Texas PACS: A Roundup of the Special Interests
Driving Texas' Political Action Committees
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Business, Labor &
Ideological Compared
From 1995 through 1997, 974 general- purpose PACs reported $56 million in expenditures benefiting candidates and other political activities. The accompanying chart compares the total expenditures of PACs sponsored by:
Two out of three PAC dollars came from PACs sponsored by businesses, corporations or business trade associations. Business-related PACs spent a total of $37 million (66 percent of Texas’ PAC total). More than half of Texas’ active PACs (517) were affiliated with businesses that promote the interests of a particular private-sector industry. In fact, 37 of the state’s 50 largest general-purpose PACs are directly affiliated with a particular business interest.
The biggest single PAC category, ideological and single-issue PACs,
accounted for 29 percent of all Texas PAC spending ($16 million). The 311
PACs in this category include political party committees and cause-oriented
groups that sought to influence issues ranging from civil-justice tort
laws to abortion policy. In 
contrast
to the strictly business categories, these PACs may or may not promote
a pro-business agenda. Expenditures by these PACs are dominated by 187
PACs affiliated with one of the two leading political parties. Together,
they spent more than $12.1 million.
Out spent by business by a ratio of 14:1, 93 labor union PACs spent less than $2.6 million. As such, “Big Labor” cut a small profile in Texas.
Researchers did not have enough information to classify 53 relatively small PACs. These unclassified PACs spent $202,897, accounting for less than one-half of one percent of all PAC expenditures.
As expected, most PAC spending during the three-year period studied occurred in 1996; PACs spent 56 percent of their total expenditures for the period in this election year. While spending in both off-election years was significantly lower, spending in the non-election year of 1997 was up 22 percent over the previous non-election year of 1995. If this trend of escalating political spending holds in 1998 as expected, Texas PACs will spend considerably more than the $31.2 million that they spent in the preceding election year of 1996.
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