Hou Chronicle Frontpage: "Wealthy few aided GOP's sweep"

The money in Texas and national politics is disgusting. Anyone wonder why: if they hurt themselves in TX at work it is tough luck ,if you're fired after years of service in TX it is tough luck or you file a legitimate insurance claim or two in TX they drop you? Hey, anyone have any problems getting justice in a ripoff with contractors like Perry Homes, where ol Bob Perry himself gave a leading $3.8 million to the GOP

Well here it is.

Please note that 48 families carried the day for the GOP in TX. with their $34 million. Also note that 5 law firms donated 2.8 million or 7% of the 41 million spent by the Demos.
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Dec. 22, 2002, 9:27AM

Wealthy few helped GOP's state sweep
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN -- Just 48 wealthy Texas families paid more than half the cost of the key campaigns that convinced 2.6 million voters to solidify the Republican hold on state government in last month's elections.

A Houston Chronicle study of campaign records found these wealthy few donated $34 million of the $64 million used to finance top Republican state campaigns.

The donors are an elite group including oil and gas producers, petrochemical industrialists, telecommunications executives and developers.

The top GOP donor, Houston homebuilder Bob Perry, said he and others who contribute the most to campaigns form just one cog in the machinery of politics and government.

"It is my view that government is not owned by anyone, least of all wealthy contributors," Perry told the Chronicle. "The direction of government taken by either Republicans or Democrats invariably reflects public opinion, which always includes the `average voters.' "

The contributions of wealthy donors are "just another voice in the cacophony of public debate," said Perry, who donated $3.8 million to Republican funds.

Suzy Woodford, executive director of Common Cause Texas, sees it differently. "We've now got a government by and for the wealthy few," said Woodford, whose group favors limits on campaign contributions.

"When we have every branch of Texas state government controlled by these wealthy few, then the interests of the average Texan are going to be lost."

Perry and many of the top Republican donors have histories of supporting efforts to limit consumer and personal-injury lawsuits or to promote school vouchers, which use tax money for private-school tuition.

Some in the past have promoted legislation that would help their businesses or keep their investments from being taxed.

And because they donated to multiple campaigns -- ranging from Rick Perry's election as governor to the committee that orchestrated the election of a GOP majority in the state House for the first time in 130 years -- they now have influence at every point of power in state government.

Bob Perry, no relation to the governor, said the donations do not translate to undue influence on state government.

"The most significant voice always has been and always will be the ballot that is cast at election time," he said.

But the donors' influence may be heavier in a year such as this, when only 36 percent of the registered voters cast ballots.

Wayne Hamilton, executive director of the Texas Republican Party, said a fundamental principle of American democracy protects campaign donations: the right of free speech.

"I find nothing at all wrong with political activity financed by people, whether it's small contributions or large. To me that's them exercising their First Amendment right," he said.

And while Republican funds may be concentrated among wealthy families, Hamilton noted that significant money for Democrats comes from plaintiffs' lawyers, particularly the five firms that are sharing billions in fees for handling the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

"Obviously the Democrats are bought and paid for by five individuals or five law firms -- the tobacco five cartel," Hamilton said.

Those five firms -- which earned $3.3 billion in fees for negotiating a $17.3 billion settlement of the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry in 1998 -- donated at least $2.8 million this year, almost exclusively to Democratic political committees.

While not an insubstantial investment, the donations represented just 7 percent of the more than $41 million the Democrats spent on nongubernatorial state politics this year. Other trial lawyers donated at least $1.7 million more to Democratic losing causes. The number could be higher because some donors were not identified by profession.

And Democrat Tony Sanchez put almost as much of his own money into his losing campaign for governor -- $59 million -- as all Republican donors, large and small, spent to elect their entire ticket.

This year's major successful self-financed candidate was Lt. Gov.-elect David Dewhurst, a Republican who gave $10.6 million to his own campaign and borrowed another $13 million to pour into it. Money Dewhurst has raised after the election is being used to pay off debt and reduce his personal liability.

The Chronicle study of campaign finance records filed with the Texas Ethics Commission focused on Republican donations because they benefited the officeholders who will lead Texas for the next four years.

The study examined donations to the campaigns of Gov. Perry; Dewhurst; Attorney General Greg Abbott; Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander; Texans for a Republican Majority, which promoted the GOP takeover of the state House; Texans for Lawsuit Reform; the Associated Republicans of Texas; the Republican Party of Texas; and state Rep. Tom Craddick's apparently successful effort to ensure that fellow House members will elect him speaker when the Legislature convenes next month.

When top donors to those efforts were identified, the Chronicle searched the donors' records for their total state contributions during this election cycle. This methodology would have missed contributions made by smaller donors to the campaigns for land commissioner, railroad commissioner, agriculture commissioner, the state's high courts, and any donations directly to legislative candidates or nonpartisan political committees.

No. 2 behind Bob Perry was San Antonio businessman James Leininger, a Christian conservative philanthropist and advocate of private-school vouchers who donated $1.2 million to Republican causes.

Other donors who gave more than $400,000 are real estate and oil investor Albert Huddleston of Dallas; poultry producer Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim of Pittsburg; petrochemical investor William McMinn of Houston; telecommunications executive Kenny Troutt of Dallas; developers Trammell and Harlan Crow of Dallas; and Houston Texans owner Bob McNair.

Others on the list of 48 top givers contributed at least $100,000 each.

The contributions examined by the Chronicle may not represent all the money donated because the reports went through only Oct. 26. A final accounting is not due until Jan. 15. The calculations also do not include donations to federal candidates or to national party accounts.

Pilgrim, for instance, donated $450,000 to national Republican committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which compiles campaign finance data.

On the Democratic side, Houston trial lawyer John O'Quinn gave $1 million to the Democratic National Committee, in addition to the $585,000 he donated to state campaigns.

Houston is home to two of the state's top five GOP donors -- homebuilder Perry and McMinn, who donated a total of $618,000. Houstonians gave a total of $11.9 million in large and small donations to state Republican campaigns this year. Dallas was the second-largest source of funding -- $6.3 million.

"If you're interested in good government, you need to get involved. You either get involved with your time or your money," said McNair. "If you don't have the time, then basically you have to provide money to an organization so they can go out and buy somebody else's time so they can do the campaign work or pay for the advertising."

He said the way to improve the campaign finance system is to require greater transparency and timely reporting of who donates to political funds.

"That's the answer, because you smoke everybody out and you know who is putting the money up," he said. "If I'm in the construction business and there's construction legislation up there, then it's clear."

Huddleston's aides call him "a different kind of Republican," an oilman who also is an environmentalist with a passion for protecting Caddo Lake, on the state's northeastern border.

"I don't even own a lake house there. I don't own property there. It's a treasure that needs to be protected," Huddleston told the Chronicle in a phone call from Vietnam, where he was on business.

A resident of Highland Park, a Dallas enclave that is home to the state's wealthiest school district, Huddleston wants to get rid of the "Robin Hood" school finance system that takes money from rich districts and gives to poor ones. But he also is willing to propose the usually unthinkable in Texas politics -- a flat state income tax to pay for schools.

"Ultimately, no one can argue with educating every child in the state of Texas," Huddleston said. "My goal is not to do it well in the short term but to put something into play in the long term that does the job."

Pilgrim said he donates because "the Lord's been good to me" through the free enterprise system, and he wants to help politicians who support free enterprise as he sees it. That means, among other things, support for lower taxes and less regulation, and opposition to unions and personal-injury lawyers.

He said large donors probably have extra influence with politicians, and he defended the relationship.

"I don't think the average citizen puts the study, the man-hours into what's good for everybody," Pilgrim said. "Maybe the larger donors may have more influence, but it's not necessarily influence for the wrong thing."

The showcase race for Republicans this year was Gov. Perry's election to the office he inherited from George W. Bush in 2000.

The governor's top donor was Troutt, followed closely by brothers Charles and Sam Wyly, Dallas investors; Pilgrim; and Houston's Bob Perry.

Other top donors to Gov. Perry include heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune John Walton of Bentonville, Ark., and his sister, Alice Walton of Mineral Wells. They support private-school vouchers.

In the lieutenant governor's race, Dewhurst was his own top donor, ahead of Bob Perry, Troutt, Huddleston, Leininger and McMinn, who donated a combined $395,000 to Dewhurst's campaign.

On the House side of the Capitol, Bob Perry was the single largest donor to the political committee that helped coordinate the GOP takeover of the House. Perry gave $165,000 to Texans for a Republican Majority.

The second-largest donor to Texans for a Republican Majority was the Farmers Insurance employees committee, which gave $150,000.

Farmers' threats to pull out of the Texas homeowners insurance market have led Gov. Perry to say he will declare insurance reform an emergency legislative issue in January.

Attorney General Abbott's largest single benefactor was Houston's Perry, who gave $537,500 to Abbott's campaign against Democratic trial lawyer Kirk Watson.

Coming in second for Abbott was Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which delivered $350,000.

Pilgrim and his family gave Abbott more than $81,000.

Pilgrim created a stir a decade ago by handing out $10,000 checks to nine lawmakers on the Texas Senate floor during a debate on workers' compensation insurance reform. The legislation would have a major financial impact on his company, Pilgrim's Pride Corp.

Pilgrim now says that money was not donated for the good of his company but for the good of all Texas workers whose jobs might have moved out of state if the workers' compensation system had not been overhauled.

"I'm a large contributor, but I have 24,500 employees," Pilgrim said. "I'm contributing for them. I know they are not able to contribute, some of them.

"It's my responsibility to support the right candidates for the right reasons. It's not selfish. It's interpreted that way by the individual who doesn't have or can't have the same input."