Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.
“Christians are rare in this world.” — Martin Luther, On Trading And Usury, 1524
Texas’ top Democratic contenders have put anti-corruption front and center in their current campaigns to end the state’s 30 years of GOP reign.
No candidate with a D next to their name has won a statewide race since 1994, and that’s left Republicans in control of every lever of power in the Lone Star State.
In early September, State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, announced his intent to change that by winning the seat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s comfortably held since 2002.
“We haven’t had competitive elections in this state for a long time,” Talarico told TV station KSAT last week. “When we have politicians who are serving the needs of their billionaire mega-donors instead of the needs of Texans, then you see things like healthcare and housing and child care become way too expensive. … Republican politicians promised to lower the cost of everything and they promised to drain the swamp. But just a year later, everything is more expensive, working families are falling further behind and corruption in Washington is the worst it’s ever been.”
To Talarico’s point, “Donald Trump just had the most lucrative year of his life.” For Forbes, Dan Alexander estimated the former reality show star’s net worth at $7.3 billion, saying, “No president in U.S. history has used his position of power to profit as immensely as Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump family’s expanding cryptocurrency empire alone has “generated $1 billion in profit” this year, the Financial Times reported as the White House distributed Get Out of Jail Free cards to incarcerated crypto creeps like Halloween candy. Credible media reports of outright bribery and other ethics violations continue to dog members of the administration, while official investigations — not to mention consequences, legal or otherwise — remain elusive.
One needn’t go to Washington to find greased palms, though.
This month, State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, announced a run against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s seeking his fourth consecutive term.
“Hinojosa laid the groundwork for her corruption allegations, calling attention to a report by Public Citizen, the nonprofit consumer advocates,” Brant Bingaman wrote for the Austin Chronicle. That Public Citizen report, featured in the Current’s reporting and my last column, revealed that Abbott awarded $950 million in no-bid state contracts to prominent contributors to his campaign PAC.
However, ”the executives identified by Public Citizen did not include Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who gave Abbott a record-setting $12 million last year as the governor moved heaven and earth to win approval [for] allowing families to spend public taxpayer money on private schools for their children,” Bingaman wrote.
Even so, Hinojosa has criticized the Texas Comptroller “for providing a $50 million contract to Odyssey, a tech company that received a $500,000 prize from Yass in 2023, to oversee the voucher program.”
“It’s just another grift,” Hinojosa told CBS News. “It is a way to pad the pockets of the well-connected.”
But Hinojosa wasn’t done there.
“You don’t get that kind of campaign cash by doing the bidding of the people,” she told Texas Monthly of Abbott’s $87 million campaign war chest. “You get it because you’re corrupt. And that is a primary issue in this campaign: He can keep his dirty money, and we’ll get the people of Texas on our side.”
Dems don’t own a monopoly on anti-corruption messaging, however. Nate Sheets, a Republican candidate for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, spilled the tea on Sid Miller, the current holder of that office, in a recent Express-News op-ed.
In 2021, Miller’s longtime political consultant, Todd Smith, was arrested on charges that he solicited more than $150,000 in bribes for procuring hemp licenses that cost $100. Even though Smith pled guilty, he was subsequently rehired as Miller’s chief of staff.
“This is how Miller operates: one set of rules for his insiders, another for everyone else,” Sheets wrote. “That’s not leadership, that’s rewarding corruption.”
Texas aspirants could certainly learn a thing or two from U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia.
“Since Citizens United, this political system has been corruption on steroids, and that is a big part of why policy doesn’t serve ordinary people,” he told the middle-of-the-roaders over at Pod Save America. “So, as Trump poses this radical threat to the rule of law and the Constitution — things that we have to protect — we can’t just become mere guardians of the status quo. We have to be about change and reform.”
Ossoff cited his record of not accepting contributions from federal lobbyists or corporate PACs and sponsoring legislation to ban members of Congress from trading stock.
“We have to acknowledge that the corruption is bipartisan,” he advised. “The whole Congress is captured by big money, and people want to hear that we recognize that, because it’s true.”
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy penned that infamous Citizens United decision, and Firing Line host Margaret Hoover quizzed him about it this month when he appeared on her PBS program.
“In 2024, over $1.4 billion of non-disclosed dark money was spent on political advertising trying to influence voters in the election. Do you ever think about the unintended consequences?” Hoover pointedly asked.
Kennedy admitted that the sleazy death spiral was predictable, but put the responsibility back on voters.
“What the voters must do is demand disclosure — see where the money’s coming from,” he said. “And if they see that some millionaire or billionaire from another state is pouring huge amounts of money into their district, they can vote against that candidate. An educated citizenry is necessary to make democracy work. You can’t be indifferent.”
Except, according to Pew Research, 80% of Americans already believe campaign donors hold too much influence over Congress. What do we do, Justice Kennedy, when most every candidate is on the take?
The anti-monopolist Matthew Stoller, in a must-read piece for the conservative journal American Affairs, noted, for example, that the corrupting tentacles of Meta, the world’s sixth-largest corporation by market cap, encircle the elites of both parties.
“Joe Biden’s chief of staff served on Meta’s board of directors prior to his White House role,” Stoller noted, adding “under Donald Trump, Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are well-known and fierce allies of the firm.”
The bottom line is, corruption is the antithesis of participatory democracy.
For instance, can anyone truly contend that regardless of how the Project Marvel vote comes out this November, the negotiations were maximally transparent or that ordinary San Antonians had a substantive role in the process?
“America is a very cynical place for a reason,” as Stoller ominously stated.
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