Losing a House primary race doesn’t come cheap
$150,00 for final expenses brings Wall’s personal loss to $6.2M
AUSTIN — The price of losing keeps going up for Republican Kathaleen Wall.
Four months after losing her campaign for Congress, the Houston Republican who tried to model herself after President Donald Trump had to put yet another $150,000 of her own money into her campaign to pay for final expenses related to the race, newly released Federal Election Commission records show.
That pushed the total she spent on her campaign for the 2nd Congressional District to just under $6.2 million — the most selffunding any candidate in Texas has put into a campaign for a U.S. House seat since at least the year 2000 and the second highest amount any candidate for the House has spent nationwide this year.
Her defeat is not unusual in Texas, where selffunding candidates have traditionally fared poorly running for Congress. Twenty-one Texas candidates have put at least $1 million into their own campaigns since 2000. Eighteen lost.
Only Maryland Democrat David Trone has spent more of his own money to campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives this year. Trone, the co-founder of Total Wine & More, has so far spent just over $10.2 million on his campaign. He won his primary last month and faces Republican Amie Hoeber in November.
Wall’s money went largely to television ads. During the primary she spent more on television than any of her opponents, filling Houston channels with images of herself with Trump. Her final report to the FEC showed she needed the extra $150,000 for expenses including online advertising
bills that were paid in April.
Despite her heavy spending, Wall lost in the primary elections in March. But she didn’t lose by much, finishing third behind state Rep. Kevin Roberts and Dan Crenshaw. She was just 155 votes behind Crenshaw, who spent just over $300,000 ahead of the March primary.
In the runoff, Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL, defeated Roberts and now heads to a November showdown against Democrat Todd Litton.
Wall has already moved on from her defeat. In June, she won a seat on the Republican Party of Texas’ state executive committee, giving her influence on the state GOP platform and rules.
Like Wall, many self-funding candidates are political novices who try to use their money to overcome their inexperience, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, in an interview during the campaign.
In Wall’s case, that inexperience showed in speaking engagements, where she struggled to remember talking points. Her campaign also avoided interviews with the media.
While Wall, an investor in high-tech startup companies, was new to campaigning, she was not new to politics in general. She and her husband, Holloway Frost, are major GOP donors in Houston. Since 2009, Wall has donated more than $700,000 to local candidates for U.S. House, to U.S. Senate candidates around the nation and to several presidential campaigns. She gave at least $77,000 to Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The winner in the 2nd Congressional District will replace U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican from Atascocita who not seeking re-election. The district includes northeastern sections of Harris County and parts of west Houston.