AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The latest release of campaign finance reports show the potential impact of donations on races across the state. Spending in the race for U.S. Senate is breaking records set in 2018, and both Democrats and Republicans are looking to flip seats in the Texas state House in November.
Democratic candidate for Senate Colin Allred raised over $30 million in the third Federal Election Commission quarter, outpacing incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by over $9 million.
From July 1 to Sept. 30, Cruz raised over $21 million, compared to Allred’s $30.3 million, according to their campaigns.
Campaign finance reports also show large amounts of fundraising tied to certain state house districts. Republicans already hold 86 of the 150 seats in the Texas House, and the party is pushing to make further gains.
Republicans see potential to flip House District 74, which runs from Eagle Pass west to El Paso, Texas Tribune politics reporter Jasper Scherer said. Democrat Eddie Morales, Jr. currently holds that seat. It was once considered a stronghold for Democrats. But Scherer noted that Republicans had a stronger showing in the district in 2020.
“It looks like Greg Abbott, some of the Republicans, see a chance to go after his seat,” Scherer said.
Democrats are also looking to gain ground, with an eye on Republicans in districts that tilted toward Beto O’Rourke in the 2022 race for governor and for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Scherer noted that some of the races being targeted are in South Texas, with a few in San Antonio and Dallas.
Democrats are targeting Republicans Morgan Meyer and Angie Chen Button are the only Republicans in the state House left in Dallas County, and Democrats are targeting their seats, Scherer said.
“An even more favorable option for them is State Rep. John Lujan in San Antonio,” Scherer said. “Kristian Carranza, who’s a Democratic organizer, political operative, she’s running against John Lujan, and has been raising competitive sums of money.”
Nationally, Democrats are looking to maintain control of the Senate. They currently have a narrow majority with 51 seats, including independents who caucus with the Democrats. Republicans have 49 seats.
With Independent West Virginian Sen. Joe Manchin retiring and experts saying his seat will likely go to Republicans in November, Democrats will need to flip at least one seat to maintain control of the Senate.
This comes as recent polls show the race in Texas is becoming more competitive. A poll released Thursday by The New York Times and Siena College shows Cruz four points ahead of Allred, within the margin of error.
Allred’s campaign has raised over $68 million since April 2023, he announced his run for Senate in early May 2023, and Cruz has raised over $47 million since January last year.
In addition to money being raised by the campaigns themselves, there are also Political Action Committees spending to support or oppose these candidates. According to the Federal Election Commission, since January 2023, there have been 19 PACs spending money on this race.
There are 10 PACs spending money to support Cruz and two to oppose him, according to FEC data. The highest spending on both candidates comes from the Truth and Courage PAC which is spending in support of Cruz and to oppose Allred.
The PAC, which is trying to ensure Cruz’s reelection, raised over $8 million between January 2023 and August 2024. They have spent about half of that through the end of August 2024, according to the FEC. The PAC has run ads to support Cruz in the race.
The Truth and Courage PAC notes on their site that Cruz was outspent by 2018 Democratic challenger O’Rourke. They are aiming to close this fundraising gap.
Since January 2023, Truth and Courage has spent over $840 thousand to support Cruz and over $530 thousand to oppose Allred. It is one of four PACs reporting spending to oppose Allred to the FEC.
Allred has seven PACs spending to support him. The greatest support since January 2023 comes from the End Citizens United PAC, according to FEC data.
End Citizens United wants to take money out of politics and protect the right to vote. The PAC has spent about $53 thousand since January 2023 to support Allred. Allred’s campaign announced in a February release that the End Citizens United // Let America Vote Action Fund had given him an A+ rating on their legislative scorecard. The PAC endorsed Allred for Senate in June 2023.
In 2017 and 2018, when O’Rourke was attempting to unseat Cruz, he raised over $80 million. O’Rourke received 48% of the vote in the 2018 election. Cruz raised more than $35 million in the same two-year period. Despite being outspent, Cruz won the election with 51% of the vote.
Texas auto dealers raise concern about new paper tag law
More than a year after Texas lawmakers passed a bill phasing out paper license plates — amid widespread and rampant nationwide fraud — a trade association representing more than 1,200 franchised car dealerships is raising new concerns to lawmakers.
Now, some law enforcement fear industry groups are trying to chip away at the law before it even takes effect.
“I would encourage you to look at these issues as to whether we’ve gone forward and not backwards,” Texas Automobile Dealers Association Executive Vice President Karen Phillips said at a House Transportation Committee hearing on Thursday.
The TADA is urging lawmakers to take another “look at” House Bill 718, which unanimously passed in 2023 and is set to take effect July 1, 2025. The new law will replace temporary paper tags with metal ones. Phillips’ objection: metal license plates can also be counterfeited.
“Of course, going to a metal tag, our concern is that we’re just switching from a fraudulent temp tag to a fraudulent metal tag,” she said.
Phillips told lawmakers that “with the cancelation of temporary tags,” fraudulent metal ones will become “ubiquitous.”
Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, the committee chair, called her remarks “spot on.”
“We’re always trying to keep up with the criminals,” Canales said. “They always find a better way. And, so, I don’t know that a metal tag is any better.”
Sgt. Jose Escribano, with the Travis County Constable’s Office Pct. 3, also testified. He said he left the hearing feeling “nervous” about what will happen with HB 718 and added TADA’s concerns are “new” to him.
“Well, where were you a year-and-a-half ago?” he asked.
Canales asked Escribano and Phillips to meet and find a solution to the counterfeiting concern that can be brought back to the committee.
Escribano has investigated paper tag fraud across the state for years. He is considered a leading expert and said metal tag fraud isn’t new, but is easier to detect than paper plate fraud. That’s because paper tags can be registered to anyone at any address, turning getaway vehicles into “ghost cars.”
“A paper tag is a very, very, different animal altogether,” Escribano said. “It’s a piece of paper. A metal tag, you have to go a little bit further to get that metal tag, and it’s pretty easy to detect. We just simply run it.”
Bogus paper tags have been used in crimes ranging from human smuggling to armed robberies, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Phillips said she had “concerns” over whether the new law will solve Texas’ tag fraud epidemic. She declined KXAN’s request for an interview after the hearing, despite telling lawmakers she was “very concerned that we have not increased the awareness of the public.”
“You have a bill that just passed, and now, you’re going to go up and propose that we keep paper tags because of something that you just discovered?,” Escribano asked. “This is not recent. We could have had this conversation a long time ago.”
KXAN asked if he felt this was a “Hail Mary” attempt to try to undo the law.
“It appears that way, yes, absolutely,” said Escribano. “It looks like a ‘Hail Mary’ to me because why would you bring that up now and not back then? That’s concerning to me.”
The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is finishing up a final rule to implement the law. It will be presented to the board this month, TxDMV Deputy Executive Director Roland Luna Sr. told lawmakers. The next board meeting is Oct. 24.
The TxDMV is currently:
- Working with a third-party vendor to distribute metal plates to the 22,000 dealers in the state.
- Leveraging technology with a new inventory management system that will allow car dealers to receive, track and know what’s in their inventory. It will also allow the TxDMV to make sure dealers are compliant.
- Working with DPS to make sure the new plates are secure with hidden “indicators” known to law enforcement to prevent counterfeiting.
- Putting together online training seminars.
The agency is working with dealers to ensure the transition to metal plates is “a seamless process” that is not “an impediment to business and commerce in Texas,” Luna said.
As part of the 2024-2025 budget, the legislature allocated $35 million to the TxDMV to implement and enforce HB 718.
Ken Paxton’s evasive relationship with the media
506 days ago, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton held a press conference — one of just two he has called in the last year and a half. It was a blockbuster political news event, both because it was meant to preempt his historic impeachment, and because in recent years he has made himself available to journalists almost as rarely as the Texas House has impeached statewide officials.
He took no questions.
During that long drought of public access to the state’s top attorney, KXAN has submitted dozens of press inquiries to Paxton’s office. They have not responded to one since September 2023. It marks an era of evasion in which Paxton has ignored inquiries and avoided accountability from the press.
“Democracy runs on information,” the Texas Press Association’s Donnis Baggett told Nexstar. “The flow of that information — two ways — is essential. But increasingly in this country… (officials) may control the message and their exposure to questioning about that message. That’s not a healthy relationship. That’s a one-way street.”
The OAG’s website shows Paxton’s communications staff has published over 200 press releases since October 2023. Each one includes a media contact email that has proven to be a one-way line of communication.
Email data Nexstar obtained through the Texas Public Information Act suggests Paxton’s press team has an extraordinarily low response rate to journalists’ inquiries.
From March to September, the Attorney General’s Office received 2,722 emails to their “communications@oag.texas.gov” email account — the main press contact and the only means of contacting their press office that they provide publicly. In the same timeframe, that account sent eight emails — a sent/received ratio of 0.003%.
Individual press staffers also show a low response rate. Communications Director Paige Willey received 3,470 emails in the same period. She sent 907 emails, suggesting a press response rate of less than 26%. Lead press secretary Jonathan Richie sent just 197 emails for the 2,112 he received, suggesting a response rate of less than 9%.
The numbers suggest an evasive relationship with the press experienced anecdotally in newsrooms across Texas — the attorney general has expressed little interest in speaking with the traditional press, and by extension, with the constituents for whom he works.
In just the last few months, Paxton has sued Dallas, Austin, Bexar County, Harris County, Travis County, and migrant charities in Houston and El Paso — just to name a few of the lawsuits in which Texas taxpayers are paying the legal bills for both sides.
“Every tax dollar should be transparent,” Texas Association of Broadcasters Vice President Michael Schneider said. “If we’re making this decision — the extraordinary decision — to use tax dollars to sue a local government agency in Texas, then we should know what’s going on, what’s the reasoning behind the suit, how much money is being spent on the suit.”
The Attorney General’s Office also spends more than most government offices on their communications team. Communications Director Paige Willey gets paid more than $213,000 a year — that’s more than the White House Press Secretary, more than Ken Paxton, and more than most of the assistant attorneys general on his staff. Lead Press Secretary Jonathan Richie makes another $90,000. Yet, their interactions with the press are scant.
“We should be able to find out how our money’s being spent. We should be able to find out what is the reasoning behind policy that’s enacted,” Schneider said. “We need to be careful about the people we’re electing because we need to make sure that they’re going to be accountable and responsive to the public.”
Paxton’s defense attorney shed some light on the attorney general’s relationship with the press.
“Let me share with you my exposure to that over the last decade of knowing him and representing him. I want you to imagine that every time you open the newspaper or open your phone or open a website, everything associated with your name for ten years is, ‘Ken Paxton under indictment for securities fraud,'” attorney Mitch Little said. Little defended Paxton against securities fraud charges and impeachment before winning the Republican nomination for Texas House District 65.
“The ten-year framing that Ken Paxton has received, regardless of the accomplishments of his office, is that he’s under indictment for securities fraud,” Little said. “I think he has a much deeper level of exposure than I do to the media and the way that this is framed on behalf of and to advance the Democrat agenda. I think it’s just true, and certainly you see it on a national level that the media is captured for the Democrats, and Republicans are tired of it and some of them have said, ‘look, I’m not talking to you anymore.'”
Longtime journalists like Baggett agree that the press is partially responsible for improving its relationship with elected officials.
“The press owes it to the public first, and to the people in government second, and to themselves, to go the extra mile in trying to be as fair and balanced and equal — in all capital letters, bold face — as it is humanly possible to be,” Baggett said. “I don’t think that happens all the time, to be quite frank about it, and every time there’s an egregious example of that it puts people deeper in the trenches. It makes them more defensive, more suspicious, and thereby hurts the effort to heal the wounds that this country is suffering right now, largely based on the lack of trust.”
Nexstar contacted Paxton’s office last Tuesday for comment on this story, seeking to better understand how his press team decides when and whether to respond to press inquiries, and whether they maintain a journalist “blacklist,” as his former employees have testified under oath in his impeachment trial.
Nexstar did not receive a response.
Texas lawmaker wants ‘clean water’ right added to state constitution
Texas lawmakers are joining the push to add a new “green amendment” to the state constitution. The movement aims to protect people’s rights to “clean air, clean water, healthy soil, fauna, etc…” said State Representative Vikki Goodwin (D).
On October 17, Rep. Goodwin is hosting a town hall that will discuss the Green Amendment and why it should be added to the Texas Constitution.
“It’s actually a very short amendment,” Rep. Goodwin said. She introduced the amendment during the last legislative session in 2023. The joint resolution did not receive a hearing.
Rep. Goodwin said she’s planning to bring the amendment up again in the next legislative session that starts in January.
“I’ve had a little bit more time to let people know what it is we’re trying to accomplish with it, and we’ve gotten some groups that are getting behind it,” Rep. Goodwin said.
The Green Amendment For The Generation movement was founded by Maya van Rossum. It aims to add an amendment to every state’s bill of rights that adds protections to the planet and environment.
“Because of that bill of rights placement and the careful choice of language, it lifts up environmental rights,” van Rossum said.
The language for these amendments is pretty simple. Here is what the first proposed Texas Amendment said:
Sec. 36. (a) The public, individually and collectively, has the right to a clean and healthy environment, including clean water, clean air, healthy soil, and diverse and abundant native
flora and fauna, and to the preservation of the natural, cultural, scenic, recreational, and healthful qualities of the environment.The right to a clean and healthy environment is inherent, inalienable, indefeasible, and equal with other protected inalienable rights of liberty reserved to the public. The state shall equitably protect this right for the public and may not take any action to infringe on this right.
(b) The public natural resources of this state are the common property of all persons, including future generations. The state, including the legislative, judicial, and executive branches
and each state agency and political subdivision, shall conserve, protect, and maintain the state’s public natural resources for the benefit of the public, including future generations.H.J.R. No. 119
“They’re all just plain clear statements about these environmental essentials of life, and that they need to be recognized and protected at that constitutional level,” van Rossum said.
Currently, three states have a green amendment in their state constitution: New York, Montana and Pennsylvania.
Eighteen other states, according to van Rossum, have taken steps to add the amendment.
“It would be great if Texas was on the leading edge of this environmental movement, but it may take some time,” Rep. Goodwin said.
According to Rep. Goodwin, the amendment gives Texans extra bite when protecting the land and provides additional avenues for legal action if someone damages a waterway or your air quality.
“If the state agency isn’t penalizing a company for polluting a waterway. For example, an individual could say, well, you’re going against my constitutional right to a clean river,” Rep. Goodwin said.
Maya van Rossum started the movement after she used the Green Amendment in Pennsylvania to win a lawsuit in Delaware.
“We thought, wow, we have this really important amendment, and we used it in our legal arguments, seven municipalities, seven local government, governmental entities, joined us in that legal action, and we were successful,” van Rossum said.
van Rossum said that they’ve focused on state constitutions because they are easier to amend than the national one. “State constitutions are amended all the time with great regularity, and states have a lot of authority when it comes to the environment and environmental protection.”
After almost every legislative session, Texas voters are asked to decide on new amendments.
First, the legislature needs to pass a joint resolution. This requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers. This means at least 100 members in the Texas House and 21 in the Texas Senate.
Then a majority of Texas voters must approve the amendment in an election.
In last year’s constitutional amendment election, votes passed thirteen propositions. That included a proposition to lower property tax.
Voters also approved an amendment to provide retired teachers with cost-of-living increases, as well as measures to create funds investing in broadband, water infrastructure and state parks.
A measure to raise the mandatory retirement age for judges failed to pass.
In all, voters passed 13 out of the 14 proposed amendments, which is usually what happens in Texas. Since 1876, lawmakers have put 711 proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. The voters passed 530 of them, nearly 75%.