Big Bucks, No Whammies in HD 46

It may be down to the closing hours in House District 46, but there's still been plenty of campaign money getting pumped into the Dukes/Thompson race.

Since Feb. 26, Thompson has received $9,692 from Houston-based legal firm John Steven Mostyn P.C. and $14,500 from Mostyn directly. This came on top of $48,588.25 worth of TV ads in February paid for by Mostyn, meaning he has dropped a whopping $72,780.25 into the Thompson campaign. Mostyn is a long-standing Democrat donor to campaigns across the state (including, in previous years, Sen. Kirk Watson and the Dukes-endorsing Rep. Garnet Coleman) but this is his biggest hand-out to a single campaign. "Thompson has sold his independence and the best interests of this district to the highest bidder," said Dukes in a press release.

But the Dukes campaign isn't short on its own donations from out-of-town lawyers. In its campaign telegraph report for Feb. 29, there was $67,880.25 from the law firm of Mikal Watts, the San Antonio trial attorney and Democratic activist who briefly contemplated a U.S. Senate run last year.

Traditionally, Watts made most of his donations to the Texas Trial Lawyers Association PAC, rather than going straight to the candidate. Like Mostyn for Thompson, he'd already made payments in kind to Dukes: $2,867.76 worth of robocalls in mid-February.

The Dukes campaign notes one difference between the two: in 2003, Mostyn got publicly reprimanded by the Texas Bar Association and paid a $300 fine. Watts has received no reprimands in the ten year period for which the bar keeps records.