Outside money floods local House races
Newin flux of cash favors GOP candidates over Dems in tight contests for 7 state seats
Outside money is flooding battleground Texas House races across the Houston area, helping Republican candidates erase fundraising advantages amassed by Democrats who are raking in money from individual donors outside Texas.
In all seven battleground districts around Houston, five of which are under GOP control, Democrats raised more cash than Republicans from early July through late September, the period covered by the latest round of campaign finance reports.
However, spending by political action committees and other groups favored Republicans by a more than 2-to-1 margin in those districts, helping three candidates — Republican Justin Ray, state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-Houston, and state Rep. Sam Harless, R-Spring — overcome their fundraising deficits.
The battle for control of the Texas House has attracted far more attention than any recent election, with Democrats bullish on their chances to flip the nine seats needed to capture amajority in the lower chamber and Republicans going all out to protect their 83-67 margin ahead of a crucial redistricting battle next legislative session. Reflecting the urgency of the moment, donors from across the country and interest groups from Austin to Washington, D.C. are collectively ramping up spending, producing fundraising totals typically reserved for lowlevel congressional contests.
“It's really only since 2018, which caught a lot of Republicans by surprise, that we have this many competitive House races,” said Rice University political science professor Mark Jones. “This time around, not only do you have arguably close to two dozen races (statewide) where it's not a cer
tainty that one party is going to win, but control of the Texas House hangs in the balance.”
During the 12-week period covered by the campaign finance reports filed earlier this week, the 14 candidates in Houston’s seven battleground House districts combined to raise nearly $4.7 million and spend almost $1.6 million. They collectively are heading intothe stretch run of the 2020 election with about $2.4 million cash on hand, with millions more set to come from outside groups.
Two longtime political donor groups, Associated Republicans of Texas and tort reform advocacy group Texans for Lawsuit Reform, have particularly escalated their spending on House Republican candidates in 2020, combining to buy $276,000worth of digital ads, direct mail, canvassing and other expenses to support Ray and another $272,000 on behalf of Davis.
Democrat Ann Johnson, an attorney who is challenging Davis, outpaced the incumbent in fundraising from individual donors. Committees and other groups spent about $525,000 backing Davis, however, helping her rack up more than $597,000 in contributions to Johnson’s roughly $481,000.
A similar dynamic played out last reporting period in the west Houston district where Ray, the former mayor of Jersey Village, is attempting to unseat state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston. Though Rosenthal raised more cash than Ray, the challenger benefited from a massive lead in spending from committees and other groups, giving him a 2-to-1 edge in overall contributions.
And in northwest Harris County, groups including the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group focused on legislatures around the country, and Leading Texas Forward, a PAC run by House Republican lawmakers, helped Harless make up a fundraising deficit to Democrat Natali Hurtado.
Jones said the looming-once-a-decade redistricting battle is likely driving much of the spending by Republican groups, in part because of the number of GOP-controlled congressional seats atplay. There are 24 Republicans representing Texas in the U.S. House, the most from any state.
“That map will look very different if Texas Democrats take control of the House and the map-drawing gets kicked into the courts, rather than the Texas Republicans control the House and draw a tailor-made map designed to boost Republican fortunes for the next decade,” Jones said.
Republicans have not held such a clear-cut financial advantage in every district, though, with Democratic attorney Akilah Bacy and state Rep. Gina Calanni, D-Katy, outpacing Republican opponents Lacey Hull and Mike Schofield, respectively, in their west Harris County districts.
Bacy recorded the biggest haul of any state House candidate in the Houston area, raising nearly $418,000 in cash and $213,000 worth of in-kind contributions, or spending mostly by groups on her behalf. Republican nominee Lacey Hull, a conservative activist, raised a total of $277,000, or less than half of Bacy’s total.
Calanni and Bacy both are heading into the final weeks of the campaign with far more cash than their opponents, with Bacy reporting more than four times as much in her account as Hull.
In another contest, state Rep. Gary Gates, R-Richmond, contributed $355,000 of his own money to his re-election bid, more than three times the fundraising haul of Democrat Eliz Markowitz.