‘Necessary to compete’: Super PACs increase advertising ahead of Texas Senate race

Allison Bedwell, behavioral and social data science and Plan II Honors sophomore, said while watching the Texas football game against Texas State on television, she saw several political ads for the Senate race.

“I think it’s kind of frustrating when you’re just watching your team play and you’re kind of getting bombarded by political messaging, especially (when) a lot of times it seems kind of far-fetched,” Bedwell said. “It’s kind of almost humorous, but in a depressing way.”

Bedwell is not alone.

Labor Day is seen as the marker of fall campaign season beginning and political operations start “unloading their resources” around that time, said Joshua Blank, research director of The Texas Politics Project. He said while some people may know who they would vote for for a long time, a large portion of voters do not make their decision until the fall.

Blank said that there are very few campaign finance limits in statewide races in Texas, allowing a small number of donors to largely fund a campaign, especially through Super PACs.

A Super PAC, unlike a regular PAC, cannot make campaign contributions or coordinate directly with a politician’s team, but can make independent expenditures, meaning they can spend their own money to advertise for or against candidates. Super PACs can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, unions or other political committees.

“We can have well-funded candidates who can lose, but to compete, you need money because the state is huge,” Blank said. “It has multiple expensive media markets and millions and millions of voters, and so it’s not surprising that it’s such an expensive state to campaign in. But again, money doesn’t determine the outcome. It’s just necessary to compete.”

Super PACs can spend advertising money in any way they see necessary, including through television, digital or print advertisements, Blank said.

“(Super PACs) are very pragmatic and careful about where they spend their money. They generally don’t show up unless it’s a competitive race,” government professor Brian Roberts said. “(The) Texas Senate race is more competitive than it’s been in a while, and so it, not surprisingly, is attracting a lot of Super PAC money.”

According to The Texas Tribune, The Senate Leadership Fund, a major conservative Super PAC, has already spent $70 million advertising in the Texas Senate race. An anonymous source told The Texas Tribune that the connected entity Texas PAC will book another $30 million in advertisements, bringing the total to $100 million.

Talarico’s campaign described its funding as being 97% from small donors in an April news release from the campaign, and has advocated for banning Super PACs while saying he leads the fight against “billionaire mega-donors.”

Talarico has raised $72 million directly for his own campaign, according to the Texas Tribune. Lone Star Rising PAC, a Super PAC which has created advertisements favoring Talarico, recently received a $10 million donation from Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder and billionaire, according to data from the Federal Election Committee.

“One of the features of Talarico’s candidacy that’s made him such a threat has been his ability to raise money,” Blank said. “At the same time, it has long been known that regardless of who the Republican nominee turned out to be, whether John Cornyn or Ken Paxton, that that candidate would be well funded and at least equally financed, if not more heavily financed than Talarico.”

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