02.24.10

Bob Perry looms large in Williamson County GOP House races

Posted in 2010 Primary, HD-20, HD-52, Money In Politics, Williamson County at 6:05 am by wcnews

According to the eight day out reports, home builder and right-wing sugar daddy Bob Perry is making his presence known, contributing a total of $95,000 to his candidates in two local House GOP primary races. The largest single political donor in Texas tapped Larry Gonzales and Milton Rister for largess as they seek the Republican nominations for House districts 52 and 20.

In HD-52 it looks like a two candidate race between Larry Gonzales and John Gordon. Gonzales in the current filing raised over $83,000, $70,000 of that from Bob Perry ($40,000) and his wife Doylene ($30,000). Gordon is largely self-financing his campaign and spent just shy of $48,000 over the last filing period. The two other candidates, Alyssa Eacono (raised $7,000/spent $16,000) and Stephen Casey (raised $1,200/spent $2,300), are lagging behind in the money race.

In HD-20 there are three candidates spending and raising significant money - Milton Rister, Dr. Charles Schwertner, and Stephen Thomas.

Milton Rister raised just over $46,000 this filing period. Perry gave him $25,000 of that. Also giving to Rister were former GOP candidate for Governor Clayton Williams ($10,000), James Leininger ($2,500), and a variety of Oil interests - KOCHPAC ($1,000), Conoco Phillips ($1,500), and Chevron ($1,000).

AAS reports on HD-20 and that Dr. Charles Schwertner spent $123,000 on his campaign in the last month.

Charles Schwertner dished out more than $123,000 from Jan. 22 to Feb. 20, according to campaign finance reports.

The next highest spender, Milton Rister, spent about $34,000 in the same period.

Another candidate, Stephen Thomas, listed expenditures of about $32,000.

Patsy Williams, the final Republican in the race, had about $2,200 in expenses

This race is still likely to come down to a runoff. The question is, which two will make it?

[UPDATE]: Later this week it was reported that Stephen Thomas had received $25,000 from Bob Perry, which is the exact amount that Milton Rister received from Perry. Thomas was also formerly the head of the now defunct TRCC, aka the home builder protection agency, that was setup to protect builders like Perry from lawsuits when they built sub-standard homes.

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