How fundraising helps shape Texas political races

Pop quiz question: Does asking complete strangers for large sums of money but promising nothing tangible in return sound like a profitable business proposition?

Short but counter-intuitive answer: Yes — at least some of the time. 

Here’s the longer answer. Every few months or so until the end of the year, we are going to see reports from countless political candidates that they’ve collected millions and millions in contributions from people all over Texas, and maybe even from all over the country, in their quest to win whatever office they’ve filed for ahead of either the March 3 primaries or the Nov. 3 general election.

The donors, and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of them, cannot by law be told flat out that “if you give me X much money I’ll steer Y number of government contracts or something else of value your way.” Maybe there’s some wink-winking, nudge-nudging going on, with one side or the other assuming an unspoken deal has been cut. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

READ MORE: With the new year, Texas politics is about to shift into high gear 

Yet the more money that flows in, the more candidates ask for — and, in many cases, the more both sides give and get.

The late Jesse Unruh, who in the 1960s was speaker of the California State Assembly and served as state treasurer in the 1970s and ’80s, is credited with coining the phrase, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” That’s because professional strategists, image-makers, press aides, pamphlets, travel, air time and all the rest are expensive. 

And in the early stages of any campaign, before most people tune in and before most polling can be considered reliable, money is often seen as the clearest measure of a candidate’s strength. 

The obvious example is Gov. Greg Abbott, who this year is running for an unprecedented fourth four-year term. It would not be out of the question to assume that a Republican officeholder or two with a modicum of statewide name recognition might want to make the case that Texans may be ready for some new blood. But anyone who had thought about making such a leap would have done so with the full knowledge that, at last count, Abbott was sitting on a war chest north of $90 million. It could easily be over $100 million by now, and Abbott is considered a shoo-in for renomination.

On the Democratic side in the governor’s race, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin is pointing to Abbott’s bed of cash as a means of spinning the race as a match between David and Goliath, with her in the role of the underdog — who, in the biblical telling of the story, emerges as the unlikely winner.

“If you’re ready to take our state back from Abbott and his billionaire donors, join our fight today,” says Hinojosa, whose main Democratic rival is Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, on her fundraising website.

The art of pleading for money has, over the decades, morphed into more of a science. Candidates from both parties use breathless prose, artificial deadlines and sometimes a dose of humility to add a sense of urgency to their appeals.

“I hate asking for money … but the swamp is about to spend a fortune to TAKE ME OUT and replace me with a RINO!” state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, said in a recent social media post.

The end-of-year fundraising pitches by Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico, a Texas House member from Austin, had something of a  “truck month” TV commercial vibe, noting that Dec. 31 was the “deadline” for fourth-quarter contributions for 2025. Unsaid was that Talarico would be happy to accept a donor’s check on Jan. 1 and each day thereafter, just like a Ford dealer will gladly sell you a new F-150 whenever you’re ready to buy one, whether it’s truck month or not.

Talarico’s rival for the Democratic Senate nomination, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas, sprinkled in a dash of folksiness to connect with supporters, and to stimulate their generosity.

“Hey, y’all. I know you’re tired of hearing from all the politicians,” she said in a selfie video on Facebook. “But let me tell you something. We need to shut the haters up because they were so mad that I was courageous enough to do what I always do, which is to stand for the people.”

One thing pretty much every candidate has in common when it comes to raising money is that they make it as easy as possible. There’s a “donate” button on every credible political website that takes users to a series of more buttons with specific amounts they can give. But if you’re moved to click on any of them, a word of caution.

There’s also a less conspicuous box that you can check or not. If you happen to check it, what you might have thought was a one-time gift will turn into a recurring tapping of your checking account. For those folks, they will get something tangible in return for their generosity: a smaller-than-expected balance on their monthly bank statement.