In this period covering 1/20/22 to 6/30/22 Garcia raised $787,949, spent $675,976, has no outstanding loans, and has a Cash on Hand balance of $1,897,179. Of the $787,949 about $160,000 came from 15 donations of $10,000 or more. The highest donation was $15,000. These donations account for about 20% of his entire fundraising for the quarter.
Garcia's opponent raised only $63,144 during the same period.
In this period Hidalgo raised $1,150,804, spent $569,065, has an outstanding loan of $1400, and has a Cash on Hand balance of $1,983,697. Of the $1,150,804 about $290,000 came from donations of $10,000 or more. The highest donation was $30,000. These donations account for about 25% of her entire fundraising for the quarter. Her opponent raised 70% of her total fundraising from just 7 individuals including 4 who gave $100,000 each.
The rest of her report was littered with 800 pages of small donations. The reports provided by the County Commission is not like the Texas Ethics Commission where a spreadsheet could be downloaded and analyzed. It is difficult to analyze due to the volume of pages and donations. (but I did it for you!)
In contrast, during her run in 2018 Hidalgo raised about $183,000 in her January 2018 report.
In his July report Mormon raised $63,144, spent $19,585 and has a Cash on Hand balance of only $69,638. He has no outstanding loans. His largest donor was Richard Weekley for $9606. Weekley could easily drop a $1Million on his general election and just might. Other than that he had a very weak reporting period. His opponent in the runoff raised only $46,150. His opponents in the primary also had very weak fundraising results.
Mormon will face Commissioner Adrian Garcia who raised over $700,000 in the same period and has almost $2 Million Cash on Hand for the general election.
That was quick!
Judge Briones, candidate for Harris County Commissioner, responded to a negative Facebook ad posted by her opponent in the Democratic Primary Runoff, Benjamin Chou. Chou created a Facebook page, Organization to Elect Better Leaders, as well as a twitter account which has 0 followers. According to the page the OTEBL "The mission of the Organization to Elect Better leaders is to make transformative change in our political system by electing ethical leaders." The hypocrisy makes hypocrites look bad.
According to Briones Chou might have violated a number of Ethics Commission rules such as not putting on a "Political Ad paid for by..." disclosure on the ad, not registering as a PAC, not appointing a treasurer, and not identifying the source of donations. Now I believe if the amount spent is below $500 for the entire campaign these rules may not apply but then again I do not know about PACs. Whoever is advising him should read the rules of the Ethics Commission. His Facebook page and account was created by Human Age Digital who should also know the rules of the Commission.
This entire mess looks like a rookie campaign.
A group called the Conservative Republicans of Texas published an endorsement mailer for the 2022 Republican primary with comments from Steven Hotze, the founder, and Jared Woodfill, the President of CROT and the former Chair of the Harris County Republican Party.
The endorsements include Don Huffines who ran for Governor (lost), Money Mays Middleton who ran for Senate District 11 (won), Eric Dick who ran for Harris County Treasurer (lost) and Vidal Martinez for Harris County Judge (in a runoff). All of these candidates are considered to be extreme far right wing.
Since Jan 1, 2021, CROT raised $641,000 with Defend Texas Liberty PAC donating $150,000 (more on them in a separate post) Huffines $126,500, Money Mayes Middleton $50,000 Eric Dick and Vidal Martinez both donated $50,000.
The largest donors of $2500 or more totaling $484,600 include:
| Don Huffines Campaign | 76,500.00 |
| Don Huffines Campaign | 50,000.00 |
| Middleton ,Mayes | 50,000.00 |
| Eric B. Dick | 25,000.00 |
| Eric B. Dick for Harris County Treasurer | 25,000.00 |
| Ken Paxton Campaign | 25,000.00 |
| Vidal Martinez for Harris County Judge | 25,000.00 |
| Vidal Martinez for Harris County Judge | 25,000.00 |
| Jerry Mouton Jr Commissioner Campaign | 15,000.00 |
| Johnny Mark Teague | 15,000.00 |
| Sid Miller Campaign | 15,000.00 |
| Valoree Swanson Campaign | 15,000.00 |
| J B Flynn Campaign | 10,000.00 |
| Jerry Mouton, Jr Commissioner Campaignr | 10,000.00 |
| Kerns ,Steve | 10,000.00 |
| Mark Keough Campaign | 10,000.00 |
| Roberts ,David | 10,000.00 |
| Conservative Republicans Of Harris County | 8,600.00 |
| Steven Toth Campaign | 7,000.00 |
| Bert Keller Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Brandon Steinman Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Bryan Slayton Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| C.D. Group | 5,000.00 |
| Clockwork Consulting LLC | 5,000.00 |
| Darrell Apffel Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Kenneth Clark Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Metts Sr ,James O | 5,000.00 |
| Mike Schofield Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Rachal Diane Jackson-Hisler Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Sid Miller Campaign | 5,000.00 |
| Henry Dugie for Galveston County Treasurer | 2,500.00 |
The Harris County Republican Party was expecting a win by Eric Dick to be the nominee for Harris County Treasurer. Instead he got trampled by 30 points even after being endorsed by the Houston Chronicle. According to his ethics reports, Dick spent over $208,000 of his own money for political advertising in his losing cause.
His opponent, who has no idea of what the office actually does, raised about $78,000 including a personal loan of about $22,000. The Chronicle has this to say about him:
No doubt that plenty of voters in the Republican primary will agree with him that the expanded scope of county government is a problem. Fortunately for them, the November general election offers an opportunity to vote in new commissioners or a new county judge. But if they don’t, we don’t believe that using the treasurer’s office to shape the budget should be in the cards — no matter which party is in control.
“If you don’t follow the law, you’ll get removed from office,” said Dick, who was first elected to the Harris County Board of Education in 2016.
Eric Dick, a Trustee on the Harris County Department of Education has been fined $30,000 by the Texas Ethics Commission for his deceptive mailer supporting his run for City Council back in 2019. Dick is an attorney and the TEC has also referred him to the Texas Bar.
I guess you could call this landslide a premature election.
The Qanon Republican Party has their candidate.
Vidal Martinez is running for County Judge against Lina Hidalgo probably because they couldn't find a woman with the last name of Hidalgo to confuse voters. Martinez raised $514,585 with $100,000 coming from a personal loan. Of the remaining $414,585, 14 donors contributed $340,000 or 82% of all her donations. The remaining 18% donated $74585. Unlike other candidates Martinez relied on the deep pockets of every day, common, peasants donating $1000 or more. Her top 14 donors are:
According to Dennis Paul, he incorrectly blames Harris County for his staff's mistakes and lies leading up to his event being cancelled by his own staff.
"Despite having a contract in place for months with Commissioner Adrian Garcia's office in Precinct 2, we were notified late last week that we would not be able to have any sort of fundraising activities at Clear Lake Park. I would like to think that this was a simple miscommunication, but it seems par for the course for Democrats in Harris County."
Jared Woodfill was the Chair of the Harris County Republican Party for over a decade. In 2019 his law office was raided. Now he finds himself on one end of a strange conspiracy theory assault. From the Houston Chronicle:
Instead, according to an indictment announced Tuesday by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the incident was a brazen attempt by a former Houston police captain to secure evidence to support a far-fetched claim that prominent local Democrats had orchestrated a scheme to harvest more than 700,000 ballots leading up to the Nov. 3 election. The ex-lawman, Mark A. Aguirre, 63, faces a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the Oct. 19 confrontation.
So, how does Jared fit in this debacle? Turns out Jared is the president of Liberty Center for god and country. The Liberty Center paid Aguirre over $200,000 for his investigative skills. Over the years Jared has joined with religious nut job Steven Hotze and has been circling the drain with him. Liberty Center is not listed at the Texas Ethics Commission or the city or county websites. They had a GoFuckMe site that has since been removed.
Hopefully the Harris County DAs office is going to comb this shit out.
Harris County Republican Party Chairman Keith Nielsen resigned Monday, the party’s secretary confirmed, ending a brief tenure dogged by his social media post that displayed a Martin Luther King Jr. quote next to a banana.
Yep, I'm not sure how anyone could have possibly thought that a meme with a banana next to a quote from Martin Luther King Jr wasn't racist. I gave my thoughts when it happened. Maybe he was making a fruit salad when BOOM an MLK quote popped up in his face and distributed on social media. Whatever he was thinking at the time resulted in him getting fired from his job with Pasadena.
He decided to dick it out as chair instead of resigning prior to the election. Since then his party lost every seat in Harris County except for one. According to the Texas Ethics Commission his party is near broke, and they have become as popular as herpes at a hot tub party.
So, he has left the building hopefully taking all of his extreme right wing, conspiracy theorists with him. Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
A few months ago the Harris County Commissioners Court rushed through a process creating the Office of the Elections Administrator. Many activists, including myself, were not very happy about being called to provide input, taking their time to do so, just so they could immediately make the decision. From a previous post:
The Commissioners listened to our input then voted to approve the item regardless. Their minds were made up leaving us with many unanswered questions. Why were we left in the dark on this extremely important issue? Why was this being discussed in the middle of a historic election? Why was this being discussed during a raging pandemic killing Houstonians? Why didn't the Commission reach out for comments from the public? Why were they not being transparent about the issue?
Since then an Elections Administrator, Isabel Longoria, has been appointed by the Commission. This selection has been praised by many in the community but Tuesday's meeting might upend this. According to an update to the upcoming agenda for Tuesday's meeting:
Request by the County Attorney for Executive Session to consult with the County Attorney concerning claims that the Office of the Elections Administrator was improperly established and for possible action upon return to Open Session including ratification of prior acts of Commissioners Court; creation of the Office of the Elections Administrator and/or authorization for litigation concerning such claims.
Most probably the Harris County Republican Party has their panties in a wad and has challenged the process that was rushed through. The item will be discussed during executive session.
Hopefully this rush to appoint was legal and we can move on to the next election cycle.
I was wondering where Kathleen Wall was going to put her money after spending $13 Million of her own money in a losing effort to win a republican primary for congress in two different district. Wonder no more!
Last reporting period Harris County District Attorney candidate Mary Nan Huffman raised $30,000. $10,000 of that, a full 1/3 came from one donor, Kathaleen Wall. Other big contributors include HillCo PAC ($2000), the Houston Police Officer's Union ($10,000), Constable Mark Herman ($5000). I've expected Wall to spread her money around to other candidates since she can't seem to win herself.
Huffman is a trump supporter and will probably run as a "law and order" candidate. She has the support of Joe Gamaldi the president of HPOU who incorrectly blamed activists for the shooting of 4 police officers in a botched raid when in fact his own officers were responsible. Wall. Huffman. Gamaldi. What could go wrong?
I bet he endorsed Tony Buzbee.
The Harris County Republican Party officials embraced their new chair, Kieth Nielsen. Nielsen was asked by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to resign his seat before officially accepting the position for his racist post concerning a Martin Luther King quote. That racist quote cost him his position as the Planning Commissioner of Pasadena. He also claimed he would not accept the position, one he had just recently won.
When Dan Patrick calls for you to resign, whatever you did must be really, really, bad, like racist bad. Patrick is the low life of the Republican Party and when he is calling for you to resign, you might want to consider doing something different with your meme generating skills. Dan Crenshaw also called for Nielsen to resign. He told him to fuck off.
Nielen was eventually sworn in. And the executive committee welcomed him even after over 100 chairs wrote to him thanking him for not taking the position. He lied to them. This is the new Republican Party. This is who they have become. They tolerate racism. They tolerate those who promote racism. It starts at the top.
Back in 1995 Wayne Dolcefino was an investigative reporter (sic) for KTRK-TV. He had a boner for Sylvester Turner when Turner first ran for Mayor. Dolcefino was eventually sued and lost for a story about insurance fraud and a jury awarded $5.5 Million.
Turner lost his bid for Mayor and Dolcefino is no longer with KTRK but that doesn't stop them from crossing the line of integrity and fair reporting. In 2019 they seemed to have a thing for Tony Buzbee but that ended in a $13M crushing defeat. Now they have set their sight a bit higher, the Commissioner Court race. KTRK's incorrect reporting of a possible 8% increase in Harris County property rates was as honest as a lead balloon was at floating. Harris County Commissioner summed up the reporting with the following:
Commissioner Adrian Garcia reassured property owners, though, saying, "There is zero chance that during a pandemic and an economic crisis an 8% tax increase would be proposed or passed."
Maybe they should have started with that statement. Guess who KTRK will be behind this November in the race for the open Commissioner seat.
Harris County became the latest in Texas to adopt an independent administrator model to run elections when the Democratic majority on Commissioners Court voted Tuesday to create the new department. Court members voted 3-2 along party lines to create an election administrator’s office, which will assume the voter registration duties of the tax assessor-collector and the election management role of the county clerk.
| CANDIDATE | Raised | Spent | COH | Loans |
| District Attorney | ||||
| Kim Ogg (Inc) | $102,688 | $368,328 | $150,584 | $68,489 |
| Audia Jones | $11,573 | $26,277 | $20,311 | $0 |
| Carvana Cloud | $26,385 | $33,570 | $788 | $1,021 |
| Todd Overstreet | not filed | |||
| Lori Deangelo | $1,175 | $1,231 | $641 | $0 |
| Mary Huffman | $81,435 | $62,612 | $35,616 | $0 |
| Lloyd Oliver | LOL | LOL | LOL | LOL |
| County Attorney | ||||
| Vince Ryan (Inc) | $11,650 | $77,291 | $61,033 | $0 |
| Christian Menefee | $12,640 | $123,961 | $24,961 | $0 |
| John Nation | not filed | |||
| Sheriff | ||||
| Ed Gonzalez (inc) | $41,085 | $307,714 | $219,574 | $0 |
| Jerome Moore | $3,670 | $9,391 | $6,975 | $0 |
| Harry Zamora | $2,000 | $911 | $0 | $0 |
| Joe Danna | $15,623 | $17,789 | $5,420 | $8,000 |
| Randy Rush | not filed | |||
| Paul Day | not filed | |||
| Tax Assessor | ||||
| Ann Bennett (Inc) | $19,027 | $43,191 | $31,803 | $0 |
| Jolanda Jones | $16,960 | $98,725 | $30,102 | |
| Jack Terrence | not filed | |||
| Chris Daniel | not filed | |||
| Commissioner Pct 1 | ||||
| Rodney Ellis | $483,204 | $599,177 | $3,822,587 | $0 |
| Maria Jackson | $68,935 | $36,053 | $29,926 | $9,400 |
| Commissioner Pct 3 | ||||
| Michael Moore | ||||
| Kristi Thibaut | $53,836 | $187,929 | $178,180 | $0 |
| Morris Overstreet | not filed | |||
| Diana Martinez | $5,468 | $2,929 | $3,729 | $0 |
| Zaher Eisa | not filed | |||
| Erik Hassan | $0 | $35,200 | $0 | $0 |
| Constable Pct 1 | ||||
| Alan Rosen | $0 | $22,747 | $928,052 | $0 |
| Cedrick Collier | $4,105 | $5,501 | $3,392 | |
| Gilberto Reyna | not filed | |||
| Perry Wesley | not filed | |||
| Constable Pct 2 | ||||
| Chris Diaz | $20,475 | $44,406 | $21,143 | $0 |
| Lt Jerry Garcia | $4,905 | $5,495 | $17,849 | $0 |
| George Goffney | not filed | |||
| Alberto Rivera | $2,632 | $1,042 | $3,203 | $500 |
| Jerry Garcia | Withdrew | |||
| Constable Pct 3 | ||||
| Sherman Eagleton | $62,995 | $71,703 | $60,658 | $82,550 |
| Deborah Florus | Not filed | |||
| Ken Jones | ||||
| Michel Pappillion* | ||||
| John Portillo | ||||
| Eric Reed | ||||
| Constable Pct 4 | ||||
| Jeff McGowen | not filed | |||
| Constable Pct 5 | ||||
| Ted Heap | ||||
| Mark Harrison | $3,500 | $0 | $3,612 | $14,178 |
| Mark Miller | ||||
| Randy Newman | ||||
| Constable Pct 5 | ||||
| Silvia Trevino | ||||
| Joseph Guerra | ||||
| Constable Pct 7 | ||||
| May Walker |
