III. Top Donors

Having analyzed the major-party candidates who raised $5 million so far for the 2002 Texas Supreme Court elections, this report now identifies the top donors to these candidates. Law firms are the biggest donors to judicial races, with four law firms each giving more than the biggest non-law firm donor: Texans for Lawsuit Reform.¹²  Defense firms accounted for eight of the top-10 law-firm donors, including the top two donors to the court: Vinson & Elkins and Fulbright & Jaworski. Two plaintiff firms also ranked among the top 10 firms: Fleming & Associates and Watts & Heard.
 

Nine of the top 10 non-law donors represent business interests. They include Texas’ two business tort groups, two diversified oil fortunes, a major homebuilder, corporate lobby firm and an insurer (note that homebuilder Bob Perry also supplied most of the money raised in 2002 by the PAC of the HillCo lobby firm). The list also includes a powerful physician trade group that traditionally allied with defense interests (although doctors have begun surfacing as plaintiffs in HMO lawsuits) and Peter O’Donnell, a retired investor and GOP activist.

Finally, the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC) also made this top-10 list by virtue of the $25,000 each that it gave to incumbent Justices Wallace Jefferson and Xavier Rodriguez before the Republican primary. It is extremely unusual for a party PAC to pick sides in primary battles. Yet in this case RNSEC ranks among the top three donors to both Jefferson and Rodriguez. This unusual behavior may have been an attempt by the Republican Party to preserve as much racial and ethnic diversity as possible on its statewide ticket. If so, this effort yielded mixed results. While Jefferson—the court’s first African-American justice—survived the primary, Hispanic Justice Rodriguez lost to one of Texas’ leading opponents of affirmative action.
 

The top-dollar Jefferson-Moody and Wainwright-Parsons races generally follow the stereotype wherein plaintiff firms are the top donors to Democratic judicial candidates and Republicans rely on defense firms and business interests. Even here, however, the title for Justice Jefferson’s No. 3 donor is shared by both the oil-rich Bass family and plaintiff firm Watts & Heard. In the Schneider-Yanez race, two of Republican Michael Schneider’s top donors are defense firms but the third is plaintiff firm Mithoff & Jacks. While two of the top three donors to Democrat Linda Yanez are plaintiff firms, her No. 1 donor is the immigration law firm Tammy Tran & Associates (which was a major donor to Republican Attorney General John Cornyn). Similarly, the top donor to Democrat Margaret Mirabal is a plaintiff firm, but her next two largest donors are the defense firms Vinson & Elkins and Fulbright & Jaworski. Finally, the top donors to Mirabal opponent Steve Smith, as well as to chief justice candidates Tom Phillips and Richard Baker, defy generalization since these three candidates raised little money from few sources.

Of the three high court candidates who were knocked out in the Republican primary, only John Hill Cayce fits the stereotype in which defense firms and business interests underwrite GOP judicial campaigns. In contrast, all three of the top donors to the campaign of primary opponent Elizabeth Ray were plaintiff firms and a plaintiff firm also ranked among the top donors of failed GOP incumbent Xavier Rodriguez.

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