A look at the 8 day out finance reports for HD134, slates and the RPT

Soon your mailboxes will be empty! Only six days left in the 2018 primary cycle! I don’t care who you are, that should be good news! Especially to the candidates and their by now zombie campaign workers. So I thought I’d take a look at a few reports and let you know what I found.

But no matter what I find, I’ll never top this one:

A South Texas candidate had 9 in-kind donations of deer semen. Does this happen in other states? #TxLege pic.twitter.com/qXxECTxJFk

— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) February 28, 2018

Kinda strange, don’t you think?

HD134

Anyways, let’s take a look at the Sarah Davis vs Greg Abbott race for HD134 (I think there is a candidate running but this is truly Davis vs Abbott):

Lots of stuff to pick through on that chart. Main thing for me is that Abbott’s campaign is being funded 85% out of the district and only has 26 individual contributions from within the district while Davis has 233. Perhaps the anti-vaccination block walkers from outside the district can overcome that? Oh, and Abbott’s campaign in total is being funded 80% by PAC’s and Candidates. Pareto principle?

Conservative Republicans of Harris County and Texas

This is the slate for Dr. Steve Hotze. If you heard Michael Berry and I talking about slates yesterday, you know that he is in a different category than the other two of the “Big 3” slates that we talk about in Harris County. Mostly because he puts his own money into it instead of profiting from it. In fact, reports show that he has invested $665,000 of his own money into CRT through the years and I bet that number is low because those are just loans.

But as I told him this morning, part of who you are is who you jump in bed with and he has to take on the reputations of the other two. One thing is for certain – you know exactly where he stands on moral issues and you know exactly how much money he is receiving and spending because he is very transparent and uses political action committees.

Here are a few observations from reviewing the reports of his two PAC’s.

• CRT, the statewide version, has spent $415,985.79 this cycle targeting areas outside of Harris County.
• Steve told me this morning that all told he has sent out over a million copies of his slate around the state.
• CRHC, the Harris County version, has spent $214,919.25 this cycle but they are sending out another round this week, so that will increase.
• HillcoPAC, the lobby group out of Austin headed up by Bill Miller, sent CRHC $10,000 through an intermediary PAC called Citizens for Responsible Judges.
• CRHC listed a payment in-kind of $7,909.95 for telemarketing for the Chris Carmona for County Chair campaign. That donation is not listed on Carmona’s filing.

Texas Conservative Review

This is Gary Polland’s endorsement slate. As discussed on the Michael Berry show yesterday, we’ll let you know who is funding this slate.

In addition to the political support, Dr. Hotze purchased an advertisement for his wellness center and Mark Lanier, plaintiff’s attorney and bible teacher at Champion Forest Baptist Church, purchased an ad for his new book.

The (unopposed, estimated) is because unopposed candidates are not required to file during the 30 day or 8 day periods. The (not-reported, estimated) is because no expenditure to this slate was found on the campaign finance reports of these candidates. The estimates are based upon other candidates paying for the same size ad.

Link Letter

This is Terry Lowry’s endorsement slate. Mr. Berry was much tougher on the little fella than I have ever been.

The little fella is also subsidized by Mark Lanier in the form of a daily bible talk on The What’s Up Radio program.

The (unopposed, estimated) is because unopposed candidates are not required to file during the 30 day or 8 day periods. The (not-reported, estimated) is because no expenditure to this slate was found on the campaign finance reports of these candidates. The estimates are based upon other candidates paying for the same size ad.

Michael Berry on the TCR and Link Letter slates

I happened to catch the Michael Berry show yesterday as he was talking about the slates. Near the end of his last hour, he put the word out for me to call in. He had already covered everything because he is very in tune with the HCRP but I enjoyed chatting for the last 5 or 6 minutes of the show. Here is a link to the podcast: 2-27-18 AM show. He starts talking about the slates at roughly the 57 minute mark.

When he asked me if the Big 3 still had influence, I told him it all depends on who turns out and that right now, it is mostly previous primary voters and they do have influence with them. I also estimated that they would spend between $800-840k to take the chairman’s position back. If you total the numbers above, it stands at $812,419 and that is without the additional mailers that Dr. Hotze mentioned. How’s that for a guess off the top of my head? Tough hill to climb for Paul Simpson. And all free for Chris Carmona.

Texas Republican Party

You’ll recall that I said that it was time for the Oust Straus folks to fund the RPT. SREC member Mark Ramsey started a campaign to get people that agreed with the censure to donate $44 in honor of the Rule 44 Censure resolution.

Well the message came through loud and clear. A total of 7 people contributed $44 for a grand total of $308.

Good thing that Greg Abbott gave $50,000 and Dan Patrick gave $25,000. I knew those Rule 44 Censure proponents would step up to the plate!