So, it’s the first weekend in November 2022, and you know what that means boys and girls! That means Election Day 2022 is right around the corner, next Tuesday in fact.
As one should expect, the rhetoric, hysteria, and hyperbole being spewed out by candidates, campaigns, and the media are going over the top as Election Day approaches. The Houston Chronicle has certainly gotten into the act. To quote James Lennon of the Kingwood Tea Party:
Learned yesterday, from the Chronicle, that republicans asking Harris County Hispanics to vote for them is a hate crime. Today’s news from HC is that it is election malpractice for a Republican candidate to ask for and receive large donations from successful Texas Republicans.
Mr. Lennon here was in part referring to a Houston Chronicle editorial piece, where the Chronicle editorial board called on Harris County Republican Party judge candidate Alexandra Mealer to return big campaign donations from so-called far-right mega doners. The Chronicle duly noted that Mrs. Mealer has successfully raised $8.6 million for her campaign to win the Harris County judge race against her Democratic Party incumbent opponent Lina Hidalgo. A decent chunk of that $8.6 million came in the form of big campaign donations from Houston hometown entrepreneurial hero Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, Houston real-estate magnate Richard Weekly, and Texas oil barons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. In the interest of full disclosure, I have donated to Alexandra Mealer’s campaign also. The Chronicle editorial board goes on to decry the alleged horrors that might occur should Mealer win the county judge race.
Yet here are the kickers. First of all, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, Mealer might not win the race. Second, there’s the whole issue of asking, how much does it matter to you who wins the race? Richard Weekly might have an immediate interest in the race, as land use and housing are often deeply affected by local laws and regulations. Bare naked interests, however, don’t necessarily explain Jim McIngvale’s contributions, nor do they explain the West Texas oil money. Maybe they simply see Mealer as a strong candidate with great prospects in her future and they want to help her along.
More to the point, however, is the Chronicle’s own previous behavior and attitudes towards big money campaign contributions rolling into political races. It was widely noted some years back that left-leaning billionaire George Soros donated quite a bit of money to local district attorney races around the country. One recipient of Soros’s money was Houston’s own Kim Ogg, who received a cool $500,000 advertisement blitz donation to her campaign, courtesy of Soros. So, what was the Chronicle’s reaction to that? That’s easy – the Houston Chronicle editorial board didn’t say boo about it.
So there you go.
Mrs. Mealer does not need to return the big campaign donation money to her donors, nor should she do so. If Soros money can flow to a prominent local Democrat, the same goes for Republicans. And personally, I don’t see any problems with that. If you really want to stop the flow of big money into politics, then maybe you shouldn’t be demanding for the government to do so much. Then it wouldn’t matter as much who gets elected, and there wouldn’t be such a big reason for the money to flow that way in the first place.