The Texas Observer

The campaign finance reports for Texas candidates are rolling in today. There’s some bad news for Republicans, at least in the races we’ve looked at so far. Here’s our snap analysis (for background on the races, go here):

House District 52, Diana Maldonado-Bryan Daniel

Democrat Diana Maldonado, who’s running for an open seat in Republican-leaning Williamson County, is absolutely killing her opponent Bryan Daniel. The “kid bloggers” at the Burnt Orange Report are psyched. Between July and October, she pulled in a little over $227,000. Daniel raised only about $85,000. But here’s the really interesting part: Maldonado has about $278,000 left in the bank; Daniel has a paltry $19,000.

Where’s Tom Craddick? Where are the fat-cat donors and Big Business PACs?

Daniel’s only sizable donations come from Bob Perry, the check-writing homebuilder and swift boater, and Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the corporate-backed organization that pushes tort reform. Perry and his wife gave Daniel $30,000 while TLR chipped in about $17,000. Daniel is also getting some money from ag interests (he is an agricultural insurance executive) but overall his fundraising is weak. Not a good sign for him.

Maldonado has twice as many donors, and some big checks. Annie’s List, a PAC that supports women candidates, has spent more than $31,000 on Maldonado. Blue Texas PAC, $50,000. Oh, and here’s a sign that Maldonado has reach beyond her district: Don Henley - yes, that Don Henley - gave her $15,000. Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Waking Life) offered up $500.

House District 32, Juan Garcia-Todd Hunter

This is probably the most-watched, most expensive House race in the state. Freshman Democrat Garcia faces a tough re-election challenge from Democrat-turned-lobbyist-turned-Republican Todd Hunter. At least on the money front, Garcia is starting to pull away from Hunter. Between July and October, Garcia hauled in almost $354,000 while Hunter took in about $187,00. If you take Bob Perry out of the equation — he gave $80,000 — Hunter had a pretty bad run of it. The key figure, though, is this: Garcia spent more than $554,000 to Hunter’s $173,000.

For a lobbyist, Hunter hasn’t done a great job of calling on his friends it seems. There’s a smattering of uranium mining, banking, and oil donations in the report, but not a whole lot of four- and five-figure sums. After all, Hunter has been sticking his neck out defending their profession.

Garcia, on the other hand, is benefiting from the largess of some very generous PACs: Parent PAC ($75,000); Texas 2020 PAC ($60,000); Vote Texas PAC ($10,434); Blue Texas PAC ($50,000); and Border Health PAC ($5,000). Garcia campaign manager Christian Archer said another big fundraiser is planned at the home of grocery magnate Charles Butt (of the HEB stores) on October 15th.

Presumably, this is a race that Craddick and the boys would like to win. Unseating Garcia would give them a net two seat gain in the House. Archer says the other side has been strangely low-key. “We’ve been prepared for a gunfight,” he said. “We showed up with a howitzer ready to go but we haven’t seen much coming back yet.”

Maybe the calvalry is on its way.

House District 85, Isaac Castro-Joe Heflin

The Republican candidate in 2006 raised $800,000 (three times more than Joe Heflin) but still got beat in what should be a GOP district. So far it looks like the big money is shying away from Castro. He raised just $34,000 between July and October, and 60 percent of that amount came from Texans for Lawsuit Reform. (You can understand why TLR would have a crush on Castro — he’s calling for an end to “frivolous lawsuits,” including the two pending against him.) Heflin raised about $66,000 and three times as much money on hand as Castro. Again, not a good scenario for the Republican 30 days from the election.

House District 144, Joel Redmond-Ken Legler

File this one in the possible sleeper department. The district, vacated by Republican Robert Talton who ran unsuccessfully for Congress, is 58 percent Republican, according to Dana Chiodo’s Texas Candidates. That makes for a steep climb, but Democrat Joel Redmond, who comes from a prominent family of Baptist preachers, is besting Legler on the finance front. Redmond reports raising $137,000 with $90,000 still in the bank. Legler took in only $45,000 and has $14,000 on hand.This is the second reporting cycle in which Redmond has done far better than his opponent. In May, Redmond said he expected to be outspent 2-1.

One final thought: where’s the good doctor,  James Leininger, the right-wing multimillionaire who would finance a ferret if it supported private school vouchers? He was active in the primaries but seems to be AWOL so far in the general. Could Leininger be sitting this “change” election out? A Leininger spokesman told the Lubbock paper that he would “be more modest this cycle.”

Of course, there’s still time for large last-minute contributions to make a difference. And in recent elections, major donors have funneled money into PACs with generic sounding names — like the Texas Opportunity PAC — that dropped last-minute attack ads in key districts. Stay tuned.

by Forrest Wilder

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Craddick, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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