Thread by @christackettnow

Midterms are done, at least as far as contribution to campaigns are concerned. There have been several looks at spending by the far right groups, specifically Empower Texans. I think they are seeing part of the picture, but not the whole enchilada. This will be the enchilada.

When I define ET World, it's three categories of donors to Texas elections
The first category of donor in ET World is
(ET) = Empower Texans PAC, Texans For Fiscal Responsibility PAC, and Texas Right To Life PAC
#txlege

Continuing the levels of ET World
The second category of donor is
(ET9) = The 9 largest donors to the Empower Texans PAC.
These 9 donors make up 97% of the ET PAC, 96% of the TFFR PAC, and 78% of TRL. This overwhelming funding to the 3 PACs is why all three are flagged as ET

Continuing the levels of ET World
The third category of donor is
(ETR) = These are donors who give almost exclusively to candidates funded by the ET level (following a lead), OR it's the campaigns themselves, moving money between the various campaigns

Now, let's detail each category. (ET)
Empower Texans PAC was the largest single donor to both Texas Senate and House races from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18. They gave to 44 different candidates.
Wins - 17 ($1,292,941)
Loses - 27 ($3,015,073)
Overall spend - $4,308,104
#txlege

(ET)
Texas Right To Life PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 gave to 41 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 14 ($238,534)
Losses - 27 ($1,192,872)
Overall spend - $1,431,406
#txlege

(ET)
Texans For Fiscal Responsibility PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 (this PAC really just started in July 18, but doing full date range for consistency) gave to 9 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 3 ($20,000)
Losses - 6 ($507,800)
Overall spend - $527,800
#txlege

Totaling up the entire (ET) category, Empower Texans, Texas Right To Life and Texans For Fiscal Responsibility, they contributed $6,267,219 to Texas House and Senate races
$1,551,475 to winning races
$4,715,744 to losing races
75% going to races that did not succeed
#txlege

The next level in ET World is (ET9). Let's remind everyone who those biggest 9 individual donors are to Empower Texans
Tim Dunn
Farris Wilks
Dan Wilks
Kyle Stallings
Mayes Middleton
Dick Saulsbury
Holloway Frost
Darlene Pendery
Monty Bennett
97% of ET is these 9 people
#txlege

(ET9)
Mayes Middleton contributed the most from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 7 different Texas House & Senate candidates. This one is first because Middleton spent $1.7 million on his own race.
Wins - 5 ($1,771,192)
Losses - 2 ($7,500)
Overall spend - $1,778,692
#txlege

(ET9)
Farris Wilks is second on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 20 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 14 ($536,729)
Losses - 6 ($142,500)
Overall spend - $679,229
#txlege

(ET9)
Darlene Pendery is 3rd on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 28 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 8 ($145,500)
Losses - 20 ($312,000)
Overall spend - $457,500
#txlege

(ET9)
Kyle Stallings is 4th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 28 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 6 ($62,000)
Losses - 22 ($154,500)
Overall spend - $216,500
#txlege

(ET9)
Tim Dunn is 5th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 19 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 13 ($147,000)
Losses - 6 ($56,500)
Overall spend - $203,500
#txlege

(ET9)
Dick Saulsbury is 6th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 12 different Texas House & Senate candidates. This excludes his kids, who gave a lot too.
Wins - 6 ($57,500)
Losses - 6 ($68,000)
Overall spend - $125,500
#txlege

(ET9)
Dan Wilks is 7th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 16 different Texas House & Senate candidates.
Wins - 12 ($60,258)
Losses - 4 ($57,500)
Overall spend - $117,758
#txlege

(ET9)
Monty Bennett is 8th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 14 different Texas House & Senate candidates. This excludes the giving by MJB Operating and Violet Verbena, both are Bennett.
Wins - 9 ($23,500)
Losses - 5 ($32,000)
Overall spend - $55,500
#txlege

(ET9)
Holloway Frost is 9th on the ET9 list, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18 giving to 5 different Texas House & Senate candidates. This excludes giving by Kathaleen Wall, Frost's wife.
Wins - 3 ($25,000)
Losses - 2 ($30,000)
Overall spend - $55,000
#txlege

Totaling up the entire (ET9) category, those people who have ALREADY given large amounts to Empower Texans, they contributed $3,689,179 to Texas House and Senate races
$2,828,679 to winning races
$860,500 to losing races
#txlege

Now you have the $6,267,220 that the ET category spent, PLUS the $3,689,179 the donors to ET, the ET9 category spent.

ET, TFFR, TRL and their 9 biggest donors spent $9,956,399 on Texas House and Senate races from 1/1/17 - 10/27/18.
$4.3m winning
$5.5m not winning
#txlege

The third and final category / level I define as ET World are the ET Related donors (ETR). Remember, these are donors who give almost exclusively to ET candidates. You might see a stray donation to a non-ET person, but that's it. I'll call out most of them below.

(ETR)
Dan Patrick's campaign, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 20 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Dan The Man gave to mostly ET backed folks, and spent the bulk in the Senate.
Wins - 15 ($747,062)
Losses - 5 ($198,691)
Overall spend - $945,753
#txlege

(ETR)
Jonathan Stickland's campaign, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 27 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Stick was a veritable laundry of funds, albeit not an overly successful one.
Wins - 9 ($42,743)
Losses - 18 ($194,917)
Overall spend - $237,660
#txlege

(ETR)
Stacy Hock, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 38 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Hock is a major advocate for school choice, looking to privatize public dollars, monetizing kids.
Wins - 17 ($87,500)
Losses - 21 ($135,000)
Overall spend - $222,500
#txlege

(ETR)
New Leadership PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 5 different Texas House candidates. New Leadership went a big 0 for 5. Yikes! Guess they aren't backing the new leaders that Texas actually wants.
Wins - 0 ($0)
Losses - 5 ($203,103)
Overall spend - $203,103
#txlege

(ETR)
Kathaleen Wall, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 9 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Wall ran for US Congress, but lost in the primary. She is married to Holloway Frost (ET9)
Wins - 8 ($125,000)
Losses - 1 ($10,000)
Overall spend - $135,000
#txlege

(ETR)
Don Huffines Campaign, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 7 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Huffines gave most of it to his brother, Phillip, who lost in the primary.
Wins - 1 ($5,000)
Losses - 6 ($123,800)
Overall spend - $128,800
#txlege

(ETR)
Constituents Focus PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 13 different Texas House candidates. 84% of their contributions went to losing campaigns
Wins - 5 ($19,098)
Losses - 8 ($101,255)
Overall spend - $120,353
#txlege

(ETR)
Windi Grimes, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 10 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Grimes is a director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a legislative arm of Empower influence.
Wins - 5 ($27,500)
Losses - 5 ($71,627)
Overall spend - $99,127
#txlege

(ETR)
Michael Olcott, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 18 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Olcott is a retired biochemist, and deeply tied to Empower philosophies.
Wins - 9 ($45,000)
Losses - 9 ($37,500)
Overall spend - $82,500
#txlege

(ETR)
MJB Operating and Violet Verbena, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 5 different Texas House & Senate candidates. These are both Monty Bennett (ET9), just giving via a different vehicle.
Wins - 2 ($43,300)
Losses - 3 ($31,000)
Overall spend - $74,300
#txlege

(ETR)
Briscoe Cain's Campaign, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 19 different Texas House & Senate candidates. Briscoe had no challenger in the primary or general, so pushed money around.
Wins - 8 ($23,205)
Losses - 11 ($13,300)
Overall spend - $36,505
#txlege

(ETR)
Texans For Vaccine Choice PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 31 different Texas House & Senate candidates. This PAC is mostly grassroots, but has recently seen big investment by ET9 & other ETR.
Wins - 14 ($7,325)
Losses - 17 ($26,800)
Overall spend - $34,125
#txlege

(ETR)
NE Tarrant County Tea Party PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 22 different Texas House candidates. They had a miserable record on candidates, only winning 14% of the races they backed.
Wins - 3 ($6,667)
Losses - 19 ($23,130)
Overall spend - $29,797
#txlege

(ETR)
Jeff Sandefer, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 4 different Texas House candidates. Sandefer is someone who made a lot of money in oil and gas and now advocates for school choice / vouchers.
Wins - 1 ($5,000)
Losses - 3 ($16,000)
Overall spend - $21,000
#txlege

(ETR)
Texas Home School Coalition PAC, from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18, gave to 6 different Texas House & Senate candidates. The past cycle, this PAC was very ET. It wasn't leveraged as much in 2018.
Wins - 1 ($2,000)
Losses - 5 ($16,000)
Overall spend - $18,000
#txlege

(ETR)
The next few ETR are other ET funded campaigns. I won't scorecard them, but just list who was giving, and the pics list who they gave to.
- Ken Paxton
- Matt Shaheen
- Matt Rinaldi
- Matt Krause
#txlege

(ETR)
And even more ET funded campaigns giving to other ET campaigns. I won't scorecard them, but just list who was giving, and the pics list who they gave to.
- Bill Zedler
- Bo French
- Tony Tinderholt
- Jonathan Boos
- Jeff Leach
- Valoree Swanson
- Matt Schaefer
#txlege

Let's total up everything I have flagged as ETR contributions.
Overall dollars contributed to campaigns from 01/01/17 - 10/27/18: $2,495,658
$1,234,785 toward wins
$1,260,873 toward, well, not wins.
#txlege

Ok, all three categories, ET, ET9 and ETR make up ET World. What did they contribute to Texas House & Senate races from 1/1/17 - 10/27/18?
ET - $6,267,220
ET9 - $3,689,179
ETR - $2,495,658
ET World Total - $12,452,057

I do want to make sure I remind folks that Mayes Middleton spent $1.7m of his own money on his TX House race. That inflates the ET9 and ET World win pools quite a bit. If you exclude this large self funding exercise, ET World dropped approx $3.9m on wins, $6.8m on losses.
#txlege

The $12m is an incredible amount of money to come from a small group of people, funding a small group of candidates. They want you to think they are a majority of Texans. I know better. Hopefully you do too.

Whew. That’s it. The whole enchilada.
#txlege

And here is the whole mega thread as one article
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1061413…