As we know, Ned Holmes, the finance chair for the Gene Locke campaign, made a $20,000 donation to Steven Hotze’s Conservative Republicans of Harris County PAC just before Hotze sent out his homophobic mailer to voters. Holmes claims that the timing is coincidental because he’s a longtime supporter of Hotze. How that’s supposed to make me feel better about the Locke-Hotze relationship is unclear, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s also not true.
Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission, however, show that prior to his Nov. 24 contribution of $20,000, Holmes had donated to the PAC only once in the past eight years. He made a $2,000 contribution on April 20, 2000. Holmes denied to Olson that his most recent contribution was connected to the mail piece.
Well, I guess that one donation in 2000 was a long time ago. And maybe he always intended to be a once-every-9.5-years kind of longtime supporter. Which he kept secret from everyone, including his candidate. Yeah, that must be it.
Rick Casey is not impressed.
According to Hotze’s report, his committee was flat broke as of three weeks ago. Since then he raised $56,000, of which $40,000 came from Locke’s two backers.
Hotze’s report shows about $9,700 in expenses for the mailing in November and a balance of $44,285 in the bank.
I hope there are some unpaid bills for the mailer. I don’t want it on Locke’s conscience if his backers inadvertently bankrolled Hotze’s next hit piece.
I think Nick Anderson sums it up the best. I’ll just leave it at that. Nancy Sims has a few related words.
My memory is that the last time Ned Holmes gave money to Hotze it was for another “uncoordinated” effort. Holmes was supporting Peter Wareing in the Congressional 7 GOP primary in 2000, and so was Hotze. The timing of that donation conveniently coincided with a mailer sent out to voters by Hotze endorsing Wareing over Culberson.