According to a recent study* by Ballotpedia, 97.3 percent of state legislators seeking reelection have advanced to the general election. This turnover rate isn’t unique. In fact, it’s in line with the percentage of incumbents advancing from the primary to the general elections in 2018 (97 percent) and 2016 (97.5 percent). The caricature of the …

Why Texans Should Care About Redistricting Before the events of 2020 redirected both state and national attention toward far-reaching issues like the coronavirus and allegations of systemic racism, much of the focus of the Texas election season was centered on the upcoming redistricting process.  While it may sound innocuous — even tedious, particularly compared to …

Lobbying is big business Lobbying is one of the most common activities in government. Hundreds of corporations, organizations, and governmental entities hire lobbyists to persuade legislators on issues as wide-ranging as agriculture to healthcare. So far this election cycle, more than $640 million has been committed to lobbying in Texas — that’s twice as much …

Last week, Texas campaign finance reports were released. We’ve cleaned up the data and made it easy to search, so you can see for yourself who’s giving and who’s getting in Texas politics. Here are three surprising headlines to get you started:  Lobbying Dwarfs Everything.  TWICE as much money has been spent on lobbying as …

Texas candidates just filed their semiannual campaign finance reports, giving voters a behind-the-scenes look into their fundraising as they head into the final stretch before the November elections.  To give you a fair comparison, we pulled the numbers from the same time frame in 2018. The headline from the data was easy: donations to Democratic …