I’m going to take a look at the July finance reports from the various state races, which I will split into three parts. Part one will be statewide, SBOE, and State Senate, part two will be State House races from the Houston area, and part three will be State House races from elsewhere in the state. I’m not going to be doing every race of course, just the ones of interest. January reports for statewide candidates can be found here, and January reports for various SBOE and State Senate races can be found here.
Chrysta Castaneda, RRC
Jim Wright, RRC
Amy Clark Meachum, Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Nathan Hecht, Supreme Court, Chief Justice
Gisela Triana, Supreme Court, Place 8
Brett Busby, Supreme Court, Place 8
Kathy Cheng, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jane Bland, Supreme Court, Place 6
Staci Williams, Supreme Court, Place 7
Jeff Boyd, Supreme Court, Place 7
Rebecca Bell-Metereau, SBOE5
Lani Popp, SBOE5
Michelle Palmer, SBOE6
Will Hickman, SBOE6
Marsha Webster, SBOE10
Tom Maynard, SBOE10
Susan Criss, SD11
Larry Taylor, SD11
Roland Gutierrez, SD19
Pete Flores, SD19
Candidate Office Raised Spent Loan On Hand
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Castaneda RRC 43,072 38,785 27,166 16,043
Wright RRC 384,282 90,680 45,000 350,856
Meachum SCOTX 51,093 44,271 0 132,303
Hecht SCOTX 312,030 106,598 0 727,648
Triana SCOTX 17,592 9,781 0 113,567
Busby SCOTX 207,080 116,130 0 611,700
Cheng SCOTX 7,637 4,033 90,174 9,292
Bland SCOTX 264,370 106,000 0 417,335
Williams SCOTX 14,135 47,262 0 7,466
Boyd SCOTX 104,743 171,002 0 492,183
BellMetereau SBOE5 27,439 8,027 2,250 20,935
Popp SBOE5 22,930 98,185 10,000 25,354
Palmer SBOE6 6,873 9,134 0 6,076
Hickman SBOE6 1,800 2,225 2,500 1,047
Webster SBOE10 2,480 1,589 25 3,529
Maynard SBOE10 3,170 1,103 5,000 4,216
Criss SD11 22,586 14,071 0 13,644
Taylor SD11 64,150 116,848 0 1,129,009
Gutierrez SD19 60,074 99,208 0 11,309
Flores SD19 295,760 65,577 0 563,459
I skipped the Court of Criminal Appeals races because no one raises any money in them. Jim Wright is the no-name Republican challenger who ousted incumbent Ryan Sitton in the GOP Railroad Commissioner primary, in an upset no one saw coming. He had $12K on hand in his eight-day report for the March primary. You can see where he is now, thanks to the Republican money machine including Tim Dunn (evil rich guy behind Empower Texans, $20K) and a slew of PACs. Ryan Sitton had $2.5 million in his account at the time of his defeat (all of which he can now donate to other campaigns, if he wants), so Wright isn’t in that league yet, but the point is that Wright wasn’t a no-name nobody for long. The establishment just moved over to his camp and did their thing. The Republican Party of Texas is currently a dumpster fire, and many of its county parties (see, in particular, Harris and Bexar) are even worse off, but the real power structure is still operating at peak efficiency.
The larger point I would make here, as we begin to see Joe Biden and Donald Trump ads on TV – I saw one of each while watching the Yankees-Nationals game on Saturday night – is that there’s more than one way to do a statewide campaign in Texas. For a million bucks or so, you could probably blanket local and cable TV in many of the media markets with ads for Chrysta Castaneda and the statewide Democratic judicial slate. I have seen my share of “vote for Republican judges” ads on my teevee, as recently as 2016 and 2018. Our Congressional candidates have shown there’s plenty of financial support out there for Democratic contenders, even those in odds-against races. There are many people who know enough to create a PAC, get some dough in the door, then cut an ad and buy some time for it. The numbers say this is the best chance we’ve had in a quarter century to win statewide. What are we going to do about that?
As for the Senate races, SD11 isn’t really competitive. It’s on the list of “races that may end up being closer than you might have thought because of prevailing conditions and recent political shifts”, but it’s too far out of reach to expect more than that. The thing I’d ponder is if the likes of Larry Taylor, and other Republican Senators in safe districts or not on the ballot this year, will put some of their spare cash towards helping their fellow partymates who are in tough races. I’m sure we can all think of a few of them. As for SD19, I’m not too worried about the current gap between Roland Gutierrez’s and Pete Flores’ cash on hand. I fully expect Gutierrez, the one Dem running in a truly flippable district, to have the resources he needs. But I’ll still check the 30-day report, because SD19 officially makes me nervous after the 2018 special election fiasco.
Nobody ever raises money in the SBOE races. It would have been fascinating to see what might have happened had cartoon character/performance artist Robert Morrow won that primary runoff, but alas. It’s just another boring contest between two normal people. Which, given the history of the SBOE, is actually quite comforting.
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