Who Really Runs Texas?
Share on Reddit
The seven major donors who spend the most on, and get the most from, Texas politics.
by Dave Mann Published on Tuesday, October 2, 2012, at 5:19 CST
ILLUSTRATION BY GREG HOUSTON
IT’S HARD TO OVERSTATE THE POWER OF MONEY in Texas politics. If you’re wealthy, the state offers numerous ways to buy influence and implement policy.
Texas has no limits on campaign contributions. Unrestrained spending—in a state with extremely low voter turnout—means very rich people can donate a lot of money to influence a few voters and swing a state election. But that’s just the beginning. Rich individuals and corporations can spend unlimited cash on lobbyists, too, and use the legislative session to fete state lawmakers—who earn a measly $7,200 a year—with food, drinks and gifts. They can contribute to the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think tank with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry, that’s largely funded by the corporate interests that benefit from the free-market policies it advocates. And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, wealthy individuals and corporations can now fund third-party groups that influence elections without ever disclosing their donors.
Behind the scenes of many Texas political debates, there’s a wealthy individual or company feeding huge amounts of money into the system. When they get their way, as they often do, the policy they’ve purchased impacts people’s lives.
Who are these donors? We’ve compiled a list of the seven individuals and companies that spend the most and get the most in Texas politics. During the first 18 months of the 2012 election cycle—from January 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012—these seven donors have contributed a combined $10.3 million to state candidates, according to an analysis by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. There are many other powerful people in Texas, including elected officials, lobbyists and advocates. But these seven mega-donors essentially run the state. In Texas politics, money rules.
TIM DUNN
TIM DUNN IS OUT TO PURIFY the Republican Party, and he’s bankrolling the tea party group Empower Texans to do it. Fronted by provocative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan, the group pushes for extremely limited government and has tried to defeat any Republican who strays from its orthodoxy.
Sullivan may be the face of Empower Texans, but it’s Dunn’s money that makes the operation go. The 57-year-old Midland oilman is chair of the organization’s board and provided nearly $400,000 to the Empower Texans PAC since 2007—more than 40 percent of its total contributions, according to Texans for Public Justice. After tea party victories in 2010, Empower Texans gained new prominence. Pressure from Sullivan (and the threat of Dunn’s money) helped push the Texas Legislature significantly rightward in 2011, contributing to deep budget cuts, especially for public schools, while the $9 billion Rainy Day Fund was left mostly unspent.
The unprecedented education cuts didn’t bother Empower Texans. Dunn is no fan of public ed. A devout Christian, he founded Midland Classical Academy, which, according to the school’s website, offers students an “academic foundation from a Biblical worldview.” If Dunn has his way, many Texas kids will soon use publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools.
To make that happen, Empower Texans and Dunn took aim in 2012 at House Republicans who support public schools or who support House Speaker Joe Straus. Dunn contributed $40,000 toward defeating Straus in the May Republican primary. The speaker retained his seat, but five House committee chairs lost their primaries, thanks largely to Dunn’s efforts. Dunn’s crusade against the speaker—and against public schools—will surely continue.
BOB PERRY
IT’S BEEN A QUIET FEW YEARS for Bob Perry, relatively speaking.
The reclusive owner of Houston-based Perry Homes has been the most prolific and controversial GOP donor in Texas, if not the nation, donating millions every campaign cycle. He famously helped fund the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004. He prodded Rick Perry (no relation) and the Legislature to create a state agency in 2003 just for him. OK, not just for him. Other homebuilders benefited, too. But it was Bob Perry’s attorney who wrote the law that created the Texas Residential Construction Commission. The agency was nominally supposed to regulate the building industry and protect homeowners, but it did nothing of the sort. Instead, it favored builders in arbitration disputes with consumers. Eventually the Legislature heard enough consumer complaints and did away with it.
Though he lost his friendly state agency, Bob Perry kept on writing checks, continuing to support the powerful Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a major backer of tort reform. It’s become increasingly difficult for consumers with faulty homes to sue or win claims against homebuilders.
Perry has largely avoided political controversies in recent years, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less influential. In the first 18 months of the 2012 election cycle, Bob Perry contributed more than $4.8 million to Texas candidates.
AT&T
THE PERTINENT QUESTION isn’t who AT&T gives money to, but rather who doesn’t AT&T give money to?
The Dallas-based telecom giant is ubiquitous in Texas politics. Campaign contributions? Check. More than $1.1 million donated to state candidates for the 2012 election through June 30. High-powered lobbyists? For sure. The company spends nearly $10 million a year to employ more than 80 registered lobbyists, including annual contracts ranging from $50,000 to $150,000 for high-powered lobbyists and former lawmakers like Mike Toomey, Buddy Jones, Dianne Delisi and Eddie Cavazos and Tracy King. Corporate sponsorships? Of course. The AT&T logo, and the corporate money that comes with it, backs numerous policy conferences and banquets, both parties’ state conventions, and the recent Texas Tribune Festival. The company also donates money to lawmakers’ favorite charities. As The Dallas Morning News reported, AT&T even bought 700 copies of Rick Perry’s book Fed Up! to give to attendees at a 2010 Washington luncheon.
Still, we don’t know exactly how much money AT&T spends to influence public policy in Texas, since the company also donates corporate money to nonprofits, think tanks and third-party groups that don’t have to disclose their donors. For instance, the Observer has learned that AT&T donated $76,500 to the TPPF in 2010.
What we do know is that in the tangled world of telecom policy, AT&T nearly always gets its way. Think about that next time you look at your phone bill.
WILLIAMS BROTHERS CONSTRUCTION
THOUSANDS OF YEARS from now, what will endure of Rick Perry’s reign as governor? When the remnants of refineries have rusted to dust, and the radiation from West Texas’s buried waste begins to subside, our monstrous highway network—beguiling shamrocks high above the plains, impossibly straight causeways across the swamps—may be our most enduring achievement.
When that day comes, we can thank Williams Brothers Construction for the monuments. The Houston-based firm is Texas’ biggest recipient of highway contracts, earning just under a quarter billion dollars in 2012. The company built Baytown’s Fred Hartman Bridge, the overpass-rich U.S. 59 Gateway in Houston, and big pieces of the President George Bush Turnpike around Fort Worth.
So who are the Williams Brothers? Look past brothers J.K. and C.K. Williams, each of whom has sold his share of the company they founded in 1955 to third partner James Douglass Pitcock. Today, 84-year-old Doug Pitcock is the sole shareholder in Texas’ biggest road-building enterprise, and he rewards his allies.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett is a particularly close friend, and the recipient of more than $100,000 in campaign money from Pitcock. In 2010, the Houston Chronicle reported that Williams Brothers had been awarded more than $182 million in toll-road contracts from Harris County during Emmett’s three years in office.
Pitcock keeps a low profile, but he has good friends in Austin, too. In 2007, he loaned his private jet to Gov. Perry for a trip to Israel that prompted the formation of the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce. As of 2010, he’d given $400,000 to Perry’s campaigns, and Pitcock was the second-biggest benefactor of the Super PAC Americans for Rick Perry during the governor’s doomed presidential run.
