him that the expanded scope of county government is a problem. Fortunately for them, the November general election offers an opportunity to vote in new commissioners or a new county judge. But if they don’t, we don’t believe that using the treasurer’s office to shape the budget should be in the cards — no matter which party is in control.

“If you don’t follow the law, you’ll get removed from office,” said Dick, who was first elected to the Harris County Board of Education in 2016.

Eric Dick, a Trustee on the Harris County Department of Education has been fined $30,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for his deceptive mailer supporting his run for City Council back in 2019. Dick is an attorney and the TEC has also referred him to the Texas Bar.

I guess you could call this landslide a premature election. 

 The Qanon Republican Party has their candidate.

Vidal Martinez is running for County Judge against Lina Hidalgo probably because they couldn’t find a woman with the last name of Hidalgo to confuse voters. Martinez raised $514,585 with $100,000 coming from a personal loan. Of the remaining $414,585, 14 donors contributed $340,000 or 82% of all her donations. The remaining 18% donated $74585. Unlike other candidates Martinez relied on the deep pockets of every day, common, peasants donating $1000 or more. Her top 14 donors are:

Dennis Paul, a republican from Clear Lake, had to change his annual fundraiser from a Harris County park to Galveston County and we all got to listen to him whine and lie.

According to Dennis Paul, he incorrectly blames Harris County for his staff’s mistakes and lies leading up to his event being cancelled by his own staff.

“Despite having a contract in place for months with Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s office in Precinct 2, we were notified late last week that we would not be able to have any sort of fundraising activities at Clear Lake Park. I would like to think that this was a simple miscommunication, but it seems par for the course for Democrats in Harris County.”