Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Although they haven’t officially been put up yet, Quorum Report has obtained the personal financial disclosure report the U.S. Senate requires for David Dewhurst, Ted Cruz, Tom Leppert and Ricardo Sanchez. According to the Statesman, Dewhurst’s wealth adds up to some $225 million, quite a formidable amount (I suspect that myself and many of my readers could be quite content for 1/100th of that), but not quite the billionaire some had tagged him as.

Tom Leppert clocked in at $12 million (nice, but an order of magnitude less than Dewhurst) and Ted Cruz came in at just under $1 million. Ricardo Sanchez had a net worth of $212,009, but that was probably before his recent house fire.

A little bird was kind enough to provide me a copy of Dewhurst’s report, and I wanted to take note of a few tidbits.

Under income, Dewhurst lists his salary from the State of Texas at $61,119. The Lieutenant Governor’s base salary, as set by the Texas Constitution, is $7,200, though actual pay varies somewhat depending on which days he acts as the acting governor. I find it ironic that if I wanted to be Lieutenant Governor, I’d have to take a significant pay cut. Still, I bet the benefits are pretty awesome…

Dewhurst’s biggest wealth comes in the form of holdings in Falcon Seaboard, the energy and investment company he founded and for which he owns (according to the report) 97.38%. His report lists assets to the tune of over $50 million in Falcon Diversified and $25–50 million in Falcon Seaboard Investment Company, plus over $50 million in a blind trust. He also listed a receivable note from them in the $1–5 million range, as well as a promissory note (i.e. loan) from them in the $5–25 million range. Plus various other Falcon Seaboard-related investments and income.

Next comes Section IIIA, Publicly traded assets and unearned income sources, which lists the companies Dewhurst owns shares of stock in. Among those he has listed as owning shares worth between $100,000–250,000:

Applied Materials (as I was an employee of Applied Materials for several years, I own a good bit of their stock myself (though only the shares in my 401K remain), so if he’s held them from any time prior to 2001, I’d just like to offer my condolences to the Lt. Governor for his capital losses…)

Baxter International Incorporated

Carnival

Stocks he holds $50,001-100,000 in are:

Boeing

Calpine

Carmax

Comcast

Diebold (the liberal conspiracy theorists should have a field day with this one!)

ENI (Italian multinational oil and gas company)

France Telecom S.A.

Nippon Telegraph and Telecom

Sanofi-Aventis (French pharmaceutical company)

Telecom Italia

Total S.A. (French oil company)

Unileaver N.V.

There are also lesser amounts of stock in Section IIIB, non-publicly traded assets and unearned income sources, which are presumably either in trusts or retirement accounts. (I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant.) I’m not clear if all Mr. Dewhurst’s stock holdings are inside or outside of his blind trust, or some other arrangement. My quick impression is that, blind trust or not, that’s an awful lot of foreign corporations for an American politician to have investments in.

Other tidbits:

Speaking of liberal conspiracy theorists, the fact that Dewhurst is a Vice President for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs will no doubt send many of the Daily Kossacks reaching for their NEOCON bricks. (For the record, Wikipedia lists Dewhurst’s religion as Presbyterian, and the JINSA board includes several other prominent non-Jews, including Connie Mack and Bill White.)

As you might expect for someone made of money, he has an Amex Black Card.

There has been some controversy over him selling stock in Caterpillar “when he was one of three state officials who approved a $1.175 million state grant to the company to build a facility in Seguin.” Also: “Although the stock was in Dewhurst’s state blind trust, there have long been questions about whether the fund was truly at arm’s length because Dewhurst’s brother Gene was one of the trustees.”

That’s not a very blind trust. Indeed, about the trust, the report says “Mr. Dewhurst is the 100% beneficiary of the David Dewhurst Blind Trust which is a grantor trust for tax purposes. The trust is NOT considered a blind trust.” Que?

I’ll be happy to link to Dewhurst’s report (as well as those of the other candidates) when they’re publicly available.

Tags: 2012 Election, David Dewhurst, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Republicans, Ted Cruz, Texas, Texas Senate Race, Tom Leppert

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2011 at 9:08 PM and is filed under Elections, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.