In the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election, more than $1 million has been spent helping first-term Republican state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) in his reliably red Northside district.
No Democrat has carried Texas House District 121 since 1981, but LaHood and his allies are now launching last-minute attacks against his little-known challenger, Zack Dunn.
Campaign finance reports covering money raised and spent between Sept. 25 and Oct. 24 indicate LaHood pulled in a staggering $1.1 million during that span.
That includes roughly $200,000 from a PAC aligned with the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which wants to legalize casino gambling in Texas, plus big money from trial lawyers, who LaHood helped during the last legislative session.
Dunn, a 33-year-old prosecutor, brought in close to $400,000 in the same span, including $225,000 from a Democratic PAC aligned with former state Sen. Wendy Davis, called Blueprint Texas PAC.
Dunn is just the latest in a long list of Democrats who’ve sought to put the seat in play in recent years — hoping to win over moderate Republicans who’ve grown tired of the GOP’s rightward march.
The old Joe Straus district includes wealthy suburbs of San Antonio, which have long favored more moderate, business-centric Republicans.
Dunn’s campaign manager Colt Osburn, who has been working in the district for many years, said this election cycle could be a breaking point for those voters, who Democrats have to win over to be successful in this district.
“If all of the quote-unquote Democrats — people with Democratic primary history — all vote for us, we still lose by about 5%,” Osburn said. “But we’re getting people at the door that are literally telling us, ‘I voted Republican for the last however many years, and I can’t take it anymore.'”
A deep red congressional district
Last-minute campaign cash is also flowing into a nearby U.S. House race that Republicans didn’t expect to have to defend this cycle: Texas’ 23rd Congressional District.
This week the National Republican Congressional Committee — a group charged with protecting the GOP’s House majority — purchased ads to shore up their candidate, 30-year-old gun content creator Brandon Herrera.
Herrera pushed then-U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) to a primary runoff and then became the nominee after Gonzales dropped his reelection bid and resigned before the end of his term.
This massive San Antonio-to-El Paso district hasn’t been competitive since adding more Republicans after the 2020 Census, but last week the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted it toward Democrats, from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
The NRCC did not respond to a request for comment.
Herrera’s Democratic opponent, Katy Padilla Stout, is also getting some last-minute help in the final stretch.
National Democrats already reserved ads here on her behalf, and now a renewable energy PAC called the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition (ITC) is up to about $725,000 in TV ads and mail attacking Herrera with comments from his YouTube channel.
The move comes as Democrats are preparing for a potential wave election — but don’t have a good track record of pulling new races online in the final stretch.
In a nod to that struggle, a strategist with the ITC PAC said their internal polling showed that even when voters were presented with controversial things Herrera had said on his social media accounts, many didn’t believe he’d actually said those things without seeing the tape.
