Back Mic: Texas Governor’s 5 Biggest Donations Listed, Abbott Halves School Choice, House GOP Uncondemned

Top 5 Donations to Texas Gubernatorial Candidates

Republican Greg Abbott and Democrat Beth O’Rourke both posted huge fundraising tallies in their latest report, with O’Rourke displacing Abbott for a couple of million dollars.

Below are each candidate’s top five single contributions from the July midterm filing and the donor behind them.

Abbott

• $500,000 April 7 – Edward Rosicky Jr., president and chairman of Majestic Realty Co. from City of Industry, California
• $500,000 June 22 – James Pitcock, Jr., contractor for Williams Bros. Construction from Houston
• $450,000 March 31 – Kenny Trout, principal of Dallas-based Mount Vernon Investments
• $300,000 April 22 – William Harris, owner of Colony Ridge Development of Huntsville
• $300,000 April 25 – Stuart Stedman, principal of Stedman West Interests Inc. from Houston

O’Rourke

• $1,000,000 June 23 – George Soros, owner of Soros Fund Management of New York, NY
• $1,000,000 March 4 – Tench Cox, former venture capitalist at Sutter Hill Ventures in West Lake Hills
• $1,000,000 March 4 – Simone Cox, former CEO of Blanc & Otus and co-founder of the nonprofit CalMatters, News from West Lake Hills
• $500,000 June 28 – Our Texas PAC managed by Alan Metney, founder of iFLY Indoor Skydiving, located in Greenwood, Colorado.
• $300,000 June 30 – Washington, D.C.-based American Federation of Teachers PAC

Learn more about candidate fundraising here and the in-state and out-of-state fundraising gap here.

Abbott Halves Participation in School Choice Push

Back in January, Governor Greg Abbott hinted that school choice legislation would need to be passed during the 2023 legislative session. He doubled down on the idea at a campaign event this week.

“Parents should not be forced to send their child to a government-sanctioned school that teaches a critical race theory, or forces their children to wear a mask against their parents’ wishes, or forces them to attend a school that is not safe. “, he said at the campaign stop at Fort Stockton.

A day later, Abbott posed for a photo with school choice activist Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children.

The issue is set to be one of the biggest battles of the next legislative session with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick full support for school choice and House Speaker Dade Phelan’s reticence about support in his body.

“This is what we had on the floor of the House of Representatives during the budget night, which was a test vote [for vouchers]and about 40-45 out of 150 members would vote for it,” he said. told Chris Salcedo in an April radio interview. “So the delta is pretty big in school choice across the finish line.”

But if the governor decides to spend more of his political capital on the issue, the lower house could gain more support. While “vouchers” is a term often thrown around in school choice policy discussions, the preferred form of Abbott’s legislation has yet to be defined.

A motion to impeach the House Republican Party in Texas has failed

two weeks ago Texas informed about a recommendation from the leadership of the Republican Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives that three of its members have been formally censured for supporting the primary opponents of some of their colleagues.

State Reps. Jeff Cason (R-Bedford), Ben Lehman (R-Anderson) and Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) faced condemnation when two-thirds of the House voted in favor of the proposals.

In the end, each of these motions fell short of the two-thirds threshold in an anonymous digital vote.

Thoth said Texas scorecard as for the vote, “The Republican caucus voted overwhelmingly against censure of members who cover liberal members of the caucus.”