No limits

Millionaires wield too much clout in Texas, where campaign finance rules are loose.

Thousands of Texas’ most loyal Republican activists will assemble in San Antonio this weekend for the state convention.

But the voices of every block-walker, phone-banker, keyboard warrior and precinct chair who dons a flame-red T-shirt and fills the Henry B. González Convention Center are only so loud.

In Texas, they risk being drowned out by a much smaller, often quieter group that probably could fill only a high school math class: the wealthy Republican political donors who can put their money where their mouths are.

In our vast state of 30 million, there are only around 30 people who truly control the purse strings in Texas politics.

Many of those folks remain elusive, thanks to the Lone Star State’s absolute lack of limits on the amount of money individuals can contribute to political candidates.

As of April, those millionaires and billionaires had already given Gov. Greg Abbott super-sized contributions totaling more than $15 million — about a third of his total war chest.

Among them is a private, very rich couple in the tiny Central Texas town of Doss, population 225. The Porters kicked in more than a million to Abbott for reasons that are difficult to discern, given the lack of information political donors are required to provide under Texas law — and the fact that the couple is known to hang up on reporters seeking interviews.

Of course, another $1 million to Abbott’s $45 million war chest probably won’t tip the scales much more than they already are. The governor’s Democratic opponent, Lupe Valdez, reported $115,000 cash on hand in May. But there’s a bigger problem. The lack of any limits means a small group of wealthy individuals enjoy tremendous financial influence over all lawmakers — a reality that’s disturbing for any Texan who prefers to think we all have a say in the state capitol.

Texas is one of only a dozen states that lack any campaign finance limits. And because individual contributors are not required to provide details like their employers or occupations, it can be much harder to figure out what they want for their money than it is in other states, or in federal races, with lower limits and better disclosure rules.

We can speculate whether generous checks from chemical companies and big oil investors have influenced legislative leaders who usually sing the virtues of local control to strike down local efforts to ban plastic bags or limit fracking and drilling near neighborhoods.

The liberal watchdog group Texans for Public Justice has accused the governor of catering to donors from real estate and construction industries when he added to the call of a recent special session legislation curbing local municipalities’ ability to regulate land use. The group, according to the Texas Tribune, found that Abbott had received $10.7 million from groups that could benefit from the legislation.

In some cases, what the donors are buying is a high-profile appointment. About 259 of Abbott’s picks for various boards and commissions — or sometimes their spouses — donated roughly $14.2 million combined to Abbott’s various campaigns since June 2001, according to an Express-News analysis of documents from the governor’s office and Texas Ethics Commission. The same was true of former Gov. Rick Perry.

Over the years, TPJ, the watchdog group has documented that the 200 wealthiest campaign contributors generally supply about 40 percent of the money in Texas politics. A 2015 report by the Center for Public Integrity gave Texas an F for both its rules for political financing and for lobbyists’ disclosure.

The policy solutions are obvious: Texas should both boost campaign finance reporting requirements and impose rules so that a small group of rich Texans can’t pay for so much sway.

And members of school boards, city councils and county commissioners should be required to use the Texas Ethics Commissioner’s electronic reporting software so that their campaign backers’ identities would be easily available to the voting public, too.

The state should impose better limits on campaign finance, close disclosure loopholes and provide more information — voters deserve to see a bigger picture of who is underwriting campaigns.

Until Texas fixes our campaign finance laws, it won’t be the GOP convention that controls the direction of our state’s politics — it’ll secretive millionaires from places like Doss.