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Hiding Their Influence: Chapter 4,
Hiding the Money
Download a PDF of Chapter 4 (188 K)
Download PDF of entire report (1.5 MB)
The “Tobacco Five” and 10 other trial lawyer firms in Texas are doing much more than directly handing out hundreds of thousands dollars to political candidates. In fact, a side project of their creation dwarfs the above-board contributions that are easily traceable through records on file at the Texas Ethics Commission. In what appears to be an attempt to erase their fingerprints, the “Tobacco Five” have concocted a series of generically named political action committees through which they are slipping—largely unnoticed—millions of dollars into scores of political campaigns.
More than $2.7 million flowed through just three of the little-known trial lawyer-funded Texas PACs in the 2000 election cycle. Of that, 49 percent—$1.3 million—is directly from a single source, the “Tobacco Five.”
Once deposited in one of the innocuous-sounding PACs, the disguised tobacco money is safely shifted back and forth through other PACs in the campaign finance system before finally ending up in the hands of individual candidates and the Texas Democratic Party.