Spreading the money around......Posting from the hip here ....
Posted on 04/22/2004 5:21:15 PM PDT by YCTHouston
The Democratic Party's biggest contributors in Texas appear to have found a marquee-name candidate to rally behind for a statewide race at or near the top of the ticket in 2006.
State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
The Republican comptroller during the past month raised tens of thousands of dollars from trial lawyers whose wealth and generosity is usually reserved for Democratic candidates. A big chunk of the cash she received from high-profile members of the plaintiffs' bar was contributed at an event hosted by Houston attorney John Eddie Williams - one of the five private lawyers hired to represent the state in the landmark tobacco lawsuit several years ago. Williams is the current president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
The law firm headed by another member of the so-called "tobacco five," Walter Umphrey of Beaumont, gave Strayhorn $5,000 to Strayhorn's political organization the day of the March 25 Houston event. Umphrey also contributed indirectly through political action committees that donated to Strayhorn this month.
Several other high-powered law firms that specialize in personal injury litigation donated money to the comptroller that same day. One of the firms, Baron & Budd, employs, Democratic State Rep. Steve Wolens of Dallas and specializes in asbestos cases. Several of the lawyers who donated to the comptroller have been named among the best at their business in the state and the nation by magazines such as Forbes, Texas Monthly and Texas Lawyer. That group includes Houston's Richard Warren Mithoff, a nationally personal injury lawyer who gave the Republican comptroller a $5,000 donation.
The lawyers and law firms on Strayhorn's latest list of contributors have several things in common. They've donated vast sums of money to Democratic candidates at the state and national levels and they rarely share any of that with candidates for the GOP. They are the enemy in the eyes of tort reform advocates. They don't seem to care much for Governor Rick Perry - and they are universally loathed by most Republicans as a result of all of the above.
But Strayhorn says she's proud to have support from a diverse group of contributors. "She gets money from doctors and lawyers and business men and women," Strayhorn's spokesman, Mark Sanders, said. Some of the lawyers who contributed recently studied under the comptroller's father, the late Dean Keeton, at the University of Texas law school
The contributions came to light in an updated report that Strayhorn filed this week with the Texas Ethics Commission to reflect a change in her campaign treasurer after former state GOP Chairman George Strake resigned the post last week in protest of Strayhorn's unofficial but highly aggressive campaign against Perry for most of the past year. While most of the known Democrats who gave to Strayhorn are trial lawyers, she also received contributions from businessmen with Democratic credentials such as Greg Lamantia, a McAllen beer distributor who gave 11 state Senate Democrats the use of his airplane for their escape to Albuquerque, New Mexico to protest Congressional redistricting last year. Lamantia picked up a $5,000 bill for Strayhorn to fly on his plane in early March.
The recent windfall from personal injury lawyers and other Democrats might lead spectators to think that Strayhorn might be considering a party switch and race for governor as a Democrat in two years. But she has already jumped ship once - leaving the Democratic Party in the mid-1980s when she ran as a newly-converted Republican in losing bid for Congress. In fact, she switched parties several years before Perry. But party switchers have become a rarity in the past decade in Texas - and it would be unheard of on any high level in Texas political competition for someone to try to pull off a double-switch.
"She's a Republican and proud of each and every contributor," Sanders said of the comptroller.
Even though Strayhorn reaped contributions of more than $50,000 from identifiable plaintiff trial lawyers and close to $200,000 from donors with ties to Democrats in general this year, she hasn't been abandoned by GOP base support at this point in time.
East Texas chicken king Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim gave Strayhorn more than any of the individual trial lawyers with a $25,000 contribution to her political account a week before the money from Williams, Umphrey and the other attorneys came in. Virgil T. Waggoner of Dallas, another major GOP donor over the years, contributed $5,000 to the comptroller. HEB food stores CEO Charles Butts donated $25,000 to Strayhorn as well. While winning substantial financial support from trial lawyers, she also received a $500 contribution from Leo Linbeck, the senior chairman of the trial lawyers' most serious rival - Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
By the same token, some of the lawyers who sent checks to Strayhorn have donated occassionally to Republican candidates. For example, Fred Baron, whose Dallas firm gave $2,500 to Strayhorn, contributed $6,000 to Republican Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst last year. Mithoff donated $5,000 to Dewhurst in 2003 as well. Despite being a staunch opponent of lawsuit limitations, Houston attorney Mark Lanier, who donated $5,000 to the comptroller, has probably given as much or more to Republicans.
If Strayhorn runs for governor in 2006 as many Republicans and Democrats expect, she could conceivably end up paired against Democrat John Sharp in a general election campaign. Sharp's employer, the Dallas-based tax firm Ryan & Co., doesn't appear to be worried about that. The firm was Strayhorn's biggest contributor during the past three months with a $75,000 donation to her campaign. The company's leader, George Ryan, kicked in an additional $50,000 to Strayhorn's war chest. Besides ties to the tax firm and the fact that they both have held the job Strayhorn has now, Sharp and Strayhorn share another common thread in their disapproval of Perry. Sharp lost a close race against Perry in the 1998 lieutenant governor's contest - and there's always the possibility that the two could face again at some point in the future.
The feud between the two high-ranking Republicans was spurred initially when Strayhorn refused to certify the state budget after the regular session ended last year. It's intensified over the course of the past several months - and it reached a new level of bitter animosity in the past several days as Strayhorn has dissected Perry's school finance plan for the special session that kicked off today, likened it to the Hindenberg and declared it disastrous for taxpayers, school children and state government.
Perry and his staff have dismissed Strayhorn's sharp attacks on his property tax relief and educational achievement plan essentially as wildly exaggerated rhetoric that's politically motivated. While Strayhorn refuses to say what her political plans might be for 2006 when she will have the choice of running for re-election to a third term, seeking higher office or retiring from politics. She appears to be tentatively laying the groundwork for a possible primary campaign against Perry in the 2006 gubernatorial race - although she probably won't make a final decision until waiting to see whether U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison will make a bid for governor that year as some Republicans predict.
Spreading the money around......Posting from the hip here ....
I have little regard for the Mom .....
She makes herself a pretty big(mouth) target around here, doesn't she ?? ...
hehe ! Thank you. ;^)
I've heard of her . . .
It won't work. Texans won't be fooled by a wolf in sheep's clothing. I think her political career is over in 2006.
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