POLITIFACT
Mostly true:
PolitiFact checks Sherry Sylvester statement that personal injury trial lawyers “have provided over 80 percent of the funding for the Texas Democratic Party for over a decade.”
It’s a Texas axiom that trial lawyers fuel Democratic politics.
Still, we were struck by a claim by the spokeswoman for Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which advocates litigation limits.
In a Dec. 2 opinion column in the San Antonio ExpressNews, Sherry Sylvester said Democrats will not regain ground in statewide elections until the party changes its financial backers and rejects policies routinely pushed in support of personalinjury trial lawyers, whom she called “the primary funders of Texas Democrats.”
The “personal injury” description applies to cases in which a plaintiff says injuries occurred because of the actions or negligence of another person or entity.
Sylvester further wrote: “Personal-injury trial lawyers not only have provided over 80 percent of the funding for the Texas Democratic Party for over a decade, trial lawyers provided virtually all the funding for the Bexar County Democratic Party in this election.”
We focused on the first part of that statement — that more than 80 percent of the state Democratic Party’s funding has come from personal-injury trial lawyers for more than a decade, presuming this was not a claim about donations to individual candidates.
Indeed, Sylvester told us she based her analysis on the Texas Democratic Party’s contribution and expenditure reports for 2006 through 2010.