I’ve been looking for a meaningful hook to talk about the Texas Attorney General race since Republican U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert officially joined. Gohmert’s entry was a bit more puzzling than the others. Paxton is the incumbent, George P. Bush is attempting to move up from Land Commissioner, and Eva Guzman is attempting to move up from the Supreme Court. But from U.S. Congressman to Texas Attorney General is not a clear-cut move up. And I don’t particularly like his chances.
But now we have some campaign finance reports to chew on.
In just over a month, [incumbent Ken] Paxton will face the most significant primary challenge in his career with three other widely-known candidates in Texas politics: Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, and Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01).
The first financial reports to be released since the list of candidates were finalized for the ballot corroborate the viability of each of the candidates, as all raised over a million dollars in the period between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 — more than any of the Democrats vying for the nomination.
Having been in the position for nearly two full terms, Paxton’s war chest is still the largest out of any candidate with $7.5 million cash-on-hand.
Becoming available a day past the due date, Paxton’s finance report showed that he raised $2.8 million and spent $2.1 million.
Over half of his expenditures — $1.3 million — was spent on direct mail. Of note, another $153,000 was spent on “campaign advertising services” and $130,000 was listed for “legal fees.”
Citing contributions from “ more than 5,000 grassroots conservative donors” with about half giving to Paxton for the first time, his campaign stated, “With these dominant fundraising numbers and the groundswell of grassroots support behind him, it’s clear Ken Paxton’s campaign has both tremendous enthusiasm and financial advantages over his challengers in the primary.”
“As the stakes get even higher moving forward, there is no question that Ken Paxton is the only candidate positioned to defeat the radical left’s candidate in November,” said Paxton’s campaign in a press release.
Though Paxton’s war chest is the largest, the candidate to receive the most contributions for the period was Guzman.
Backed by the powerful Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) PAC, Guzman reported a haul of $3.7 million.
The majority of her contributions came from a handful of wealthy donors.
TLR PAC topped the list of contributors to Guzman’s campaign with a total of $626,000 listed. Richard Weekley, the chairman of the board of directors for TLR, contributed another $500,000, and another board member, Alan Hassenflu, contributed $250,000.
Guzman also reported receiving $500,000 from Harlan Crow, $500,000 from Robert Rowling, and $250,000 from Jan Duncan.
Advertising accounted for a large portion of the $2.6 million Guzman reported spending, with $1.2 million on media buys, a combined $555,000 on printing and postage for direct mail, and another $269,000 listed for political advertising.
Bush, who was the first challenger to jump in the race, reported raising $1.9 million, bringing him to a total of $3.2 million cash-on-hand at the beginning of January, the second-largest war chest behind Paxton.
“We have a good number of cash-on-hand, but the real factor in this campaign that’s different is the ‘Texas First Tour’ that we’re putting together,” Bush told The Texan at a meet-and-greet in Round Rock.
“We’ve got about 20 events lined up over the course of the next three weeks leading up to early voting, and then we have two weeks of early voting,” said Bush.
The focus on a more event-oriented ground game was reflected in Bush’s campaign expenditures as well. While $132,000 was categorized for consulting expenses and $154,000 was for advertising, $635,000 of the $1.8 million total expenditures went toward salaries for campaign employees and contractors.
Gohmert, the last candidate to enter the race who joined partway through the candidate filing period in November, also put more expenditures toward grassroots campaigning.
The East Texas congressman spent far less than the other candidates with only $126,000 in total expenditures. Of that, over half — $65,000 — was listed for the “purchase of campaign vehicle,” and another $32,000 was used for “yard signs/stakes.”
Gohmert’s total fundraising haul for the period tallied to slightly above $1 million, his target goal when he announced he was considering a bid for the position.
But the finance report I want to hone in on is not Gohmert’s, but Bush’s.
Going after an entrenched incumbent, this is the first race Bush has run where he’s a financial underdog. $3.2 million is only slightly more than the $2.8 million he raised at this point in his 2014 Land Commissioner run, where “his two main challengers, a Republican and a Democrat” had raised “a combined total of around $20,000.” To be running behind both Paxton and Guzman in the money derby in a higher profile race seems to be a setback for the candidate who garnered more votes than Greg Abbott in the 2014 general election. (In 2018, he ran some 220,000 votes behind Abbott.)
Conventional wisdom is that Paxton is vulnerable due to his pending state security fraud charges, but those charges have been pending for over six years despite the federal charges having been dismissed, and didn’t keep him from winning the general by almost 300,000 votes in The Year of Beto. These lengthy delays suggest that the case is all smoke and no fire, and that the case is more useful for Democratic county DAs as a club against Paxton than actually trying the case, and the indictment will probably run into Sixth Amendment issues if it hasn’t already.
But back to Bush. Back in 2014, there seemed to be an unspoken assumption among establishment types that George P. Bush was some sort of golden boy of Texas politics, destined for the Governor’s mansion at some point based on his last name, in much the same way that his father Jeb was seen as the likely 2016 GOP Presidential nominee. Well Jeb!’s campaign came a cropper, and Bush seems considerably less golden these days. The Bush dynasty’s one persistent advantage, their reputation of fundraising prowess, doesn’t seem to be working well enough thus far for George P.’s uphill charge against an entrenched incumbent.
Conservative activists have always been cool to Bush: The Third Generation, but were willing to give him a chance as Land Commissioner because, frankly, he was on the ballot. After the Alamo redesign controversy, the bloom was definitely off the Bush as far as conservative activists are concerned. But in a four-way race, Bush is at risk of missing the runoff, with Eva Guzman drawing a lot of the same moderate/business/Hispanic Republican support base that Bush needs. By contrast, Paxton’s record for being a strong advocate for conservative principles (and filing lawsuits against the Biden Administration) has a lot of activists still standing behind him.
Bush could still get into a runoff with Paxton, but right now it’s no sure thing.