[ Report Home | Previous Page | Next Page ] Texas PACs 2000 Election Cycle Tort Law: $1,481,128

Two tort PACs spent $1.5 million to elect and retain lawmakers and judges who will help lower the legal costs that businesses incur when they harm consumers, workers or communities. While the total spending of these two PACs declined from $1.6 million in 1998, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) increased its PAC spending from $1.2 million to $1.4 million. TLR raised half of its money from the families of just five tycoons who made fortunes in litigious industries: Sterling Group’s Gordon Cain ($200,000); real estate mogul Harlan Crow ($150,000); Cogen Technologies’ Robert McNair ($125,000); and the owners of David Weekley Homes ($126,000) and Bob Perry Homes ($90,000).

TLR spent 73 percent of its PAC money—more than $1 million—on just two GOP Senate candidates. It spent $535,082 on Todd Staples’ successful effort to beat trial lawyer David Fisher in the race for the seat vacated by vice-squad-stung Sen. Drew Nixon. It spent another $490,434 on Bob Deuell’s failed attempt to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. David Cain. Republicans got 92 percent of all TLR PAC money.

Although TLR’s financial muscle helped push through a raft of pro-business tort laws in 1997 and 1999, the Texas Legislature had other priorities in its two subsequent sessions. In 2001, TLR even found itself on the defensive, having to expend its political capital to kill the so-called “Ford-Firestone bill” (H.B. 3125), which would have increased the penalties faced by companies that knowingly sell dangerous products.¹⁶  After the close of the 2001 session, TLR got Governor Rick Perry—who collected $3.2 million from TLR members—to veto four bills, including one that would have forced insurers to pay medical bills promptly.¹⁷

Unlike TLR, PAC spending by the Texas Civil Justice League PAC plummeted 83 percent from $356,331 in 1998 to just $60,391 in 2000. While the reasons for this drop are not entirely clear, the PAC devoted much of its 1998 spending to statewide races, most notably spending heavily to help Republican John Cornyn defeat Democrat Jim Mattox in the attorney general race. There were no such big-ticket statewide races in 2000.