Who Owes An Oligarch?
I’ve detailed the oligarchs buying Texas over the past week, capturing what they gave from 1/1/23 to 12/31/24, but we really need to pull it all together and understand just how bad it is. I’m going to lay out the total accepted by Republicans and Democrats from those top 14 individual donors in the state of Texas. I want you to see it. To me, it explains exactly why we are where we are.
Let’s follow the money.
I’m just going to open with a whole series of screenshots, with the total amounts collected, in order from most to least. If someone isn’t on this list, they didn’t take oligarch money. Or, they took less than $5k. I am focused ONLY on the candidates, as oligarch money many times flows through a PAC and then to a candidate, so I’m trying to capture the end game. And Abbott, Greg (The Honorable) has had the massive Jeff Yass contribution pulled out and allocated to the various people Abbott spent it all on.
This is everyone who took $1 million or more.
Here is everyone from $600k to almost $1 million
Here is everyone who received from $300k to almost $600k.
PLEASE NOTE: Keep in mind this isn’t everything a candidate took in. Just what came from one of the 14 top individual donors in the 2024 Election cycle.
Here is everyone who received from $150k to almost $300k. Of note, not a single Democrat so far (but that will change).
Here is everyone who received from $80k to almost $150k.
Here is everyone who received from $60k to almost $80k.
Here is everyone who received from $40k to almost $60k.
Here is everyone who received from $30k to almost $40k.
Here is everyone who received from $20k to almost $30k.
And lastly, here is everyone who received from $10k to almost $20k.
218 candidates and office holders detailed above. The dollars that flowed into candidates comes to just over $77 million dollars. What was the breakdown between the blue team and the red team?
$75 million to Republicans. $1.8 million to Democrats.
Some people might look at the list above and think I’m unfairly going after Democrats, as “obviously the problem is with Republicans”. Nope. You can’t say money in politics is a problem and then decide that your oligarchs and the money they give is AOK. I will fully acknowledge the system is broken, and it will take a lot of work to change it, as those in power FULLY embrace the current model.
Do you want to see the breakdowns of where the dollars came from per candidate? Here are a few examples and then I’ll give you the link to go crazy.
Greg Abbott
And Texans for Greg Abbott
John McQueeney
Marc Lahood
And for grins, you can see the same thing with the PACs. They are there in the drop down choices as well.
Here is Texans for Lawsuit Reform
and Texans United for a Conservative Majority
Enough examples. If you want to pull your own representatives or an oligarch funded PAC in the bar charts, here is the link. Remember, if they aren’t in this list, no oligarchs involved.
And if you want all of the Campaign Finance info, with my standard pie charts and data back to 2000, here is that link.
I’ve been doing this, looking at the money since 2017. The story continues to follow the same path, and if anything has gotten more extreme each cycle.
If Democrats in Texas want to win in the future, they have to come to grips with the money and decide do they want to play the same game Republicans are (which as you can see above isn’t ever going to happen), or do they flip the table and get back to connecting directly with people, becoming a real opposition party and quit compromising and playing the game by the old rules. You know where I land on that one.
The Texas Legislature is in swing. The federal level is insane. It’s all infected by the same ideology, and it isn’t just one or two billionaires driving it. We have to acknowledge the root of the rot and work together to prove to our communities that we have a true north, that we won’t sell out our allies, and can be trusted to lead at every level. We will keep talking. Hopefully you will keep listening, sharing, and driving a movement.
Let’s go!
See It. Name It. Fight It.
If you want to catch up on my other deep dives on the money
Seems like a huge almost insurmountable task. Yet it has to be done. Dems should put all our efforts to breaking this crazy buy out of our votes!!
Thank you, Chris for all you give us to work with and to think about. I want to just comment on a small part of this post: having to do with messaging to rural and urban voters. Maybe you are right in one way to emphasize reaching out to voters in your back yard, but I see problems there. First, consider gerrymandering. Reaching out to rural constituents is a potential means of reducing the impact of gerrymandering in our elections. But then to partially negate my position that rural voters deserve attention, reevaluate our ideas concerning rural versus urban issues: If urban issues can be characterized as an emphasis on identity policies, well that is an area that the right has successfully used to split off our voters. But all Texans are affected by economics, health care, and ethics. I see a few issues, like availability of health care and small-town economies, as more meaningful to rural voters. But really, all Texans should be concerned with these, and many uptown voters have rural roots. I do think the challenge of reaching voters--urban apathetic and rural hopeless--given our fragmented information spaghetti, is bigly big.