It’s mid-to-late July, and you know what that means: It’s campaign finance report season! We’ve got a lot to cover, as there’s more angles and intrigue than usual, certainly a lot more than there was three months ago. I’ll start with Harris County and then hit the Congressional reports, and then to the city of Houston and maybe some state stuff. The January reports for Harris County candidates and officeholders are here.
Lina Hidalgo
Annise Parker
Warren Howell
Oscar Gonzales
Aliza Dutt
Rodney Ellis
Adrian Garcia
Richard Vega
Raquel Boujourne
Tom Ramsey
Teneshia Hudspeth
Carla Wyatt
Marilyn Burgess
Sean Teare
Ed Gonzalez
Christian Menefee
Annette Ramirez
Kim Ogg
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Candidate Raised Spent Loan On Hand
=======================================================
Hidalgo 26,049 141,460 51,400 600,492
Parker 96,105 9,793 0 92,755
Howell 2,800 71,157 67,000 1,357
Gonzales 3,625 3,148 0 476
Dutt 132,500 2,337 118,200 246,662
Ellis 808,522 289,467 0 7,351,102
Garcia 1,426,368 411,292 0 2,559,209
Vega 19,749 5,549 0 9,749
Boujourne 33,795 2,764 100,000 131,030
Ramsey 73,900 80,188 0 1,563,132
Briones 868,866 278,181 0 3,007,305
Hudspeth 8,420 5,445 0 752
Wyatt 910 80 0 2,128
Burgess 29,800 12,400 5,207 34,513
Teare 60,405 50,987 0 39,031
Gonzalez 51,756 23,416 0 96,179
Menefee 465 20,598 0 226,825
Ramirez 5,625 10,248 0 7,625
B-Daniels 2,000 1,026 2,700 3,462
You may be looking at this and saying “wait, I thought you said that Lina Hidalgo had no money in her account, where did that $600K come from?” I wondered that myself. According to her report, it came from Schedule K, which is for “Interest, credits, gains, refunds, and contributions returned to filer”. A total of $653,945 in refunds for legal services, plus $1,500 for “security deposit for office rent”, were added to her account. I have to assume the former is for the charges that were eventually dropped against her staffers. She still spent over $100K more than she raised, and she had less than $100K on hand in January, so she needed that money to stay afloat.
Campos noted this as well, and he speculated that not only might this mean that she is running, she’d be the favorite to win the primary. I think all things being equal and Judge Hidalgo being a motivated candidate, I’d bet on her to win as well. But this is now three cycles in which she’s done little to no fundraising, she still hasn’t unequivocally said she’s running, this kind of windfall isn’t going to happen again, and I just don’t see her as being motivated to run. I presume she will let us know soon enough.
I might have expected a bigger total from Annise Parker, who has long been a strong fundraiser, but she only filed her appointment of Treasurer on June 11, so all her contributions are from between then and June 30. I expect a much bigger number for her in January.
Republican Aliza Dutt has a pretty good cash on hand total, largely from a loan to herself. Which she weirdly claimed was fundraising, for whatever the reason. Much of the funds she actually did raise came from a small number of big donors.
That said, she did do better than the other Republicans who had filings. Warren Howell’s expenditures were filed as “unitemized”, so there’s no listing of them on the form. My best guess is they’re from personal funds, though there’s a form you’re supposed to fill out for that, which he did not do. Oscar Gonzales has had a campaign sign up at the C&D Hardware on 11th for some time. Doesn’t seem to have helped much.
Letitia Plummer filed her appointment of Treasurer on July 8, the day of her announcement. We won’t see a finance report from her until January. As noted before, she has been lax in filing her city finance reports. I haven’t checked the current batch of city reports as I write this, so the state of her campaign finances could remain a mystery until then.
Commissioners Garcia and Briones are doing what you’d expect them to do. I’m sure they will run good campaigns. I hope they play well with others and help lift the tide in the county overall. Commissioner Ramsey is just breaking even, as he did in the previous report. He’s not up until 2028, he’s got plenty on hand, and he’s in a pretty solid precinct. I’d do the same.
Richard Vega and Raquel Boujourne are both Republicans, both in Precinct 2. No one with a report is listed as an opponent for Briones yet. $10K of Vega’s funds raised was an in-kind donation for food and a venue, so I presume for a fundraiser. I suspect his cash on hand total is not correct as a result. Boujourne loaned herself the $100K. They’ve got a ways to go. In a good year for them it might not matter so much. This cycle, they’ll probably need all the help they can get.
Most of the rest of the reports aren’t that interesting. The bigger-money offices, specifically DA and Sheriff, are on their off cycle, so they’re not doing too much. Christian Menefee is still County Attorney and so still has a report to file here, though he obviously didn’t do much with it. All of the fundraising and most of the expenses came from before his campaign announcement for CD18; the expenses that continued were for recurring items like software. I looked to see if he had transferred any funds to his Congressional account – assuming it’s legal to do that – and the answer is no. The non-County Judge incumbents don’t usually do much fundraising, and as far as I can tell don’t yet have any opponents. Chris Daniel, both his personal account and his PAC, filed reports but neither showed any funds raised, so I’m not counting him as a candidate.
Kim Ogg spent $3,077 and has $446 on hand. I just thought you’d want to know that.
I forgot that we will have HCAD elections next November – I believe one will be up then, and the other two in 2028. Either Kathy Blueford-Daniels is the trustee who has to run next year, or she’s just more active than the others.
OK, that’s what I’ve got for now. Next up is Congress. As always, let me know what you think.