Regular commenter Mainstream has been investigating the complex money trail of the various anti-HERO factions and documenting it in the comments for the 8 day finance reports: Pro- and anti-HERO post. I’m putting his two most recent entries here to make sure everyone sees them; they were left late Thursday night:
The funding for the anti-HERO forces is much more complicated to analyze, because they formed multiple committees, and filed much of their reporting with the State Ethics Commission, rather than with the City of Houston.
All of the interrelated committees have Bart Standley as their treasurer, and the names of the groups include Conservative Republicans of Texas, Conservative Republicans of Harris County, Campaign for Texas Families, Citizens for Restoration (of theocracy).
Former Congressman Tom Delay is being paid by the Campaign for Texas Families about $1400 for travel associated with events, through his Sugar Land based First Principles LLC.
The Campaign for Texas Families gets its money from Conservative Republicans of Texas.
The Campaign for Houston is shown donating $79,000 to Conservative Republicans of Harris County, and the Conservative Republicans of Texas gave $2500 to the Conservative Republicans of Harris County.
Jeff Yates’ consulting company gets paid $80,000 for “advertising expense.”
Harris media in Austin is also being paid. Gulf Direct, which is Kevin Burnette, also in Austin, is also a consultant.
There is a separate statewide Campaign for Houston committee whose main donors are former failed congressional candidate Peter Wareing ($20,000), and Jack A. Cardwell ($25,000) a trucking executive from El Paso who has donated gobs of money to mostly Republicans, but even some Democrat officeholders.
I am not sure what to make of all the back and forth transfers between these committees, and the fact that the reporting is only being done in Austin, and not with the Houston filings.
And I see nothing on the Campaign for Houston filings to correlate with the reported donation of $79,000 to Conservative Republicans of Harris County.
[…]
Digging deeper, I found the $79,000 transfer from Campaign for Houston to Conservative Republicans of Harris County.
I also found $100K for TV to David Lenz Media and $120K to Big Bucks for TV and Radio.
Donors to the state PAC for Campaign for Houston include: County Commissioner Jack Cagle ($1000), city controller candidate Bill Frazer ($500), County Court at Law Judge Clyde Leuchtag ($50), State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst ($5000), voter registrar Mike Sullivan’s office employee Valoree Swanson ($100), former losing congressional candidate Ben Streusand ($2500), former losing judicial candidate Ric Ramos, a family lawyer whose wife is a judge ($15,000), former losing judicial candidate Don Self ($2000), Terry Lowry of the Link Letter publication ($1000), car dealer Mac Haik ($5000), and Alan Hartman ($100,000).
One needs to know who one’s enemies are. My sincere thanks to Mainstream for his diligence and persistence.
Valoree Swanson resigned from my office on October 23rd.
So Mike where are you on the HERO ordinance?