State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield has come up with a novel weapon for a Texas House speaker bid with a push to persuade GOP incumbents and nominees in solid red districts to give away hundreds of thousands of dollars to 11 fellow Republicans in races they could lose this fall.
Cook - the consensus challenger for conservatives who want to dump Speaker Dade Phelan - set his so-called money bomb to go off on Monday with hopes of raising up to $750,000 from 80 candidates for the GOP as added ammunition for seven House Republicans and four other nominees for the lower chamber in 2024.
Cook wants the candidates in districts that are safely Republican to pony up between 2 percent and 5 percent of the cash they have on hand in campaign accounts. The second-term representative said in a statement late last week that the effort would generate $300,000 for the targeted candidates if the Republicans he's soliciting all donated 2 percent of cash balances that he doesn't think they will need for themselves to win in November.
Cook received an enthusiastic thumbs up from at least one colleague in rookie Republican State Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Lakeway. "I’m in!" Troxclair declared in a post on X in response to the Cook challenge. "Money bomb this Monday for our colleagues who need our support.
Let’s do it!"
The contributions that Cook envisions won't be made public officially until the week before the November 5 general election. But the initiative is fraught with problems that could guarantee its failure.
Five of the incumbents who Cook wants to help appear to be solid Phelan votes. Two are committee chairs in districts where their odds for beating Democratic challengers could go down if they're associated with a Cook campaign that revolves on a vow to strip Democrats of the power they have now in the Capitol's west wing.
Only two lawmakers in a group of 48 Republicans who endorsed Cook for speaker - freshmen State Reps. Ben Bumgarner of Flower Mound and Caroline Harris Davila - are on the list of candidates who Cook hopes to help. Two appear to be prohibitive underdogs in fights with Democrats in Denise Villalobos of Corpus Christi and Steve Kinard of Richardson. Two others - Marc LaHood of San Antonio and Don McLaughlin of Uvalde - may have 50-50 shots for victories this fall at best.
The Cook target list also includes State Reps. Angie Chen Button of Garland, Lacey Hull of Houston, Janie Lopez of San Benito, John Lujan of San Antonio and Morgan Meyer of Dallas. Cook appears to think the House Republicans who would benefit from the money bomb would feel a debt of gratitude that could sway their votes in the speaker's election on opening day of the regular session in January.
But all five of those have raised substantial amounts from supporters without the need for funds that colleagues have raised from their own donors. House Republicans
who want to help the candidates on the list can give directly to them if they don't want to give Cook an opportunity to take credit for the infusions.
The incumbents who have the most cash on hand didn't appear among the four dozen Republicans who've pledged to Cook. State Rep. Greg Bonnen of Friendswood is a prime example. With a campaign surplus of almost $1.7 million, Bonnen would give away nearly $83,000 if he took the Cook challenge at the high end.
State Rep. Todd Hunter of Corpus Christi would fork over almost $63,000 from a campaign account with $1.2 million in the bank if he decided to give the full 5 percent. Bonnen and Hunter are the chairmen of the Appropriations Committee and State Affairs Committee respectively.
Most of the Republican House nominees with the largest war chests appear to be in Phelan's camp at this point. They will see the money bomb as a slick gimmick in which few may feel compelled to support. But Cook may feel like he has nothing to lose in light of the fact that he won't have a chance to recruit any Democrats who beat the endangered 11 on his list.
