As we enter the full on crazy primary season, endorsements from various groups will start popping up in your social media feed, in your local papers, and overloading your mailbox. It's important to understand who the money is behind these groups, who is conducting the orchestra. One of the groups rolling out endorsements is Texans for Lawsuit Reform, who have been big players in Texas politics for a bunch of years. Since 1/1/2011, this group has contributed $24,678,603 to 375 different campaigns at all levels. #txlege

I’ve had many requests to look at Federal level races. I may still look at individual races in the process, but I probably won’t go “all in” the way I have with Texas politics. That said, I am going to start tracking some Federal level PACs. The money being spent on federal PACs is more than insane. And I think people need to understand who is funding those PACs. So, I’ve put together this new tool with a few PACs to get it started.

datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/…

The campaign finance site owned by Empower Texans did a look back at the 2018 elections on 12/18/18. The question they asked was “Who’s Really Buying Texas?”
#txlege The site (again, owned by ET) pushes this “Context matters” point, but then provide a fairly skewed context. They mashed all of the dollars spent in campaigns into one massive bucket. Then they point to themselves and say “see, we didn’t give that much”.
#txlege

Pulling out a longer term lens and graphed a few things since 2008. It's striking how things are escalating. Long term lens #1: Empower Texans
This is total contributions in, by year, and the major donors. Remember, election cycles are 13-14, 15-16, 17-18. Big funding surge when Paxton & Patrick run. Can we stop with any talk that ET is grassroots? It's not now, and never was.
#txlege

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

How did ET World do last night? Here are the pie charts for the TX House and Senate, with all contributions going to ET backed candidates from those in the Empower Texans orbit from 05/23 - 10/27/18. Green are winners.
#txlege Some big plays that didn't get winners in the TX Senate. Who were the ET World backers for Konni Burton in SD10 from 5/23 - 10/27/18? Who were the backers for Don Huffines in SD16?
#txlege

Just to close out the vote totals from Early Voting, what will follow is 2014, 2016 and 2018 EV totals (and % of registered voters casting a ballot) from the 15 biggest Texas counties. Early Voting in Harris County
2014 - 375,227 (18.19%)
2016 - 977,279 (43.73%)
2018 - 855,710 (36.59%)
#Midterms2018

Day 4 EV Totals for the 15 biggest TX counties have been posted with the TX Secretary Of State. Here are the stats after 4 days of EV (% is of registered voters who have cast a ballot). Individual counties will follow.
2018 - 16.3%
2016 - 18.27%
2014 - 6.69%
#txlege #VoteTexas Day 4 EV Totals for Harris county has been posted with the TX Secretary Of State. Here are the stats after 4 days of EV (% is of registered voters who have cast a ballot).
2018 - 13.22%
2016 - 16.4%
2014 - 6.42%
#txlege #VoteTexas
bit.ly/2018TXEarlyVote

With all of the Senate races in (still working up the House stuff as it's been a busy two weeks), a few observations about the 30 Day Before reports (07/01/18 - 09/27/18) The top donor to TX Senate races (7/1/18-9/27/18):
1. Texans For Lawsuit Reform - $466,719
--Konni Burton (SD10) $332,900
--Joan Huffman (SD17) $103,250
--Don Huffines (SD16) $25k
--Pat Fallon (SD30) $5k
--Charles Schwertner (SD5) $319.92
--Kelly Hancock (SD9) $250
#txlege #txed

**I'm reposting my thread from yesterday to ensure that the chart titles are all correct (had a date typo on several). This way, if any portion of the thread gets shared, we can minimize confusion. An article was published by @DallasBizNews on 10/15 that is one of the most poorly done data driven articles I think I have ever seen. The article is titled "Does Texas’ senate race belong to Texans?" and throws out some HORRIFIC numbers. I'm going point by point with reality.

An article was published by @DallasBizNews on 10/15 that is one of the most poorly done data driven articles I think I have ever seen. The article is titled "Does Texas’ senate race belong to Texans?" and throws out some HORRIFIC numbers. I'm going point by point with reality. The article says it's going to dig into the numbers from 07/01/17 - 06/30/18 and explore out of state contributions to @BetoORourke and @tedcruz. They get pretty close on one side and are miles away on the other.

Question. I’m looking at the Beto 3rd Qtr numbers and trying to break down $ per state. How would you account for the massive ActBlue amounts for Beto? It’s all individual donors, from all over the country but the filings show as being from MA, which is where ActBlue is based. ActBlue is just a payment service, like Square. When you donate, you provide your address and they verify your max allowable contribution, but your specifics don’t seem to get transmitted to the campaign.

I’ve done a little digesting on the 30 Day Reports and wanted to share some observations
#txlege Empower Texans looks to be back to being primarily a one person show. They took in $1.1 million from 07/01 - 09/27 from 50 donations. Tim Dunn gave $1, 050,000. It makes for a very monochromatic pie. #txlege #txed

30 Day reports are due to the Texas Ethics Commission today (10/09). I’ll drop screenshots of updated charts into this thread as I get them added to christackettnow.com. $ posted here will just be those since 06/30 (SemiJul filing). #txlege #txed And away we go. First up will be the Statewide races, candidates sorted alphabetically. I am going to skip Greg Abbott. He raised $5.7 million from a whole bunch of donations. Enough said.

To help make sure individuals, and especially candidates for public office, are quoting the correct funding levels as it relates to public schools, I downloaded the TEA PEIMS finance overview for 2000-2017 and dropped it into a dashboard. goo.gl/GzEDxc. #txed #txlege You can access the Texas School Funding Trend page at goo.gl/GzEDxc. Just like with my campaign finance dashboards, this has a drop down where you can pick which district you want to see. Then you will see the trends in Local, State and Federal funding #txlege #txed

Due to the SD19 Special Election happening next Tuesday, we get 8-Day Before filings from PACs who are contributing. This means we have another Empower Texans filing. Let me break down what it tells us. #txlege On dollars going in, since July 1, 2018, the only meaningful dollars going into Empower Texans are coming from one source: Tim Dunn. He has given $900k. Empower in total has taken in $951k from 36 donations. Dunn is $900k (94.5%), the Mike Canon Campaign gave $40k. #txlege

We can add Kel Seliger in SD31 to the list of Republicans being attacked by Empower Texans as we head to the general. Rather than “money from Austin”, it’s switched up to money outside his district. #txlege Tim Dunn and ET World seems like they are really mad about wasting all that money on Mike Canon.
$349k - Empower Texans
$50k - Kyle Stallings
$20k - Texas Right To Life
$20k - Tim Dunn
$10k - Dick Saulsbury
#txlege

Tim Dunn and Empower Texans are sending out letters to folks in House District 2, attacking Dan Flynn, the Republican incumbent. Yes, thats right. The republican incumbent is being attacked by the extreme end of the republican party as we near the general election. #txlege First off, Empower is telling people to use transparency texas . org for campaign finance data. This is a site with campaign finance stuff, but what they don't tell you is that Empower Texans owns the site. Show up for data, read Empower propaganda. Not very transparent. #txlege

Since Jessica was good enough to bring up Paxton and Empower and declare "He's their man", I thought I pull together a mini-thread and few pie charts to help illustrate that fact. #txlege

https://twitter.com/jessicashortall/status/1033337582501945344

In the 2014 election cycle, Ken Paxton was running for AG for the first time. From 01/01/2013 - 12/31/2014, Paxton raised:
$8,323,245 from 3,951 donors
$4,443,856 (53%) from the top 100 donors
$1,098,470 came from ET World (DOES NOT include a $1,000,000 loan from ET) #txlege

Looks like Texas Alliance For Life is doing "pay to play" advertising for some candidates.
02/25 - Mailer supporting Jason Villalba $11,886
02/28 - Villalba donation for $12k
02/28 - Mailer supporting JD Sheffield $10,483
06/08 - Sheffield donation for $11k
#txlege And then there is a $17k donation from Texas House Leadership Fund to Texas Alliance For Life on 03/14. Right after TAFL had spent $16,657 on mailers for Capriglione & Cosper ($13k on 02/28), and Clardy ($3.6k on 03/02), all candidates that THL had supported. #txlege

I've looked at the 19 Empower Texans candidates still on the ballot. Some serious money pouring in, dominating a candidates finance report. It's even more startling when you see the 23 candidates who didn't advance in the primaries.

https://twitter.com/christackettnow/status/1029116095171624965

#txlege 23 Empower Texans endorsed / funded by the ET World candidates got knocked out in the primaries. There was A LOT of money poured into these candidates from all across ET World. The graphic shows you just how much ET World filled up their coffers vs regular folks. #txlege