Bought and Sold

We're a year out from the midterm elections next November. Control of Congress hangs in the balance. Democrats are itching to rein in President Trump, while Republicans are pulling out every stop to keep power.

But behind the headlines, the real game is being played by billionaires. If the 2024 bromance between Trump and Elon Musk taught us anything, it’s that the richest Americans can pull the strings of democracy. 

In our penultimate episode of this season, we break down how the ultra-wealthy have doubled down on their political giving over the last decade, using their money to support candidates who align with their worldview. Year over year, their giving grows, stoking fears that our elected leaders are more beholden to these donors. 

Campaign finance reform and landmark Supreme Court decisions, like Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. FEC, have transformed money into a form of speech. With super PACs and massive political spending dominating the conversation, are wealthy donors compromising the integrity of our democratic process?

Special guests:

• Rick Hasen, political science professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA
• Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center
• Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas

This episode was produced by Kirk McDaniel. Intro music by The Dead Pens.

Editorial staff is Ryan Abbott, Sean Duffy and Jamie Ross.

Transcript

(Intro music)

Kelsey Reichmann: Welcome to Sidebar, a podcast by Courthouse News. I'm your host, Kelsey Reichmann, coming to you from Washington, D.C. I'm joined by Sidebar's Lone Star state correspondent, Kirk McDaniel. 

Kirk McDaniel: Howdy, how's D.C. under the new Trump administration? I've heard a lot about a few renovations on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

KR: Can't say I had White House demolition on my bingo card. Bye-bye, East Wing. Hello, billionaire funded ballroom. 

KM: You know, I think that's actually a really good place to start our conversation. President Trump's new ballroom is just the latest political cause to get America's wealthiest to open up their wallets. We're a year out from the midterm elections next November. Control of Congress hangs in the balance. Democrats are salivating for a chance to provide a check on Trump, but Republicans are pulling out all the stops to hold onto power. 

KR: If I learned anything from 2024, it's that billionaires will be involved. Who could forget Elon Musk's bromance with Trump? Democrats might have been less enchanted by Michael Bloomberg, but they took his money all the same. 

KM: Over the past decade, billionaires have become even more assertive in their giving and have sought to use their money to back candidates that align with their worldview. Year over year, their giving gets larger and larger, stoking fears that elected leaders are more beholden to these donors. 

KR: What exactly do these donors get in return for their spending, and does the money really help with the election? 

KM: That is exactly what I set out to learn. 

(Music break)

KR: Kirk, I'll admit that some money in politics is needed. 

KM: Yeah, I mean, how else will candidates get their name out there? And while the money itself is not bad, voters deserve to know who is financially backing candidates, or this opens the door to corruption and less than ethical activity. 

KR: But there are rules on how money can be used in elections. 

KM: Correct, and the history of campaign finance reform goes back to the early 20th Century, with several laws being passed to regulate corporate and union contributions in federal elections. These laws also sought greater transparency through requiring disclosure of who was giving the money and who was taking it. But our modern campaign finance story is actually born out of one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. 

News Clip: Good evening. The biggest White House scandal in a century, the Watergate scandal, broke wide open today. 

Rick Hasen: So, in the aftermath of Watergate, Congress passed an amended law. They'd already passed a law in 1971 called the Federal Election Campaign Act that regulated money in politics more than we'd seen before in the United States, but then after Watergate, much stricter limits were put in place. 

KM: That is...

RH: Rick Hasen. I'm a professor of law and political science at UCLA and I direct the Safeguarding Democracy Project. 

KM: These amendments Congress passed in 1974 placed all kinds of limits on the amount an individual, a political party or committee could give to a candidate. Additionally, these amendments created the Federal Election Commission, an agency that enforces federal campaign finance laws. 

KR: Oh, how times were different, both for what counted as a presidential scandal and Congress's ability to actually get things done. 

KM: Eh, in some ways, politics then wasn't so different from today. 

KR: How do you mean? 

KM: Well, for one, these reforms were challenged in court and ended up becoming a landmark decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Conservative U.S. Senator from New York, James Buckley, along with presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and groups of various political ideologies, sued then-U.S. Secretary of State Francis Valeo, challenging these new limits. 

RH: They argued that these laws were too restrictive on the First Amendment. Then the Supreme Court in Buckley issued a kind of split decision. They upheld some of the laws, the disclosure laws and the contribution limits, the limits on how much someone could give to a candidate or a party or a committee, but they struck down the limits on spending on independent campaigns and this provided the seeds for allowing the ultra-wealthy to spend whatever sums they wanted, so long as they were not doing so coordinating with a candidate. 

KR: The argument linking political contributions to protected speech gained traction through the Buckley decision. 

KM: That's right, and decades later, the same argument would be used by Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit group, in their suit against the FEC. The suit centered on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act, which prohibited independent political expenditures by corporations and labor unions. The Supreme Court sided with Citizens United, thus setting us on our path to the current state of campaign finance law as we know it today. 

RH: The reasoning of the decision led to some follow-on cases and lawsuits, and those eventually led to the creation of new entities, including what have come to be known as super PACs, which can pool together money from rich people, kind of shield their identity, at least partially, to the public and then spend those unlimited sums independently of candidates. 

KR: What is Professor Hasen's take on the current state of things? 

KM: Given these rulings, not very good. 

RH: So, our campaign finance system on the federal level is not working well. We have a Federal Election Commission that doesn't even have a quorum to enforce the campaign finance laws. We have so many exceptions to our rules that the judiciary created by a controversial interpretation of the First Amendment that the rules are not really effective in limiting big money in politics and we have a porous disclosure system, so, even when much of the money is being spent, it is not necessarily going to be money that is going to be disclosed to the public, even though those who use the system to try to influence politics can let the people know who they're trying to influence, that they're spending the money, but the public doesn't necessarily know. 

KR: Much in this country has changed since 1974, or even the Citizens United decision in 2010. What did Professor Hasen say were some of the biggest changes leading up to the 2024 election? 

KM: For one, the ability to spend your money without people knowing its source has really been a big thing. 

RH: You know, if George Soros wants to run an ad as George Soros, it would say, paid for by George Soros, and then some people wouldn't like that, or some people you know might judge the ad based on who that is, and a lot of people didn't want the identity. And so, even back in 2004, when George Soros wanted to spend money to support Democrat John Kerry for president against George W. Bush, Soros funneled the money through a political committee, which he wasn't really allowed to do at the time, it was uncertain as to what the law was, and the Federal Election Commission eventually fined the group that he gave the money to and said, you really can't take contributions over $5,000. So, now it's easier to give money through these committees and for the identity to be not hidden, because it's in the publicly filed reports but it's not on the face of the ad. It doesn't say who is funding America's PAC or whatever the name of the thing is going to be. 

Kamala Harris: I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message. 

Donald Trump: I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. 

Campaign Ad: FFPAC is responsible for the content of this ad. 

KR: The amount of money that these donors are giving has only grown larger and larger. 

KM: Professor Hasen told me that in the 2024 election cycle, billionaires were tacking on more zeros to those checks than ever before. 

RH: Now something different happened in the 2024 elections. I've been tracking how many of these ultra-wealthy people are willing to dip into their wallets so much that they spend at least $100 million. It's kind of an arbitrary number, but it's a very big number and until 2016, we didn't have anyone who ever crossed that threshold, even though you know again, after Buckley, that could have been something that a person trying to influence election could have done through an independent expenditure campaign. So, we crossed that threshold in 2016, we had one, and then 2020, we had two, and 2022, we had two. And then we get this explosion in 2024 where there are nine ultra-wealthy people each spending $100 million, each trying to get Trump elected and Republicans elected to Congress. 

KM: Open Secrets, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data, found that the top donor of 2024 was... 

KR: Elon Musk. 

KM: He shelled out a whopping $291 million to Republicans during the election. Below him, at $172 million, was the reclusive businessman Timothy Mellon, whom you may have heard of when he gave $130 million to the federal government to help pay troops during this year's government shutdown. Finally, bringing up third place with $148 million, was Miriam Adelson, the widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. 

KR: What about Democrats? Professor Hasen mentioned George Soros's name earlier and I know he's a big donor for liberal causes. Did he make the cut to be a top donor? 

KM: No, at least for 2024, he was not one of the top 100 donors, but former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the eighth spot on the list with his $64 million donation. To put this all back into context, there were more nine-figure donations last year than ever before in U.S. history. So, I asked Professor Hasen why 2024 was such a special year for billionaires to open up their wallets. 

RH: Elon Musk kind of showed that those with wealth don't need to worry about flaunting it. In the political system that you know, in our polarized system, there are probably just as many people who will be praising them as condemning them. I think a psychological barrier was breached and so you saw many more people spending the large sums. 

KR: So far, we've just talked about billionaires giving money. Does all this money actually help anyone win? 

KM: Well, looking at the numbers, Democrats raised nearly $3 billion for their 2024 campaigns. Republicans, on the other hand, raised about $1.8 billion. So, despite raising less, Republicans maintained control of the House of Representatives, flipped the Senate and regained the White House. 

RH: Does the candidate who gets the most financial support always win the answer? The answer is no.

KM: So many factors can go into why a candidate wins in a presidential race. The money certainly helps, it allows you to do more rallies, run ads, hire staff for our field offices but a candidate has to connect their message with the voters and drive them to turn out more than their opponent. For a moment, I'd actually like to go back to your question about money winning elections. While I was researching this episode, I focused a lot on how money drives outcomes. But since money in these federal races doesn't necessarily drive the outcome, what is it getting the person who's spending it? 

RH: What I think the money is buying is both a greater chance of winning as well as a greater chance of influencing the political decisions made by the person who's elected that you've supported. 

KM: It is this idea that brings us back to our biggest spender in 2024, Elon Musk. 

Saurav Ghosh: What did he get in return? So, I think the best-known exchange of what he got was DOGE, right, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. My name is Saurav Ghosh and I'm the director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center. I was at the FEC from 2015 through 2022, and I joined CLC right after. When I was at the FEC, I was doing federal campaign finance enforcement, and my job was essentially to review complaints that were filed and to determine if those complaints had any merit. 

KM: Saurav shared with me a tracker that the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center put out, keeping tally on how the president is rewarding donors like Musk in his new term. 

SG: Some of what our report talks about are the more discreet corporate policies that helped out his businesses. The whole issue with Starlink getting preferential treatment by the FAA. Then there was the issue of the ex-AI Grok chatbot and sort of the official push to get that incorporated into various agency functioning, so these are the kind of things which, I think, ironically, somebody as wealthy as Elon Musk might not have even been as affected as some of the other folks on our list, but they're very tangible examples of him being in an influential position, being able to obtain very favorable policies for whatever interests that he wanted as a direct return on the investment of his capital and his time helping to get Donald Trump elected president. 

KM: It's important to note that giving jobs to political donors is something that regularly happens when a new administration, regardless of party, takes over. But Saurav told me that he sees Trump's rewarding of donors slightly different this time than, say, his last administration or in other presidents' administrations. 

SG: We are trying to underscore the point now is that there is something different, substantively different, about the way in which Trump is approaching government and the role of government and how it interacts with specific people who have supported his interests, and so I think you know it's not uncommon to see some of these donors having access, you know, getting their calls returned, getting high profile meetings and, in some cases, even getting appointed to an ambassadorship or something else that they want. I would characterize the difference, though, in Trump's administration, as it goes deeper than just influence or access. I would point particularly to the fact that so much of Trump's cabinet and senior executive positions are composed of major donors. You know we have embassies all over the world. There are many, many ambassadors. There's only one secretary of education, for instance. There's only one, you know there's only a handful of these really senior executive positions, and I don't think there's any administration where this many of these incredibly powerful and influential people are, in fact, the donors. It's not just that you know, they're meeting with donors and sort of listening to them, they are themselves the donors. 

KR: Just off the top of my head, I can think of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who all gave donations to the Trump super PAC during the election. But what's the real danger of having these wealthy people playing a role in an administration? At the end of the day, they're supposed to advance the president's vision, right? 

KM: The worry for Saurav is once the time comes to do the work, will these individuals be working to serve the people or themselves? 

SG: The problem of special interests capturing policymaking, capturing elected officials, that's a problem regardless of the political affiliation of the president or whichever party controls the House and Senate. What we don't want, I think, as Americans, is to see that, regardless of which party wins or which candidates are elected, that the special interests continue to eat first, right, to always cut to the front of the line and have their interests protected. Because I think their goal in so many instances is to make sure that their interests are preserved and everyday Americans' interests are kind of pushed to the back. 

(Music break)

KR: Getting back to how money can help with winning elections. We talked a lot about federal elections, but I like to get closer to home for folks. How can money impact a statewide election or even a local election? 

KM: To guide this part of our conversation, I think it's best to keep in mind what Professor Hasen told me. 

RH: The rule of thumb is the smaller the race, the more that large outside money could have an influence, both in terms of who is elected as well as what policies those people might pursue when they are elected. 

KR: OK, so statewide races, let's start there. 

KM: Statewide races can be much like a presidential election, in that a candidate could raise less money but could go on to win. Something else that is quite interesting is that the money and who is throwing it around can end up becoming a part of the campaign. 

KR: What do you mean? 

KM: Consider Wisconsin's Supreme Court election that was held earlier this year. Despite being a nonpartisan race, it attracted national attention and several billionaires. Prior to the election, the high court was seen as ideologically liberal, with liberals holding a 4-3 majority on the bench. Looking to maintain the court's leftward lean, Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge, sought to fill a seat that was held by an outgoing liberal judge. Conservative Brad Schimel, a judge from Waukesha County, saw this as an opportunity to flip the court in the conservatives' favor, and there were some big issues the court was going to be taking up in the future, including abortion and redistricting. The race had the attention of billionaires from across the country, who funneled money into political action committees. In total, it was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with over $100 million spent. 

KR: Who spent more? 

KM: Data that was published by the Brennan Center for Justice showed that Schimel and groups supporting him spent around $54 million, while Crawford and her groups spent about $64 million. Much of that money went on to produce attack ads like this from an Elon Musk-funded PAC called Building America's Future, criticizing Crawford's record. 

Campaign Ad: Susan Crawford’s record? Disturbing and dangerous. A seven-year-old girl sexually assaulted. The attacker faced 100 years, Crawford let him off with only four. I don’t regret that sentence. A five-year-old violated? The predator should have rotted in prison. He got out in just two years. She protected them, not us. I don’t regret that sentence. I am proud of the work that I've done. Susan Crawford, putting criminals over your kids. 

KM: Now, Crawford ran ads against Schimel, going after his judicial decisions, but other ads focused on Musk as much as they did Schimel. Listen to this one that was put out by the state's Democratic Party, which, for the record, took a $1 million donation from George Soros. 

Campaign Ad: Brad Schmiel is corrupt and will do anything to get on the Supreme Court. I have to invest in knee pads, I have to crawl around begging people, please, please, please. And who did he beg? Elon Musk, a man who needs a guaranteed vote on the Supreme Court because his company is suing the state of Wisconsin. Schimel begged and Musk unloaded $10 million to rig the court. So, how much does it cost to buy off a corrupt politician? Just ask Knee Pad Brad. Please, please, please. 

KM: Crawford went on to beat Schimel by a little more than 10 percentage points. Professor Hasen told me that, because of Musk's involvement, the race was more than just a choice between the candidates. 

RH: Essentially the more liberal candidate was able to run against Elon Musk rather than against her opponent because he was so in their face. Between that and the kind of grief that he took for his work with DOGE in the United States government, I think he kind of pulled back from politics, at least for a time, and so I think one lesson that the ultra-wealthy are likely to learn is that, you know, you can put a lot of money into politics, but you may not want to be the face of that money because then you might encounter some serious blowback. 

KR: So, once again, money can play a role, but it didn't determine the outcome. Really, it may have been more of a drag on Schimel. 

KM: That's right. 

KR: Professor Hasen said, the smaller the race, the more influential the money is. Do you have any examples of when money made a difference in smaller races? 

KM: I do, and we'll be coming to my home state of Texas to see how billionaires invested in some state house races, which led them to getting key policies passed during this year's legislative session. To start off, we got to talk about education. For decades, Texas Republicans have fought to create a school voucher program where the state gives parents money to send their kids to a private school. This was a policy goal long held by leaders like Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. But not all Republicans support school vouchers, especially those who represent rural communities. Opponents have long held the concern that such a program would divert critical funds from the public school system and for a rural community where the school district may be the largest employer in the area, there's a fear that it's not just a kid's education at stake here. 

KR: What happened when all these factions faced off during the session? 

KM: So, in 2023, lawmakers in Texas were kicking off another legislative session and Abbott made vouchers a top priority. But he was in for an upset when those rural Republicans I talked about, and Democrats banded together in the Texas House to oppose any bill that created a school voucher program. In fact, Abbott and pro-voucher lawmakers failed several more times to pass a voucher bill in a few special sessions that followed. Not wanting to stand down from a fight, Abbott vowed to support Republican candidates who were pro-vouchers over anti-voucher incumbents in the Texas House during the 2024 primary. Additionally, our Attorney General, Ken Paxton, was also supporting primary challengers against Republicans in the Texas House who voted to impeach him in 2023. And if you haven't heard our episode about that wild legal story, I suggest you go check it out. 

KR: This is a strategy we've seen before at the federal level, where if a Republican goes against Trump, he may threaten to support a primary challenger against them. 

Josh Blank: If you have a reasonably solid candidate with money to spend, then you can have a competitive primary election in Texas. And given the fact that in most cases the race that takes place after that primary election is already determined to go to one party or the other, it means that all that really matters is what takes place in this primary, in particular in these Republican primaries. 

KM: That is Josh Blank. He is the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, and Josh explained to me how this strategy could work here in Texas. 

JB: Now, one of the things that allows for this opportunity is the fact that in Texas, we have incredibly low turnout primary elections, like many states, and we have overwhelmingly gerrymandered districts for state House or state Senate, and what this means is that, in general, it doesn't take a huge effort to create a significant primary challenge. 

KM: It's also worth mentioning that the money can flow more freely here in Texas than it does in federal elections. 

JB: This can all happen in Texas because we essentially have almost no campaign finance rules of real consequence, and so, unlike at the federal level, where wealthy individuals can't really directly engage in overwhelming fundraising or overwhelming funding advantages for one candidate or the other, in Texas that's not really the case, so that if a wealthy individual wants to throw tons of money at a candidate, there's really nothing that's going to stop them. It's why someone like Governor Abbott can have $80 million in the bank, because we don't really limit what individuals can give. 

KR: From what Josh is saying, it sounds like there's a narrow path for Abbott to succeed in ousting these anti-voucher Republicans. 

KM: Right, and while it works in theory, for over two decades, right-wing outside groups failed to oust Texas House members whom they saw as not conservative enough. But this strategy finally gained some success in the voucher fight, thanks in part to billionaire mega donors, including Tim Dunn and brothers Ferris and Dan Wilks. Really, there are many more of these wealthy donors, but I wanted to mention these two specifically because they are among, if not the top, political donors in the state. 

KR: Who are these guys? 

KM: They're men who became immensely wealthy through their oil companies in West Texas. They also belong to the far-right wing of the Republican Party in Texas. Kelsey, are you familiar with the media companies PragerU or The Daily Wire? 

KR: Oh yes, The Daily Wire is Ben Shapiro's conservative news and entertainment production company, right? 

KM: Yep, and the Wilks brothers are actually major investors in both of those ventures. One thing about Tim Dunn that directly ties him to the voucher issue is that he co-founded a nonprofit Christian private school. He also has a political action committee called Texans United for a Conservative Majority. Kelsey, could you actually read the PAC's about page for me? 

KR: Sure. ‘Texans United for a Conservative Majority is a grassroots PAC dedicated to supporting and electing true conservatives to political office in Texas. Our PAC is determined to distinguish between genuine Republicans and the Democrat-enabling lawmakers who are Republicans in name only,’ otherwise known as RINOs. ‘Texans United for a Conservative Majority is committed to promoting candidates who support the legislative priorities of the Republican Party of Texas and oppose the Austin Swamp.’ OK, I'm beginning to see how they fit into this larger primary fight. 

KM: Yeah, they're really opposed to reaching their ends through bipartisanship. 

JB: Because Republicans control all the levers of state government, there is nothing stopping them from enacting the entirety of the party platform. The problem is that the party platform is not a representative document of Republican voters in the state, let alone the state as a whole, because it's the representative document of party activists and the people who are willing to show up to these things. So, all party platforms have very extreme policies, sometimes very strange policies, but ultimately it can be used as a weapon against members of the party who aren't sufficiently committed to it. 

KR: So, how did the next election shape out for those Republicans who weren't committed to passing a school voucher bill? 

KM: The strategy finally succeeded. Once the dust had settled from the March primary and the May runoff elections, 15 incumbent Republicans had lost their seats. Now, Greg Abbott can take a lot of credit for getting rid of these members, but the money that flowed from mega donors to him certainly helped him keep the pressure on these incumbents. 

JB: He in many ways hand-delivered the only success these groups have ever had in getting rid of incumbent Republicans. But it wasn't because of the arguments that they had traditionally made, and it wasn't because these members had somehow failed their constituents, because in most cases, many of them had been re-elected multiple times. It was because Greg Abbott spent millions of dollars in their races on challengers, and you can draw a direct line between a contribution made by a Pennsylvania billionaire and a donation he made to Abbott specifically to go after these incumbents and the money that he spent going after them. 

KM: That Pennsylvania billionaire is Jeff Yass, a libertarian guy who donates heavily to candidates that support school vouchers. 

KR: What was the message to voters in the House races like? 

KM: This is another interesting wrinkle to this story. While Abbott and these billionaires were largely united against the incumbents over their votes against vouchers, the attack ads and mailers voters received, didn't really focus on that issue. 

JB: It was notable that most of the messaging in those campaigns had nothing to do with vouchers, and there's a reason for this, which is because vouchers is a niche issue. It's not a main issue for voters in general; it's not a primary issue for Republican voters. So, prior to Trump's re-election, the driving issue for Republican voters, without any competition at all, was immigration to the border, and that's what the campaigns were about. Greg Abbott wasn't running ads in these districts saying that this challenger to this incumbent was going to finally get vouchers across the finish line. He was running ads in those districts saying this will be my partner on the border. This candidate is the person I need in the statehouse to help me deal with the problem of undocumented immigration. Now, that's utterly insane, because if you look at the voting record of literally any Republican in the Texas Legislature over the last two decades, you're not going to find anyone these incumbents had done anything but given their full-throated support to everything having to do with combating undocumented immigration. But that was the issue that they were campaigned against and that was the issue ultimately, you know, that probably worked. 

KR: But these were incumbents. That had to have counted for something, right? 

KM: It certainly did in some races, and those lawmakers were able to fight back and win re-election. For others, they just weren't able to stand up to a well-funded candidate running ads against them. Now, to bring this story on vouchers up to the present day, Abbott and these wealthy donors succeeded in their effort to alter the composition of the state house, and earlier this year, when lawmakers came back to Austin, the fight over school vouchers was renewed. But, unlike in 2023, the Texas House, largely along party lines, voted in favor of a bill diverting tax dollars to pay for kids' private school tuition. For many, this voucher fight showed that wealthy individuals, aligned with state leaders, can shape the future of policy in the state. The biggest question that remains is whether the strategy can be used going forward to pass conservative bills that might not even be popular in the state. Josh said that while it worked this time, it might not work every time state. 

JB: Honestly, I don't think Abbott has ever been aligned directly with these particular donors in Texas, at least in a very overt sense. In some ways, the voucher primaries were notable because they were somewhat of an exception. In some ways, Abbott entering into that space and supporting challengers to Republican incumbents, gave these outside donors the chance to do something that they hadn't done before, which is knock off these incumbents who they wanted to knock off for a while. But it's not clear to me that this meant that this was anything more than a temporary alliance, if even an alliance at all. It was more just a confluence of interests. Abbott is like everybody else, has his own agenda and I don't think that his agenda and the agenda of these billionaires necessarily lines up 100% or even really overwhelmingly, because they're just coming from a different place with different, I think, overall goals. Abbott's goal is ultimately the goals of a politician, which is to remain in office, to remain in a position of power and to influence policy and politics in the state and maybe beyond, if that becomes his goal. The goal for these billionaires is essentially, honestly, to transform the state of Texas into a vision that they hold, and really only they know. 

KR: Do we know anything about the goals of Tim Dunn or the Wilks brothers? 

KM: They are light on the specifics, but it has been widely reported that they would like to see Christianity become more dominant in Texas life. They strive for a state where God is in the classroom and where people who go against their interpretation of the Bible hold less power in public life. That's including people who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. 

KR: So, these donors seemingly got what they wanted on school vouchers. What comes next for them? 

KM: Well, those of us who watch Texas politics are all waiting to see how these donors will shape the future of the Republican Party of Texas. Tim Dunn is a top individual donor to the Texas GOP and his PAC, Texans United for a Conservative Majority, has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars this year alone to help Republican lawmakers who share his worldview. That is including a $350,000 donation to our Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a staunch conservative who has aligned himself with the Christian nationalist wing of the party. You know, while we're talking about Dan Patrick, I think there's another connection to him and how money works in Texas. Going back to 2023, the Texas House voted to impeach Ken Paxton over accusations of him abusing his office to help a political donor. 

KR: I remember all this from your episode about the impeachment last year. If I recall, Patrick was basically the presiding judge of Paxton's trial in the Texas Senate. 

KM: And in the lead up to the trial start, Patrick took a $3 million donation from Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a group that was a staunch supporter of Paxton's. To Paxton or Patrick's critics, this donation and Paxton's subsequent acquittal became the smoking gun to prove that the trial was rigged. This donation actually came up in a conversation I had with Anthony Gutierrez. He's the executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nonpartisan democracy reform group. 

Anthony Gutierrez: It was right after that. You know, you see Dan Patrick make some really important decisions on like who is or is not going to be allowed as a witness and what type of witness they're allowed, which is going to, you know, influence how what type of questions and what kind of discovery is allowed. And those decisions directly led to Ken Paxton, who most of us think was incredibly guilty of so many things and should have been impeached, including, you know, the state House members who did vote to impeach him. But then you get to the Senate, Dan Patrick got $3 million, made some really, some suspicious decisions and, you know, that gets off in the Senate. So, no impeachment. I think that is such a clear example of you can't really trust the system as it exists today, because it's just a fact that people with wealth have more influence on the rest of us. They just do. 

KR: Wait a minute. Who was funding Defend Texas Liberty?

KM: It was none other than Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers. The oil men had given this PAC more than $100 million, but they aren't big funders of this group anymore. 

KR: What happened? 

KM: Well, the PAC's leader got caught meeting with the white supremacist online streamer, Nick Fuentes. After that news broke, Defend Texas Liberty stopped getting money from Dunn or Wilks. The group still has an active URL to this day but doesn't seem active in any current races. 

KR: Well, they're out of the picture, but the money is still flowing. It sounds like Texas will be a state to watch next year and for sure leading into the next legislative session. 

KM: Absolutely, and I'll be here to cover it all. Now, I always try to wrap up an episode like this about a topic so impactful, with a little something that people can do to be more engaged. I like to be a solutions guy.

KR: But... 

KM: When it comes to talking about money in politics, there really is no short-term solution, at least when we are talking about federal elections. Here's Professor Rick Hasen to tell us why that is. 

RH: Ultimately, we're not going to be able to have what I would consider a more equal campaign finance system until either the United States Constitution is amended, which is a very, very hard thing to do, requires super majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as getting three-quarters of state legislatures to agree, or we get a change on the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court returns again to where they were in the early 2000s, where they recognize that there are important issues on both sides, both speech issues that definitely deserve protection, as well as the concern about not having the wealthy have completely outsized influence over the process. 

KM: Saurav Ghosh at the Campaign Legal Center told me that even the FEC, his former employer, is in need of reforms so that it can do its work of keeping elections clean under the regulations that do exist. 

SG: I think the FEC needs a pretty fundamental overhaul. Whatever, again, whatever its original structure and functions, it was working well for many years, but it's really broken down in the last 15 years or so, and more recently in the last couple of years, the agency has started voting for it to deregulate, to sort of affirmatively tear down important campaign finance guardrails. It ends up leading to very favorable view of the candidates, the parties and the big money donors and I think they've lost sight of the fact that really their client as commissioners on the FEC is the American voters protecting the voters' right to transparency, making sure special interests have less influence, not more, and that's not happening right now. 

KM: In the short term, I wouldn't expect these issues to get much movement, no matter how the balance of power may shift between Republicans or Democrats in D.C. But Anthony Gutierrez at Common Cause Texas is looking ahead towards the future of how elections can be more transparent here in the Lone Star state. 

AG: There are so many big problems, you know, just federal campaign finance issues and things in Texas where we have no campaign finance limits, and all those are huge problems that we're trying really hard to think about how you make at least incremental progress in solving those. But the really big one that I think we're sort of more immediately looking at is on the local level. There's all these officials that are also in some cases raising and spending crazy amounts of money, but far less transparency and accountability. So, I think that's the problem we're really trying to take a look at and see if there's, is there a legislative fix that we can try to get past, you know, in the short term here in the next legislative session, you know, in next January 2027, when the legislature comes back. 

KR: As we said in the beginning, midterm elections are quickly approaching. 

KM: And the billionaire donors are already getting busy, stuffing PACs to influence the vote. I'd say right now is as good time than ever for us all to start looking at who's backing candidates, especially in the primary, even more so at the local level. 

KR: Be sure to keep an eye on courthousenews.com for election coverage throughout the next year. Thank you, Kirk. I know it wasn't a solution, but I'm feeling more informed going into the 2026 elections, and that counts for something, right? Join us next time for our final episode of 2025: From sandwich-wielding freedom fighter to the now infamous P. Diddy, we look back at all this crazy year had to offer through some of the wildest stories Courthouse News reporters covered in courtrooms across the country. See you next time. 

(Outro music)