Commissioners races awash in cash
Conservative PACs among those providing massive boosts in funding for candidates
Traditionally, vendors and contractors have filled the election campaign coffers for Harris County Commissioners Court members and candidates, but that story is changing with an influx of money from more politically driven contributions.
County races, typically lowprofile affairs, are seeing major funding boosts this year, notably from a strong stream of Republican and conservative political action committee funding, including hundreds of thousands of in-kind donations and ad support in the last month for Jack Morman’s bid to unseat Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia.
The largest source of that committee funding is the Stop Houston Murders PAC, which formed this year and has spent more than $2 million in this year’s county elections. Its objective is voting out Democratic judges, though its impact likely has extended to the county judge race, in which Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer is challenging Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo.
With three out of five seats on Commissioners Court in competitive races Nov. 8, the balance of the court is up for grabs. The current 3-2 Democratic majority could switch to a Republicanled court depending on the winners of the races for county judge and two commissioner seats.
Much like the rest of the country, the Harris County political climate has grown increasingly divisive, with Republican and Democratic campaigns hoping to sink their opponents on emotionally charged themes that are playing out nationally, including crime and reproductive rights.
The Stop Houston Murders PAC largely is funded by other PACs, including $750,000 from the Judicial Fairness PAC and $150,000 from the Coalition Por For Texas PAC, along with other major donations including $500,000 from Don McGill of Katy LTD, $210,000 from Richard Weekley and $250,000 each from OTA Holdings and Texas Transeastern.
The largest contributor to Stop Houston Murders, the Judicial Fairness PAC, started in 2020 to support GOP candidates for the Texas Supreme Court. Its $1.9 million fundraising haul between July and the end of September came from
just six contributors, including $1 million from the private equity firm Trinity Equity Partners, $500,000 from Don McGill of Katy LTD, $300,000 from the Republican State Leadership Committee and $125,000 from Apache Corp. It then raised $2.4 million in October, primarily from Weekley’s Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC, Chevron, ConocoPhillips Co. and Restoration PAC, an Illinois-based super PAC with ties to election denial candidates.
“It’s an example of how important a very small group of people are to our political process,” said Renée Cross, senior director of the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. “We’ve got this small group of donors who are influencing not only the election outcomes but I would say the likely public policies that are created and implemented.”
Cross said the influx of large contributions in Harris County elections was made possible by Citizens United, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2010 that allowed corporations and other groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.
“For 12 years now, there’s just been no real limitations on campaign donations,” she said.
Weekley, a Houston real estate developer and major donor to Mealer, also is behind another top contributor to the Stop Houston Murders PAC — the Coalition Por For Texas PAC, which started last year with Weekley and three other contributors donating $250,000 apiece: Harlan Crow, Robert Rowling and Hilwood Development Co., all based in Dallas.
Since July 1, Mealer has raised $8.6 million and spent $8.2 million, unprecedented numbers in an election for Harris County judge. During that period, Hidalgo has raised $2.4 million and spent nearly $3.6 million.
Much of Mealer’s funding has come from a handful of Houston-based donors, including $400,000 each from Weekley and Alan Hassenflu, CEO of Fidelis Realty Partners and a board member of Weekley’s Texans for Lawsuit Reform group. Jeffrey Hildebrand, CEO of the Houston oil company Hilcorp Energy, sent in a combined $500,000 with his wife, Melinda Hildebrand. The campaign received $375,000 from Vega Energy Partners president David Modesett and $100,000 from John McGill, owner of Don McGill Auto Group.
GOP PACs also have contributed to Mealer’s campaign directly, including a $65,000 inkind contribution from the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC, $68,000 from the Coalition Por For Texas PAC and a $35,000 inkind contribution from the Protect and Serve Texas PAC. Inkind contributions are donations of services such as media advertising or mail materials rather than monetary donations.
The Coalition Por For Texas PAC has contributed $450,000 to the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC, which made donations in October to Morman and Jack Cagle, GOP candidates for Harris County Commissioners Court.
While much of their campaign funding has come from traditional sources — relatively modest contributions from Houston-area business interests including engineering firms — Cagle and Morman have added funding from GOP PACS since they last ran in 2018. Cagle won re-election that year, while Morman lost to Democrat Garcia, whom he is running against to reclaim his seat.
Morman’s mid-October fundraising report in 2018 showed $68,260 in contributions, including $4,900 of in-kind political contributions. This year during the same period, those numbers increased dramatically: Morman reported raising $621,422, including in-kind contributions totaling $82,000 from the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC, the Houston Region Business Coalition and former Commissioner Steve Radack. At least half of Morman’s nearly tenfold increase in cash contributions during that period came from three donors who contributed $100,000 apiece: Richard Weekley, Alan Hassenflu and David Modesett.
The campaign then raised an eye-popping $811,000 in October, according to Morman’s latest report. Weekley and Hassenflu each wrote another $100,000 check, and more than two-thirds of the donations were large in-kind contributions from PACs and other conservative groups primarily paying for campaign ads: $228,000 from the Houston Region Business Coalition, $138,000 from the “C” Club of Houston, $38,000 from the Protect and Serve Texas PAC and $25,000 from the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC. The campaign also received $92,400 from the Conservatives for Law Enforcement and Border Security PAC, which is funded by Republican state Rep. Mayes Middleton.
While Cagle had no in-kind political contributions on his Oct. 31 report in 2018, his 2022 report from the same period shows in-kind contributions totaling $158,000 from the Houston Region Business Coalition, the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC and the Protect and Serve Texas PAC.
Harris County Republican Party chair Cindy Siegel said the shift in funding for county races indicates that running campaigns has gotten more expensive and donors are stepping up.
“You want a good base of the small donors because someone who gives $10 who maybe is on a fixed income, they’re probably equally if not more invested in your campaign or your party than someone who can easily write a $1,000 check,” Siegel said. “But the reality is, to campaign and to win, more and more I think both parties are having to rely upon larger donors, PACs as sources of funds to be able to help win their election.”
Siegel said larger donors are getting involved because they are concerned about crime and government transparency.
“Harris County will not thrive if we don’t have an environment where people are safe, where people know their kids will have good schools, that you can make a nice living. And these business owners I think have a vested interest because if you don’t have that here in Harris County, businesses will not come here. People will not want to move here,” she said.
Siegel’s counterpart, Odus Evbagharu, chair of the Harris County Democratic Party, said a large real estate developer like Weekley could have a different motivation for contributing to county races.
“He can make back his investment in Alex Mealer by building one subdivision under the old Republican flood plan and flood control requirements,” Evbagharu said. “That’s why you’re seeing him make such a large investment in Stop Houston Murders PAC and in Mealer’s race, and in Morman’s too. It’s all about control of the county.”
Still, he acknowledged crime remains a serious issue for Harris County voters.
“Crime has risen in this country coming off of a once-in-alifetime pandemic. We understand that,” Evbagharu said. “But we also know that in order to curtail crime, we’ve got to make quality of life investments. We’ve got to address public housing. We’ve got to address education. We’ve got to address health care. We’ve got to address all of these things that Republicans refuse to address and just say, ‘I want to solve crime.’ ”
On the Democratic side, the contributions for Cagle’s challenger Lesley Briones, are not all coming from average residents, either. More than onethird of her October fundraising total came from a $75,000 donation from Commissioner Garcia and a $100,000 loan from Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis.
Evbagharu said contributions from Garcia and Ellis have helped Briones run against a well-funded incumbent, who began the race with name identification and a fundraising advantage.