Hamilton County Texas Democrats
Election Information
Statewide Election Dates
May 28, 2024: Primary runoff
November 5, 2024: General election
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Hamilton County Local Democratic Party Convention
2024 Texas Democratic Convention
El Paso Convention Center
June 6 – 8, 2024
For more information and RSVP:
https://texasdemocraticconvention.com
Paxton Charges Could be Dropped
The New “Over the Top” Secret Plan on How Fascists Could Win in 2024
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Republicans are planning in the event Joe Biden wins re-election & Democrats hold the Senate and take the House this November…
How Trump Ends Social Security
The GOP have been trying to gut or privatize Social Security ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt put it into place in 1935.
Political News Update
Greg Abbott, Tim Dunn spend millions in Texas GOP primary fights over vouchers, impeachment
“Greg Abbott, Tim Dunn spend millions in Texas GOP primary fights over vouchers, impeachment” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Republican leaders, megadonors and political groups are spending massively ahead of the March 5 primary, pouring millions of dollars into campaigns that have become a litmus test for the Texas GOP’s future amid deepened fissures over school vouchers and Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment.
New campaign finance reports show just how expensive the Texas GOP’s ongoing civil war has gotten, with political interest groups such as Texans For Lawsuit Reform doling out more than $6 million in the last month to a mix of incumbents and PACs; and a small group of voucher supporters, state leaders and far-right megadonors separately injecting at least another $8 million into the primaries.
From Jan. 26 to Feb 24, the most recent campaign finance reporting period, Gov. Greg Abbott spent $6.1 million as part of his ongoing quest to stack the Texas House with members who will pass school voucher legislation. Last year, about two dozen Republicans joined with Democrats to block Abbott’s yearlong crusade to pass a law allowing state dollars to subsidize private school funding. Pro-voucher groups have aided Abbott’s efforts, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into challengers’ accounts in cash and ads.
Over the same period, far-right billionaires such as Tim Dunn have ramped up their giving. In the last reporting period, Dunn’s new group, Texans United For A Conservative Majority, spent more than $2.5 million as part of their campaign to oust incumbent Texas House members who voted last summer to impeach Paxton, a key ally of the state’s right wing. Paxton was acquitted by the Senate.
Paxton, who has endorsed the roughly one-third of House Republicans who resisted his impeachment on corruption accusations, didn’t spend any money on those races. Most of his cash is going to legal fees, according to campaign finance reports.
Voucher fight goes to the districts
Abbott’s spending spree in the most recent fundraising period was largely aimed at 10 GOP primary challengers to anti-voucher Republicans in the Texas House. Abbott spent about $4.4 million on mostly ads, polling and canvassing for those challengers. For those 10 challengers, Abbott’s spending made up almost all of their campaign funding for the period.
Abbott spent another $1.5 million in open-seat races and defending House Republican incumbents — like Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Austin — who supported vouchers, but are facing heated primary contests because of their votes to impeach Paxton.
Abbott’s voucher effort has been bolstered by a record-setting $6 million contribution from pro-voucher activist Jeff Yass in December.
The top beneficiary of the governor’s funding from Jan. 26 through Feb. 24 was Marc LaHood, who received $672,410 in ad spending and other services from Abbott, representing some 81% of his fundraising for that period. LaHood is trying to unseat three-term state Rep. Steve Allison in his San Antonio district.
Close behind him was Janis Holt, who received $671,300 in ad spending from Abbott in her primary against state Rep. Ernest Bailes. That ad spend made up 92% of her total haul for the most recent fundraising period. Bailes, a Shepherd Republican and voucher opponent, lashed out at Abbott last week for his efforts to unseat otherwise loyal Republicans.
“My unwillingness to be a puppet, is why I am challenged so aggressively and by so much money this election,” Bailes said on Facebook.
Bailes and other anti-voucher Republicans were boosted by the Charles E. Butt Public Education PAC, which poured $1.3 million into 11 GOP incumbents’ campaigns.
Half of that was spent defending Allison and Bailes. Allison barely outraised his challenger with $889,000 in contributions — about $60,000 more than LaHood — while Bailes raised about $50,000 less than Holt in the most recent reporting period.
Abbott’s pro-voucher quest was aided by other PACs.
The AFC Victory Fund super PAC, formed expressly to support private school vouchers, spent some $784,000 in Texas last month and collected $2.5 million in donations from less than a dozen donors.
The PAC spent almost $450,000 on direct mail against those anti-voucher incumbents, with some of the heaviest financial firepower reserved for state Rep. Glenn Rogers, R-Graford, who is battling for his third term west of Fort Worth against Paxton and Abbott favorite Mike Olcott.
Olcott also received a $50,000 donation this month from Dunn, whose groups have for years sought to unseat Rogers, a longtime foe and vocal critic of the billionaire’s political network.
“I can’t be controlled by radical billionaire special interests. I represent YOU, the people of my district,” Rogers wrote on X this week.
The pro-voucher Family Empowerment Coalition PAC spent nearly $600,000 last month, mainly on House races. It raised nearly half a million from donors in January including $100,000 from Dallas billionaires Darwin and Douglas Deason, and a quarter-million from Andrew Price, an Austin-area billionaire investor.
Holt took in $50,000 from the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC. She got another $5,000 from Texans United for a Conservative Majority, as well as a “campaign endorsement text message” from Texans for [Lt. Gov.] Dan Patrick valued at $3,318. The rest of her $2,400 in contribution came from 11 individual donors, several outside the district.
Dunn reemerges
Dunn meanwhile gave $1.75 million in February to Texans United for A Conservative Majority, which was created late last year after another Dunn-funded group, Defend Texas Liberty, was embroiled in controversy over its ties to Nick Fuentes and other white supremacists. The PAC also received $1.3 million last month from Farris Wilks, another West Texas oil tycoon who funded Defend Texas Liberty.
After laying low in the last quarter of 2023, Dunn’s new group poured roughly $3.4 million into campaigns and ad buys amid an ongoing war with the Texas GOP’s more moderate, but still deeply conservative, wing. In February alone, Texans United for a Conservative Majority spent roughly $2.5 million.
Instead of vouchers, the group has focused more on ousting incumbents who backed Paxton’s impeachment, or supporting candidates who share their hardline views on the border or LGBTQ+ issues.
Since Jan. 26, Texans United for a Conservative Majority has given $194,000 in support to David Covey’s challenge to House Speaker Dade Phelan, who has been targeted by Dunn’s groups for his role in the Paxton impeachment, his appointment of Democrats to minor House committee chairs and his sharp criticism of Defend Texas Liberty in the wake of the Fuentes scandal.
The PAC also gave $180,000 in support to Andy Hooper, who is challenging Rep. Lynn Stucky of Denton; $180,000 to Brent Money ahead of a rematch of a January run-off in which he narrowly lost to Jill Dutton in North Texas; and $103,000 to Mitch Little, a former member of Paxton’s impeachment defense team who is challenging Rep. Kronda Thimesch, R-Lewisville .
The PAC is also backing some of its former candidates, including Shelley Luther, who ran for the Texas House in 2022 after being jailed for refusing to close her salon during Abbott’s pandemic-era shutdown; and Biedermann, whose previous tenure in the Texas House was bankrolled by groups connected to Dunn.
Since Jan. 26, Texans United has given $133,000 in contributions or ad buys for Luther’s campaign. It also gave $83,000 to Biedermann days before he was roundly criticized for defending Bryan Slaton, a former state representative who was bankrolled by Dunn’s groups until he was expelled last year for having sex with a drunk, 19-year-old aide.
Big TLR money
Meanwhile, the Texas GOP’s business wing has continued to spend big in support of incumbents in the Texas House and Court of Criminal Appeals, both of which have drawn the ire of Paxton and his allies.
Leading the way has been Texans For Lawsuit Reform, a powerful pro-tort reform PAC, associated with backing the Republican establishment, that entered the year with more than $35 million in its coffers. Since Jan. 1, TLR has spent more than $8.2 million — including more than $6.5 million in the last month.
Among the PAC’s biggest beneficiaries: Troxclair, who since Jan. 26 has received $583,000 amid a challenge from Biedermann. and Joanne Shofner, whose campaign against incumbent Rep. Travis Clardy received $408,000 from TLR. Clardy was an outlier in the House for voting against vouchers but also vocally opposing Paxton’s impeachment.
Shofner and Troxclair have also been backed by Abbott, who since Jan. 26 has given them $368,000 and $237,000 in support, respectively.
In February, TLR also matched a $477,000 contribution from Phelan’s campaign to the Secure Our Border Now PAC, which supports the speaker’s House allies. TLR also gave $250,000 to the Judicial Fairness PAC, which is supporting three incumbent judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals who have been targeted by Paxton for ruling that his office can’t unilaterally prosecute local voting crimes.
Phelan, protecting his own supporters in the House, spent some $1.3 million of his considerable war chest just since late January on incumbents battling well-funded opponents. Receiving the most were Reps. Lacey Hull of Houston with $125,000, Matt Shaheen with $130,000 and Lynn Stucky with $95,000.
Phelan raised $3.8 million in the past month as he defends his own Beaumont district against an onslaught from Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and hard-right grassroots who accuse of him of party disloyalty.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/27/greg-abbott-tim-dunn-paxton-vouchers-republican-primary-texas/.
Women’s Lives Are on the Ballot This November
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Fifty-one years ago on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, which recognized a woman’s right to privacy when it comes to their reproductive health. My predecessor in Congress, Eddie Bernice Johnson, had just been sworn into the Texas House with her freshman colleague, Sarah Weddington, a lead attorney for unnamed plaintiff Jane Roe, when the call was made to the Texas House Floor that Texas women had won us the right to abortion.
But now, I’m watching Texas women suffer because of Republican anti-freedom authoritarianism. Today, I possess fewer rights than my mother possessed during her reproductive years. Why and how did we get here? The answer is quite simple: former President Donald Trump. His right-wing Supreme Court majority overturned Roe just as he intended.
As Trump continues to boast about dismantling women’s reproductive rights, MAGA Republicans have followed his lead and passed similar draconian abortion bans and in twenty one states so far, including Texas’ S.B. 8, which banned bans abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. And we know they want to take things even further by passing a national abortion ban.
Thanks to Republicans, one in three women of reproductive age now live under an abortion ban. Here in Texas, pregnant women are filled with the fear that if they suffer a pregnancy complication, they’ll be unable to access necessary healthcare treatment.
One such harrowing example of how these abortion bans are hurting women is the case of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from my hometown of Dallas who found herself in the heartbreaking position of needing an abortion to treat a non-viable pregnancy. When Kate received the devastating news about the pregnancy she desperately wanted, she had two options: risk losing her life and her future fertility by continuing to carry a nonviable fetus to term or flee her state and risk prosecution.
Some would argue that Kate had no good options; I’d agree. Kate deserved better from her state and her country. Kate should have been able to follow the advice of her doctors, but instead had to seek relief from the court system. Despite the glimmer of hope after lower courts granted her relief, multi-indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decided to threaten her doctors with incarceration. Eventually, the Texas Supreme Court delivered the final blow and ruled she could not access the healthcare she needed.
While Kate was able to flee Texas to receive the life-saving care she desperately needed, the same can’t be said for all women in her position—especially for low-income women.
What’s terrifying is that things could get worse for women if Republicans win in 2024. This isn’t about whether you agree with abortion; it’s about whether you agree with the idea behind democracy and hold the principle that power belongs to the people—and that policies should reflect the people’s will and their constitutional protections.
Let me make it crystal clear: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democrats up and down the ballot are the only candidates running to protect women’s freedoms, our democracy, and our future.
The stakes are particularly high for Texas women this year. This election is about the choice between more freedoms or fewer. President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats will stand together to safeguard the freedoms of Texas women, but it will take all of us engaging in this fight to win.
You hold the key to a better future. Only you can unlock your freedoms at the ballot box. Our rights are on the ballot, and we have the chance to protect them by voting for President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot this November. Our lives depend on it.
This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.” Link the original story here.
Appeals court rules lawsuit seeking Jan. 6 emails from Texas governor, attorney general can move forward
“Appeals court rules lawsuit seeking Jan. 6 emails from Texas governor, attorney general can move forward” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
A lawsuit to force two Texas leaders to release years of their emails, including about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, can move forward thanks to a Wednesday appeals court decision.
The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott did not make the case for the lawsuit against them to be thrown out.
The decision was a major win for American Oversight, the Washington-DC based nonprofit that sued for access to the records after being rebuffed by the state. The group’s executive director called the decision “a tremendous victory for transparency.”
“American Oversight is seeking records related to matters of significant public interest and the appeals court was correct to reject this effort to evade accountability. We hope that Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Paxton will stop their delay and finally release these records to the public,” Heather Sawyer said in a statement.
Abbott and Paxton can appeal the decision. Neither responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
American Oversight filed the lawsuit in June 2022 after unsuccessfully requesting communications from the two Texas leaders. The group wanted access to years of Abbott and Paxton’s communications, including both men’s emails with NRA officials and Paxton’s emails in the days around Jan. 6, 2021.
Paxton attended and spoke at the pro-Donald Trump rally before the attack on the U.S. Capitol that year. The attorney general has declined to say who paid for his trip to DC, and has refused to release his communications from before, during and after the event.
Abbott and Paxton said their offices did not have any communications with NRA officials. They refused to release the other records, citing rules protecting confidential communications with attorneys and discussions about pending lawsuits.
In their response to the lawsuit, they argued that only the Texas Supreme Court could compel the attorney general to act in this instance. They also said no court could force the governor’s hand in this case.
A lower court said these arguments did not hold water.
On Wednesday, the appeals court justices agreed, and also rejected Abbott and Paxton’s arguments that the lawsuit should be tossed because they released some very limited records in response to American Oversight’s requests.
The justices who wrote the opinion are Darlene Byrne, Chari L. Kelly and Rosa Lopez Theofanis. All three are Democrats.
This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
Hamilton County Texas Democrats understand the daily concerns of family and friends in Hamilton County and strive to give a voice to all. We believe government exists to achieve together what we cannot achieve as individuals; and government must serve all people. A representative democracy is only truly representative if every single citizen is guaranteed the inalienable right to vote in fair and open elections.