What Can $40K Buy You in Politics?

Well, I could give you my usual campaign wish list, but over at the Locke camp, it seems it can buy a mailing which targeted any candidate endorsed by the Houston GLBT Caucus.

As has been discovered by reading the campaign finance report of Steve Hotze’s hate PAC, two of Locke’s Finance Committee members (the people charged with raising cash for Locke) gave $40,000 to Hotze’s PAC.  As Whitless Humorings tells us:

According to the Conservative Republicans of Harris County latest finance report Ned Holmes (Gene’s Finance Chairman) and Jim Dannenbaum (a member of Gene’s finance committee) both gave $20,000 each to the PAC. This is the smoking gun. This is the proof that has been missing to connect Gene and Hotze the hate monger.

John at Bay Area Houston provides his two cents.

This is $40,000 of the $56,000 total  raised by Steven Hotze hate monger PAC from just 3 individuals and $6000 from Texans for Lower Taxes.

Over 71% of all Hotze’s donations came from Locke’s campaign staff. And you wonder why Locke would not denounce the endorsement?

Well, this certainly says a lot.  Here I thought Hotze had amassed a a huge group of anti-gay preachers to dole out some of the Sunday collection to pay for the endorsement mailer; instead, it was Locke’s people who paid for it.

UPDATE:  Another Locke Fail

The Chron now has the story.

One thing that caught my eye was the accusation that Parker was involved in some shenanigans regarding the Morales mailer that was sent out, as if it was the same thing as the Hotze-Locke Mailer.

According to the Hotze-Locke mailer, the ad was paid by Hotze’s PAC (and now we know that Locke supporters funneled money into that PAC).

A closer look at Morales’ ad shows that both Morales’ and Parker’s campaigns paid for the mailer.  If Locke had bothered to participate, his answers would have also been distributed, perhaps to even more voters than this distribution (and his campaign “paid for” disclaimer would have been on the mailer, unlike on the Hotze mailer.)  I’m not a big fan of Morales, but if he wanted to educate his supporters on each candidates’ platform, it could have been a good opportunity.

So, really?  Who’s avoiding the truth?