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During the Amarillo City Council meeting on Tuesday, Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson continued to press City Councilman Cole Stanley regarding his campaign contribution from a company tied to local businessman Alex Fairly. The contribution, which Stanley said was in the amount of $40,000, was criticized by Nelson as allegedly being the “largest donation in the history of Amarillo local elections.”
So, is it? We set out to find out.
Defining local campaigns, we are looking at Amarillo-based political action committees that have been involved in local campaigns since 2015 and local candidates since 2021. We are also looking at both direct monetary contributions and in-kind contributions, as both numbers count toward the fundraising summary for the candidates and groups in question.
For the purposes of “local campaigns,” we will be focusing on elections that take place on the May uniform election date or ballot propositions placed on other election dates by local government entities such as the city. This means that the PACs involved will have been involved in a mayoral, city council, school district, or college district election since May 2015.
According to the Texas Ethics Commission, the following political action committees have been involved in Amarillo elections since 2015:
Amarillo Matters PAC
Save Amarillo PAC
Amarillo Taxpayers PAC
Amarillo Association of REALTORS PAC
Amarillo Police Officer's Assn. PAC
Amarillo Federation of Teachers Committee on Political Education
Build Amarillo PAC
Vote Yes For Amarillo College Committee
Youth for an Accountable Amarillo
Amarillo Professional Firefighters Association Local 542 PAC
Amarillo Kids First PAC
In addition, one state PAC has been involved in local elections since 2015:
Texas REALTORS PAC
According to campaign finance reports, for these organizations, the following monetary donations in the amount of $40,000 or more have been given since 2015:
Randy Burkett (Save Amarillo PAC, 2020) — $100,000
Occunet Business Consulting (Save Amarillo PAC, 2020) — $100,000
Additionally, according to campaign finance reports, the following contributors have donated totals in the amount of $40,000 or more to these organizations since 2015:
Mike and Liz Hughes (Amarillo Matters PAC) — $40,000
Richard Ware II (Amarillo Matters PAC) — $40,000
Texas REALTORS PAC (Amarillo Association of REALTORS PAC) — $469,497
Occunet Business Consulting (Save Amarillo PAC) — $122,500
Randy Burkett (Save Amarillo PAC) — $100,000
In addition to these donations, Texas REALTORS PAC has made several expenditures to benefit candidates since 2015. Most of these expenditures went to benefit Howard Smith, who was running against Mark Nair in 2017. According to the finance reports for Texas REALTORS PAC, the following expenditure over the amount of $40,000 was made to benefit Smith in 2017:
$54,500 to ORRA SGS for political mailers benefitting Howard Smith on April 26, 2017
In total expenditures by this organization to benefit Smith totaled $67,000.
Campaign finance experts who spoke with The Amarillo Pioneer regarding independent expenditures to benefit candidates said that such expenditures would be considered contributions and that many candidates would report these expenditures as in-kind contributions on their finance reports — although, they are not always required to do so.
As for Smith’s 2017 finance reports, his reports were not readily available, as of press time.
Regarding direct contributions to candidates, no candidate has received a direct monetary contribution of more than $40,000 in a single transaction from a donor since 2017, but multiple candidates have received contributions from an individual donor that aggregate into over $10,000 since 2017.
Based on these findings, if the discussion is strictly regarding monetary contributions made directly from a donor to a candidate’s account, then the $40,000 contribution that Stanley says he will be reporting might be the largest since at least 2017 to a candidate. However, to say that this donation is the “largest contribution in Amarillo history” really doesn’t tell the whole story, and discards important in-kind contributions, aggregate contributions, and independent expenditures from PACs to directly benefit candidates.