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Hiding Their Influence: Chapter 1,
Executive Summary
Download a PDF of Chapter 1 (48 K)
Download PDF of entire report (1.5 MB)
Campaign finance is an important part of Texas politics. Individuals and political action committees (PACs) contribute significant sums of money to Texas political campaigns. While campaign contributions are technically “public information,” it unfortunately takes a lot of digging to uncover the truth about exactly who is giving how much, when there is an attempt to hide or disguise contributions.
This report is an examination of the massive influence that a small group of plaintiff lawyers—known commonly as trial lawyers—exert on Texas’ political system through their injection of millions of dollars in contributions. In just the last 18 months, since Jan. 1, 2000, a handful of trial lawyers poured over $7.3 million into Texas politics, with $3.3 million ending up in the hands of the Texas State Democratic Party.
The research involved in compiling the financial contributions detailed in this report required extensive unraveling of reports on file at the Texas Ethics Commission. Accurately tracking the monetary influence of Texas’ most prominent trial lawyers is extremely difficult. While it is possible to search state records for contributions by a single individual, simply reporting those financial totals would seriously understate the extent of that person’s contributions.