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Hiding Their Influence: Chapter 5,
How do they get away with it?
Download a PDF of Chapter 5 (60 K)
Download PDF of entire report (1.5 MB)
More than $7 million of trial lawyer money has been funneled into Texas political races in the last 18 months with scant notice. How is it that the activities and influence of these kingmakers of Texas politics—whose six-figure contributions define them as the financial elite among political insiders—goes virtually unreported to the public?
Part of the answer is that these trial lawyers go to extraordinary lengths to conceal their political contributions by using a variety of innocuous-sounding political action committees. Another part of the answer is that accurately following this twisting money trail is a colossal undertaking
requiring an inordinate amount of research time.
This is where research and public policy organizations step in to monitor the contribution and expense reports that state election laws require almost all candidates for public office to regularly file with the Texas Ethics Commission. These resource organizations, known commonly as “watchdog” groups, analyze and interpret contribution and expense data and routinely report their findings to the press. In their reporting, media outlets often rely heavily on these sources of information.