The Texas Nationalist Movement launched the Texas Outside Money Index on Monday, a public database that traces the money in Texas politics back to where it comes from to reveal how much money flows from other states into Texas elections. Live at whoboughttexas.com, it sorts every itemized contribution to a Texas campaign by where the donor lives and scores each officeholder and candidate on the share of their money that comes from outside the state.
The index runs entirely on public records: the itemized reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission and, for out-of-state committees, the Federal Election Commission. Every dollar lands in one of three buckets, Texas, outside Texas, or unresolved, the last for money that current disclosure rules leave untraceable. Money routed through political action committees is traced back down the chain to its original source. The outside share it reports is a floor, not a ceiling.
The site shows figures for the lifetime candidates, officeholders, and PACs along with the figures for the current election cycle. That share is also calculated one filer at a time. For each of 314 officeholders and candidates active this cycle, the index adds up what they raised and what others spent to put them in office, traces every dollar to the donor’s home state, and reports how much of it came from outside Texas.
Texas elections should be decided by Texans, and Texans alone. While the actual impact of this outside money is debated, academic studies have raised questions about how it ultimately affects how a candidates represent their constituents who are actually in Texas and what candidates feel they owe to interests outside of our state.
The index does not assert that outside money decided any election but it does expose information that has not been readily available to voters in the past.
You can check out the index at whoboughttexas.com.
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