By James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, Charles Tate is the 12th highest contributor to Greg Abbott’s political campaign at $105,000.

In 2010, the Dallas Morning News wrote about a scandal in Gov. Perry’s office which involved Mr. Tate. The Dallas Morning News wrote: “When Gov. Rick Perry announces that a company will get money from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, he often describes it as an important investment in the state’s future.

Behind the scenes, some of the governor’s biggest political supporters have been making investments of their own – in Perry and in companies getting money from the tech fund.

An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that more than $16 million from the Emerging Technology Fund has been awarded to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors to Perry.

The governor denied that politics influence his decisions on tech fund awards.

The fund gives taxpayers’ dollars to promising high-tech startups. It is a key part of Perry’s economic development program, which he has touted in his re-election campaign against Democrat Bill White.

The governor’s office administers the tech fund, and the governor must approve each award – a system that most other states with tech funds avoid to guard against political influence.

The News found that tech fund money has been awarded to companies with which at least eight significant Perry donors are affiliated.” In this regard, the Dallas morning news wrote that “$1.5 million (was awarded) to ThromboVision Inc., a Houston company. One of its investors was Charles W. Tate, who has donated more than $424,000 to Perry.

The Dallas morning news also had this to say about Tate: “Charles W. Tate, a noted Houston financier, is the head of one of those boards.

Tate was a partner in the investment firm led by Dallas businessman Tom Hicks, former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

In 2006, Tate started the Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization. It functions like a regional board, but it has statewide responsibilities for tech fund applicants involved in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

ThromboVision brought its tech fund application before the board. The firm was developing technology to measure the effectiveness of anti-clotting drugs.

In November 2006, the life science board recommended that ThromboVision get money from the tech fund. Tate said he voted for it. The endorsement was forwarded to the advisory committee in Austin.

Four months later, ThromboVision’s CEO, Edward Teitel, approached Tate with an “investment opportunity,” Tate wrote in a letter to The News.

“At the time,” he wrote, “the [state advisory committee] had already approved the ThromboVision application contingent upon the company’s ability to raise matching funds from the private sector.”

Tate made two investments in the company, he wrote, in May and August of 2007.

Perry announced in October 2007 that ThromboVision would get $1.5 million in tech fund money.

Tate said his vote to recommend funding was proper. “There was no need to recuse myself from [life science board] discussions on ThromboVision as I was not an investor on the date of that meeting,” Tate wrote.

Nothing in the rules of the tech fund’s state advisory committee, he said, barred him from investing in companies receiving tech fund awards.

“Furthermore,” he wrote, “the [life science] board received oral advice from legal counsel at Vinson & Elkins at its first board meeting that there was nothing to prohibit … directors from investing in ETF-funded companies.”

That soon changed, Tate said. “However,” he wrote, “in the fall of 2007, Vinson & Elkins reversed its prior opinion and orally advised the … Board that under federal IRS tax guidelines, [life science] directors should avoid investing in ETF-funded companies.”

An attorney who advises the Internal Revenue Service on tax-exempt matters told The News he would counsel board members not to make investments in companies they review.

“You’re benefiting from confidential information,” said James P. Joseph, who heads the tax-exempt practice at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C. “It’s just a classic conflict of interest.”

The ThromboVision investment was Tate’s second in a company that received a tech fund award. In January 2007, Tate bought shares in OrthoAccel Technologies Inc., another Houston-based firm.

Five months later, the life science board recommended that OrthoAccel get money. This time, Tate said he did not vote.

Perry’s office announced in early 2008 that OrthoAccel would receive $750,000 from the tech fund.

Records used by the state to monitor the award show that the governor’s office was informed that Tate was an investor in OrthoAccel.

Tate said that ThromboVision and OrthoAccel were treated the same as other tech fund applicants.

“My campaign contributions [to Perry] had absolutely no effect on OrthoAccel or ThromboVision receiving funds,” he wrote. “Both of these companies were subjected to the same rigorous review and approval process” as other applicants.

Tate’s more than $424,000 in donations to Perry’s campaigns since 2000 includes travel on Tate’s private airplane, he said.

In May, he wrote a $100,000 check to Perry, and is a member of the governor’s statewide re-election committee.

Despite support from the state, Tate and other investors, ThromboVision filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 2. Court filings show that Tate owned 200,000 shares of the company’s preferred stock.”

BusinessWeek describes Mr. Tate’s background as: “Mr. Charles W. Tate is a Founding Partner, since 2003 and Chairman of Capital Royalty L.P. Mr. Tate was Co-Founder an Partner at HM Capital Partners LLC. He was an Investment Professional at Bank of America Corporation. He holds 35 years of experience in investment banking and private equity. Before founding Capital Royalty in 2003, from 1991 to 2002, Mr. Tate was a Partner at Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst and was at Morgan Stanley & Co. for 19 years including 11 years as … a Managing Director in both its merger and acquisition and merchant banking divisions. Before joining Morgan Stanley, he was employed by the Bank of America from 1968 to 1971. Mr. Tate also served as Managing Director at Metalmark Capital LLC. Since 2001, he has been a Board of Visitors of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He is on the Advisory Cabinet of The University of Texas System Chancellor’s Technology Commercialization. He has been a Director of University of Texas Investment Management Company since 2004. He serves as a Director of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mr. Tate has been a Director of The Welch Foundation since 2008. He has been a Director of Capital Royalty L.P. since 2001. Mr. Tate has been the Chairman of Texas Life Science Center of Innovation and Commercialization from 2005 to 2010. He has been on the Board of Directors of Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas from 2008 to 2013. He served as a Director of Grupo Minsa SA de CV. He serves as a Member of Board of Overseers at Columbia Business School. In addition, Mr. Tate serves on the Board of the Institute for Sports Medicine. He also served on the board of World Health & Golf Association. He served as the Chairman of the Board at International Wire Group Holdings, Inc. since February 2002 and served as its Director since April 1995. He was Chairman of the Board at International Wire Holding Company since February 2002 and served as its Director since April 1995. He served as a Director of Berg Electronics Corporation since April 1993 and Morningstar Group, Inc. since August 1991. He served during 2002 on Governor Mr. Rick Perry’s Council for Science and Biotechnology Development. Mr. Tate received an M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1972 and has been a member of its Board of Overseers since 2001. He also received a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1968 from The University of Texas at Austin, where he is a distinguished alumnus, member of the McCombs School of Business Hall of Fame, and recipient of the 2012 Presidential Citation.”

In March 21, 2013, Texas Mostly wrote this about Tate: “A Note on Corruption in Texas

The legislative session is well underway but the biggest political deal was actually cut before the opening gavel. Nothing was said explicitly—nothing agreed to openly—certainly nothing was written down but the agreement, such as it is, potentially affects state leadership including the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. It’s more about what won’t be done than what will, which at the Capitol is just as freight-filled and heavyweight as any legislative initiative.

The issue involves the Austin district attorney’s office and the biannual effort by the state’s Republican leadership to strip the Democratic prosecutor of authority to investigate corruption in state government. Republicans were making the usual noises late last year about reducing the D.A.’s authority—and then went silent. What happened in the meantime was the revelation of bad practices in the awarding of grants at the newly-created Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, CPRIT—a scandal that guarantees at least two more years of life to the Austin prosecutor’s Public Integrity Unit and assures no inconvenient questions for state leadership. What’s not to like?

A major investigation that targets powerful politicians sucks a lot of goodwill from the investigator, as prosecutors learned when they went after House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The process leading to conviction of an elected official is as much political as criminal yet the D.A. must repeatedly reassure the public the motives for going to court are not partisan. With a prosecutor now in office who is known for professional caution, after a predecessor who shot from the hip, the chances of high-level indictments in the CPRIT case have never been great. But dynamics are shifting with an attorney general who wants to be governor—a lieutenant governor who just lost a disastrous run for Senate and suddenly seems vulnerable—and a governor who wants to be president. For all of these men any hint of scandal could be fatal, whether aired in a courtroom or in the press. If the district attorney merely allows speculation regarding her intentions to continue, declining to refute her interest in following the case wherever it leads, that will be enough to make her opponents reluctant to stir the pot or question her authority. All they want is a little consideration in return which they are almost certain to get. That’s how things work during the legislative session.

Outside the Third World few places have a political dynamic that lends itself to corruption like Texas today: a mostly one-party state where money plays an outsized role and with a governor who has been in office a long long time and has a history of “initiatives” that somehow always seem to lead to more money in his campaign coffers. These ingredients are tempered by a system that supports transparency, at least more so than in many other states. None of which has led to legal action previously. Suppose it were different, however. Suppose prosecutors really wanted to get to the bottom of the grant review process at CPRIT and check any ties to high state officialdom—ties that are much rumored. They could do worse than issue a single subpoena to one man—the so-called “missing man” in the investigation although he seems easy enough to find—with ties to the state’s leadership and who is a founding father of the Texas culture of crony capitalism, as evidenced, even before the cancer fund, by the much-abused Emerging Technology Fund.

That man’s name:

Charles W. Tate.

Healthcare is one of the top industries in Texas, as in the nation, and Charles Tate has his fingers in many pies.

He is the Tate of Hicks, Tate and Muse, the legendary Dallas buyout firm. He is a member of CPRIT’s Oversight Committee which of course prompts the current interest. Chairman of the Texas Life Science Center of Innovation and Commercialization, as well. Chairman of the external advisory committee of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, “a single University of Texas academic department spanning U.T. Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the Health Science Center at Houston,” according to his bio on the site of the Columbia University School of Business where he did his graduate work and serves on the Board of Overseers.             In another biography he is quoted as saying, speaking of his younger days, as a kid in Texas, “I had grown up with very modest financial means. I knew how that felt and didn’t ever want to feel it again. So I was very ambitious in terms of my aspirations relative to a business career.”            Tate can certainly check that box off on his life’s list. He’s loaded. The guy is a walking corporation—the industries being Big Pharma and biotech, apparently with corporate ethics to match. An official of the Texas Ethics Commission, where Tate files his personal disclosure form listing his assets, said jokingly that Tate’s file is second only to Governor Rick Perry’s in number of pages. The similarity to Perry is striking. Both Charles Tate and the governor are conservatives who come from modest backgrounds who decry big government and yet manage to put away a few dollars by leveraging the State of Texas. They’ve done some of that work together, scratching each other’s backs.

Ignore Tate’s stock ownership for a moment. Look at his real property accumulation listed with the Ethics Commission instead. There’s the $6 million digs in River Oaks, a cabin and one-sixth interest in a condo in Colorado, two co-ops on New York’s Upper West Side, a lot in Germantown, N.Y., and another in Carmel, Ca.; two in Galveston, and one in the so-called “next Santa Fe,” Chama, New Mexico. Ignore his stocks and bonds on file with the Ethics Commission because although considerable what would be most revealing are actually the holdings of his investment company, Capital Royalty, headquartered in Houston, whose interests are secret. Tate describes Capital Royalty as “a market pioneer and innovator in healthcare investing that focuses on intellectual property investment in FDA-approved biopharmaceutical assets through royalty bonds, structured debt, revenue interests and traditional royalty monetizations.” In other words it’s a private equity firm that works “directly with leading healthcare companies, research institutions, and investors to provide customized financing structures.” The missing partner, the unseen hand, is the State of Texas itself especially the University of Texas in its various incarnations.

Capital Royalty’s “strategic investment committee” includes Dr. Mark McClellan, son of former Texas Comptroller Carole Strayhorn—McClellan was director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the Bush Administration—and John Mendelsohn, former president of UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. There’s also a Boston biotech investor, Henri Termeer, who has had business relationships with the present M.D. Anderson president, Ronald DePinho.              As the details of the grant-awarding process at CPRIT became public late last year, the Houston Chronicle quoted internal CPRIT email showing that Tate had pushed for weakening controls on awards and had personally pushed for a grant to DePinho’s wife, herself a cancer researcher. A few years before, Tate was exposed by the Dallas Morning News for having bought stock in Thrombo Vision, a biotech company that he voted to award a grant as a leader of Governor Perry’s Emerging Technology Fund.

It’s worth revisiting what Rick Perry did with the ETF. It was quite clever, a new twist on an old game, selling influence: He gave grants, through men like Charles Tate, to companies whose directors and owners then gave the governor campaign contributions. No system of campaign finance is much different really. There’s always quid pro quo on some level, to be fair to the governor and Mr. Tate. The Austin district attorney for example relies on money and endorsements from the Austin Police Association whose officers present her with cases for prosecution and whose long history of shooting minorities the D.A. has coincidentally never found fault with. Men like Perry and Tate, in a way, are just more honest about the politics of the process. More direct (see http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2004-03-05/200212/) you might say. It should be little surprise that CPRIT got in trouble. If you look at the first dozen or so companies that received funds for research, many of them are re-treads, some with political connections, from the Emerging Technology Fund. The present scrutiny is focused on a company called Peloton (whose major investor was a Dallas-based millionaire Republican donor) for which the CPRIT grant approval process was completely ignored. That’s where the D.A. entered the picture. Lucky for her, it’s a target rich environment.

Tate is suspect because he was the third or fourth largest contributor to both Rick Perry and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst last year. Dewhurst actually appointed Tate to CPRIT. Charles Tate was also the single largest individual donor to the CPRIT Foundation which increasingly has the smell of a slush fund. The only surprise here is how quickly the rot at CPRIT set in. Most state-affiliated organizations take decades to reach the level of impropriety that CPRIT achieved in only a couple of years. A diagnostician would say corruption was imported, that CPRIT was “infected.” To use the terminology of healthcare, Charles Tate is a good bet as the disease vector.

Most interesting is the role of Attorney General Greg Abbott.

A year before the CPRIT storm broke, Abbott ruled that Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst could withhold email between the lieutenant governor’s office and Tate. Abbott’s office also withheld all substantive communications between Charles Tate and the state’s other favorite pot of public money that politicians like to take advantage of, the huge Teachers Retirement System. At the same time Gov. Perry’s office said that it had no documentation on Mr. Tate at all—except a bio provided in 2002 when the biotech businessman asked to be appointed by the governor to a board or commission.

In that c.v., Charles Tate described himself as member of a group that tries to introduce Houston’s inner-city troubled youth to the joys of golf and, more importantly for Perry’s purposes, mentioned his role as “Chairman of the Technology Transfer Ad Hoc Committee for the University Cancer Foundation Board of Visitors’ Institutional Initiatives Committee.” Tate’s MD Anderson title is what this should really be all about. The district attorney may find her way through the grant application process but the real rip-off, the greatest potential loss to the taxpayers of the state, will be technology transfers in which research done at state universities paid for by public dollars is leeched away by institutional arrangements with for-profit companies. “The biopharma industry today,” Tate wrote in a recent op-ed piece for the Chronicle, “readily acknowledges its old business practices are outdated, and there is a search for improved commercialization models that bridge the cultural chasm between academic/medical research institutions and commercial biopharma companies.” This is the academic version of the privatization wave that state government went through previously, with even more ethical pitfalls because of the difficulty in knowing the value of the state’s intellectual property. That is not part of the D.A.’s brief in this case but it represents big losses for Texas government. On this front General Abbott’s record has been better. He recently ruled that public universities must release contracts executed with Big Pharma involving joint research. The drug companies, prompted by UT M.D. Anderson, sued Abbott and the case has yet to be resolved. The attorney general also ruled more than a year ago against the CPRIT general counsel’s wishes, forcing public release of applications for grants. Any communication between Charles W. Tate and high officials is still off-limits, according to General Abbott.

Which leads us to the University of Texas Investment Management Company where Tate is also on the board. UTIMCO serves as a kind of stand-in or case study for how business may be conducted at CPRIT. General Abbott also declined to release the majority of Tate’s email to UTIMCO CEO Bruce Zimmerman but from the context of what was disclosed and the redactions done by UTIMCO it seems clear Tate was asking the university investment fund to provide data for his private company.

In fact he’s done more than that. In an exchange of email in late 2011 Tate asked UTIMCO CEO Zimmerman to make calls to pension and investment groups across the country to promote Tate’s private business. Which Zimmerman agreed to do. “I would be happy to reach out to institutional investors to tell them about Capital Royalty,” Zimmerman wrote. “As you know, we very much like the investments, but, alas, are barred from participating due to our Code of Ethics.” Zimmerman’s “code of ethics” did allow him to provide a long list of whom he would be willing to contact for Tate: “Calpers, Calsters, CPP, Notre Dame, Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, U Penn, Emory, DUMAC, U of Calif, Chicago, Texas A&M Foundation, NYU, U of Wash, Brown, CommonFund.” What’s most disturbing about this back-scratching is that it came shortly after Zimmerman asked Tate to speak to reporters about the good work UTIMCO does and at about the same time that Tate helped defend Zimmerman and UTIMCO staff’s multi-million dollar bonuses (“Attached is the final Talking Points,” Zimmerman wrote to Tate, “to help support the phone calls you have graciously agreed to make on Monday regarding Tuesday’s incentive compensation decisions.”) Tate did not even try to be that subtle:             “Congratulations to you and your staff for another great comparative performance relative to your peers for the 12 months ending June 30, 2011. Regarding Capital Royalty, I look forward to the list of institutional investors you have been working on. The attached is a list of state pension funds and endowments that are prohibited by law from dealing with private equity placement agents and, therefore, must be contacted directly by the manager [Zimmerman.] Please consider these as you compile your list.” In effect Tate asked a state employee to recruit investors for him. If that’s what he did at UTIMCO—in return for a little support on staff bonuses—imagine what he could have asked of the governor and lieutenant governor in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Charles Tate is a quid pro quo kind of guy. That gets results but can be problematic when the grand jury meets.

“It is common practice for us to have one-on-one conversations with Board members about prospective investments in which they may have some expertise/special interest,” Zimmerman wrote in another email. That’s how the state system of boards and commissions is supposed to work, not just UTIMCO but also CPRIT and many others in which men and women like Charles Tate offer private expertise on public investments or grant applications.             Some commissions and governmental bodies are, frankly, particularly susceptible to corruption. One of the bigger self-dealing scandals in UTIMCO history involved another marquee name from Hicks, Tate and Muse—Tom Hicks—appointed by then-Governor Bush and who was caught doing private business on public turf. (Hick’s younger brother, also an investor, is now a UT regent and a UTIMCO board member but there’s no indication he’s following in his big brother’s shadier footsteps.) For Charles Tate, the problem is he fits so well the part of the heavy in this motion picture. At board meetings he is often called upon by his peers as an expert, yet his demeanor in these meetings never portrays any hint of private interest. If there is a bad apple at UTIMCO, let’s propose a simple mechanism not unlike what happened at the Emerging Technology Fund that would make Charles Tate the perfect bagman. First he improves Capital Royalty’s bottom line by hijacking UTIMCO’s data or getting staff to promote him and his business. Then he turns around and gives big contributions to the governor’s officeholder account (both of which he’s already doing, by the way.) There’s no connection to the governor because Tate was not appointed to UTIMCO by the governor. He was chosen by the regents themselves, which establishes a cutout between Charles Tate and Rick Perry. Pretty neat, huh? The key to any possibly more direct entanglements means getting a look at Capital Royalty’s portfolio.              For the state’s system of boards and commissions to work, it presupposes a level of integrity that Charles Tate does not appear to possess. At least three times now he has been caught mistaking his private interest for the public good. If he’s still in a position of public trust it is only because the powers-that-be want him there and not because of any public-spirited self sacrifice on his part.

Which leads us back to the grant review process at the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas.

Who better to talk to than Charles W. Tate?”

Charles W. Tate is a shining star among the people who have made large contributions to Greg Abbott’s political campaign. Texans should consider the relationship between Tate and Abbott before casting their ballots in November.

By James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, the 11th highest contributor to Greg Abbott’s political campaign is Paul L. Foster. Mr. Foster, according to Project Vote Smart, contributed $110,000.

Wikipedia describes Mr. Foster: Paul L. Foster is an American businessman who is Chief Executive Officer and chairman of the board of Western Refining, an oil refiner and marketer based in El Paso, Texas. In 2007, he appeared on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, ranking 261st with a net worth estimated at $1.9 billion. As of 2014^[update], Forbes lists his net worth as $1 billion. He is Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System.

In 2007, Foster donated $50 million to help create the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso.

In 2013 Foster donated $35 million to his alma mater, Baylor University, the majority of which was to be used to construct new $100 million, 275,000 square foot business school facilities, which will be named the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation (housing Baylor’s existing Hankamer School of Business). Part of the gift was also earmarked for the $260 million McLane Stadium project. He also gave Baylor $3 million in 2006 to build the Paul L. Foster Success Center, a clearinghouse where students can receive academic and career help.

In November 2007, Foster was appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System by Governor Rick Perry. In 2009, Foster was elected Vice Chairman of the Board of Regents. In 2010 and 2011, he was re-elected as Vice-Chairman. In 2012, he was elected as Chairman of the Board of Regents. In 2013, he was re-appointed to the Board of Regents.

Foster, a 1979 Baylor graduate, was a member of the Texas Theta chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon while at college there. He was on the Baylor business school’s advisory board from 2008-2010.

Businessweek writes of Mr. Foster: “Mr. Paul L. Foster is a Co-Owner of Mountain Star Sports Group, LLC. Mr. Foster is a Partner in Jordan Foster Construction. He served as the Chief Executive Officer at Western Refining, Inc. from 2000 to January 2010 and President from 2000 to February 2009. He served as a Vice President and General Manager at Border Refining Company since 1993. He served as the President and Chief Executive Officer at WRC Refining Company since 1997. He also served on the Task Force … on UTMB Clinical Operations. He has spent virtually his entire career working in the refined product production and marketing industry. Mr. Foster is the Founder of Western Refining, Inc. and has been its Executive Chairman since September 2005. He serves as the Executive Chairman of Western Refining Logistics GP LLC, a general partner of Western Refining Logistics, LP and its Director since July 2013. He has been the Chairman at Northern Tier Energy GP LLC, a General Partner of Northern Tier Energy LP since January 02, 2014 and its Director since November 12, 2013. He serves as the Chairman of University of Texas Investment Management Company. He has been Chairman of Board of Regents of The University of Texas System since August 22, 2013. He served as the Chairman and Member of Executive Committee of El Paso Regional Economic Development Corporation. He also served as Chairman El Paso Chapter of the American Red Cross. Mr. Foster has been Vice Chairman of Board of Regents at The University of Texas System since 2011. He served as Vice Chairman of University of Texas Investment Management Company. He serves as a Director at Texas Economic Development Corporation. Mr. Foster serves as a Member of Advisory Board of Hankamer School of Business. He is a Member of National Petroleum Club, Governor’s Business Council, and World President’s Organization. He is a Member of Business Advisory Council of University of Texas at El Paso. He has been a Director of Board of Regents of The University of Texas System since February 2013. He serves as a Director of Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce. He serves as a Director of Bank of the West. He serves as a Member of Executive Committee at Borderplex Bi-National Economic Alliance and Paso del Norte Group. He serves as a Director of WestStar Bank, an El Paso-based bank; as a Director of Vomaris Innovations, Inc., a privately held medical device company; as a Member of the board of managers of Jordan Foster Construction, LLC. He was a Member of Young President’s Organization. He was a Member of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Mr. Foster has received numerous honors, including the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Baylor Alumni Association, El Pasoan of the Year by El Paso Inc., Entrepreneur of the Year by the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, and has twice received the City of El Paso Conquistador Award. He was inducted into The Texas Business Hall of Fame. Mr. Foster graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Baylor University and received certification from the Arizona State Board of Accountancy.

Texas voters should consider this top contributor to Greg Abbott’s campaign before casting their ballot in November.

By James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, T. Boone Pickens is Greg Abbott’s 10th highest political campaign contributor. He contributed $110,000. Pickens is well-known to many people.

Wikipedia describes Pickens as follows:

 

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. (born May 22, 1928), known as T. Boone Pickens, is an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. As of September 2013, Pickens has a net worth of $950 million.

Wikipedia discusses Pickens involvement Swift Veterans Sandal:

On November 6, 2007, Pickens offered a million dollars to anyone able to dispute any claims made in political ads by the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth (SVPT), a group he had supported during the 2004 presidential election. John Kerry, whose military record and anti-war activism during Vietnam was the target of the group’s book and media campaign, sent Pickens a letter on November 16, 2007, accepting the challenge, requesting that Pickens donate the money to the Paralyzed Veterans of America should he succeed in disproving any of the SVPT claims. In response to Kerry’s acceptance of the challenge, Pickens issued a letter the same day, narrowing the original challenge to the SVPT ads, and requiring Kerry to provide his Vietnam journal, all of his military records, specifically those covering the years after his active duty service, and copies of all movies and tapes made during his service. Pickens’ letter also challenged Kerry to agree to donate $1 million to the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, if Kerry “cannot prove anything in the Swift Boat ads to be untrue.” Kerry later accused Pickens of “parsing and backtracking” on his initial offer and wrote that “I am prepared to prove the lie and marshal all the evidence, the question is whether you are prepared to fulfill your obligation.”

On June 22, 2008, a group of Vietnam veterans who previously served with and now work with Kerry accepted the challenge and sent a 12-page letter — with a 42-page attachment of military records to support their case — to rebut several of the accusations of the Swift boat group. Pickens has responded with a message stating “In reviewing your material, none of the information you provide speaks specifically to the issues contained in the ads,” he wrote, “and, as a result, does not qualify for the $1 million.”

Wikipedia also notes:

“In 1949, Pickens married Lynn O’Brien. They had four children together; Deborah Stovall, Michael O. Pickens, Thomas B. Pickens III, and Pam Pickens. Pickens divorced Lynn in 1971.

In April 1972, Pickens married Beatrice “Bea” Carr Stuart and adopted one of her daughters, Elizabeth “Liz” Cordia. They had no children together.

In November 2000, Pickens married Nelda Cain. They divorced in November 2004. They had no children together.

In 2005, Pickens married Madeleine Paulson who had been married to the founder of Gulfstream Aerospace, Allen E. Paulson, for two years. Pickens and Madeleine lived in Preston Hollow, Dallas and owned a ranch along the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle. They amicably divorced in 2012 and had no children together.

It was reported on December 4, 2013 that Pickens’ public relations representative told an NBC 5 affiliate reporter that he proposed to Toni Chapman Brinker, widow of restaurateur Norman Brinker, at his ranch in Pampa. The couple married on February 14, 2014.

Pickens has four biological children and one adopted daughter. As of 2007^[update], Pickens had twelve grandchildren. In 2007, Pickens’ son Michael O. Pickens of Nocona, Texas was sentenced to probation for a penny stock trading scheme and entered drug rehabilitation afterward, emerging in March 2008. In October 2012, Michael, then 58 years old, began blogging under the title “5 Days In Connecticut.” In the blog, he made a number of allegations about his family, including that his drug addiction stemmed from physical and sexual abuse by his father, T. Boone Pickens. He also claimed his siblings stole from their mother and were addicted to drugs; and that his father sabotaged a family member’s business. Pickens and three of his children — Elizabeth Cordia, Pamela Pickens and Thomas B. Pickens III — subsequently filed a lawsuit against Michael. They alleged libel, invasion of privacy and extortion via cyberbullying and cyberstalking. The plaintiffs said the blog was part of an effort to extort $20 million from Pickens. In January 2013, Pickens’ 21-year-old grandson Thomas “Ty” Boone Pickens IV died from a heroin overdose. Ty, the son of Thomas B. Pickens III, was a student at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

In July 2009, Pickens was the subject of controversy after he had a construction crew go to his grandmother’s former home, that was now owned by someone else, in Holdenville, Oklahoma and remove a slab of driveway concrete that he had signed as a child. The current owner of the home asserted ownership, and the slab was returned. In February 2010, a judge ruled that the slab belonged to the current homeowner.

Pickens owns a ranch in Roberts County, Texas that has three pipelines that cross his property.

Pickens owns a Gulfstream 550 jet that he uses to fly to Stillwater for OSU games from his private airport near Pampa, Texas.”

Texas voters should consider this notorious contributor to Greg Abbott before casting their ballot in November.

By James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, S. Reed Morian is tied with Nancy Hunt and R. Steven Hicks as the seventh, eighth and ninth highest contributors to Greg Abbott’s campaign. They each contributed $150,000.

Forbes magazine describes Mr. Morian as follows: “S. Reed Morian joined the Board of Directors of GP Natural Resource Partners LLC in 2002. Mr. Morian has vast executive business experience having served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of several companies since the early 1980s and serving on the board of other companies. Mr. Morian has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the general partner of Western Pocahontas Properties Limited Partnership since 1986, New Gauley Coal Corporation since 1992 and the general partner of Great Northern Properties Limited Partnership since 1992. Mr. Morian worked for Dixie Chemical Company from 1971 to 2006 and served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 1981 to 2006. He has also served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of DX Holding Company since 1989. He formerly served on the Board of Directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas-Houston Branch from April 2003 until December 2008 and as a Director of Prosperity Bancshares, Inc. from March 2005 until April 2009.”

According to Texans for Public Justice, Mr. Morian contributed $372,500 to the campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Mr. Perry is currently under indictment for abuse of power. He is well-known for his thinly veiled to Texas seceding from the union. These references were seen by many as a throwback to the Confederacy.

Nancy Ann Hunt is the wife of Ray L. Hunt who was reviewed in a previous post on this website.

R. Steven Hicks is described by Forbes magazine as follows: “Mr. Hicks has served as a director of Gentiva since October 2013, when he was elected to the Board of Directors and appointed vice chairman of the Board of Directors in connection with our acquisition of Harden Healthcare Holdings, Inc. and in accordance with a Stockholders’ Agreement that Gentiva entered into with certain former stockholders of Harden Healthcare Holdings, including Mr. Hicks. Since 2000, Mr. Hicks has served as executive chairman of Capstar Partners, LLC, a private investment firm, which has invested in a broad range of industries including media and broadcasting, healthcare services, e-commerce, financial services and real estate. Prior to founding Capstar Partners, Mr. Hicks was active in the radio industry for many years and was the founder and chief executive officer of Capstar Broadcasting Corp., a leading consolidator of middle market radio stations across the United States. Mr. Hicks has served as a Regent on The University of Texas System Board of Regents since 2009 and currently serves as the board’s vice chairman. Mr. Hicks was appointed to serve on the Board of Directors of The University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO) in 2011 and was reappointed in September 2013. Mr. Hicks was a director of HealthTronics, Inc. from 2004 to 2010.

Wikipedia writes about Mr. Hicks as follows: “Hicks bought his first radio station at the age of twenty-nine. He was the CEO of GulfStar Communications, Inc., from July 1987 to January 1997. Over the next 14 years, he acquired stations in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Carolina. He also co-founded and served as CEO of SFX Broadcasting, Inc. from November 1993 to May 1996, including the initial public offering of the stock in 1993.^[4] In 1997, Hicks was named the Radio Executive of the Year and was ranked one of the 10 Most Powerful People in Radio by Radio Ink. In 1996, Ernst & Young named him Entrepreneur of the Year and recognized as Broadcaster of the Year by the Texas Association of Broadcasters.^[1]

Later, he founded and served as chief executive officer of Capstar Broadcasting Corporation, which he also took public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1998. In 1999, Capstar Broadcasting merged with Chancellor Media Corp to form AMFM Inc. Hicks served as vice-chairman and chief executive officer of the new media division of AMFM. In 2000, AMFM was bought by radio station behemoth Clear Channel Communications. In December 2002, Hicks was appointed to the board of directors of XM.^[5] On February 2, 2005, Hicks was appointed to the board of directors of sound equipment maker SLS International, Inc., a publicly trade company^[6](the firm filed chapter 11 in 2009^[7]).

In February 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry appointed Hicks to a term on The University of Texas System Board of Regents.^[1] He was confirmed by the Texas State Senate on April 1, 2009, took office the following day and his term expires February 1, 2011. He serves on the Facilities Planning and Construction Committee as well as the Student, Faculty, and Staff Campus Life Committee.”

Texas voters should consider these contributors to Greg Abbott’s campaign before casting a ballot in November.

by James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, Greg Abbott’s 6^th highest campaign contributor is Ray L. Hunt. Mr. Hunt contributed $152,110. According to Forbes magazine, Mr. Hunt’s financial holdings add up to $6.3 billion. Forbes indicates Mr. Hunt, at 71, remains chairman and CEO of Hunt Consolidated. His son, Hunter Hunt, is the chief executive of Hunt Consolidated. Hunt Oil Company is one of the largest privately held oil companies in the US.

According to Texas Monthly, Mr. Hunt is one of H. L. Hunt’s 14 children. Forbes magazine writes:  “According to Forbes calculations Ray Lee is the richest of all his siblings, having built up a business empire over the past 40 years. His trophy assets include the iconic Reunion Tower and the shiny new headquarters of Hunt Consolidated in Dallas. Like his father, Hunt is deep into the oil business; Hunt Oil is one of the largest privately-held oil companies in the U.S. In 2011 he sold a one-third stake in his Texas Eagle Ford shale fields to Japan’s Marubeni for $1.3 billion. He also raised $600 million from banks that year to build a high-voltage power line in Texas that connects the state with Mexico’s power grid. He owns vast ranches, farmland and real estate developments across the west. Overseas, Hunt was one of the first U.S. oil companies to land an oil exploration deal in the Kurdish region of Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. He’s also leveraged his big balance sheet to partner on liquefied natural gas plants in Peru and Yemen (though terrorist attacks have plagued the latter project).”

Texas Monthly magazine writes about Mr. Hunt: “He occasionally makes the wrong kind of headlines, as in 2007, when he inked a deal with the regional Kurdish government to look for oil in northern Iraq. Iraqi Arabs were incensed that the Kurds were trying to shut them out, the State Department expressed annoyance that the agreement might undermine the fragile Iraqi government, and Bush critics accused Hunt—a longtime Bush family friend who’d recently given Southern Methodist University $35 million to purchase land for a presidential library and museum—of working a sweetheart deal. No matter. Earlier this year, Hunt Oil hit it big in Kurdistan and the Bush library and museum opened to great fanfare in University Park.”

Mr. Hunt is the owner of vast wealth across the globe. Clearly, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the son of Texas oil wildcatter H. L. Hunt.

Texas voters should consider this contributor to Gregg Abbott’s campaign before casting their ballots in November.

by James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, Greg Abbott’s fourth and fifth highest campaign donors are Bob J. Perry and his wife Doylene Perry. Mr. Perry is deceased. According to the website: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/04/26/8466/donor-profile-bob-perry, Mr. Perry has a long list of right-wing politicians and right-wing political organizations to which he has contributed vast sums of money:

“Total contributions to super PACs: $23.5 million

• $10 million to Restore Our Future (pro-Mitt Romney)
• $8.5 million to American Crossroads (pro-Republican)
• $1 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (pro-Republican)
• $1 million to Independence Virginia PAC (pro-George Allen)
• $1 million to Club for Growth Action (pro-conservative)
• $1 million to Freedom Fund North America (pro-Denny Rehberg; pro-Rick Berg)
• $600,000 to Texas Conservatives Fund (pro-David Dewhurst)
• $250,000 to Freedom PAC (pro-Connie Mack; pro-Allen West)
• $100,000 to Make Us Great Again (pro-Rick Perry)
• $15,000 to Maverick PAC USA (pro-Republican)

Notable federal hard money and 527 contributions:

• $11.3 million to the Republican Governors Association
• $160,000 to Citizens Club for Growth (2004-2005)
• $4.4 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (2004)
• $1 million to Progress for America Voter Fund (2004)

Notable state-level contributions (see here):

• $1.9 million to 177 Republican candidates in Texas (2012)
• $1.5 million to Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry (2010)
• $200,000 to Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett (2010)”

According to Project Vote Smart, Mr. Perry contributed $185,000 and his wife contributed $175,000 to Greg Abbott’s campaign.

Texas voters should consider who are Greg Abbott’s major contributors before casting their ballots in November.

By James Thompson

According to Project Vote Smart, Houstonian Stuart Stedman is second on the list of highest contributors to the political campaign of Greg Abbott with a contribution of $200,000. He is tied with Kenny A. Troutt who also contributed $200,000.

According to a Houston Chronicle article, Stedman grew up in the wealthiest neighborhood in Houston, River Oaks and still resides there. He attended River Oaks elementary school according to the article and Kinkaid High School. Kinkaid is well known in Houston to be a college prep school for the wealthiest Houstonians. Various articles indicate that Stedman contributed $1 million to the University of Texas. According to BusinessWeek, Mr. Stedman is the president of Stedman West, Inc. The Stedman West, Inc. according to their website is “A family investment office responsible for the management of the assets of the Stedman and Wesley West families.”

Kenny A. Troutt according to Forbes magazine has a net worth of $1.5 billion. He owns one of the most expensive homes in the Dallas area at about $16.7 million according to D magazine. He was ranked 25th on the list of the Center for Responsive Politics’ list of top individual political contributors according to Forbes magazine.

Troutt is a major Republican donor, and has contributed to American Crossroads, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum. Troutt’s son, Preston, has also donated to Republican Party candidates. American Crossroads was cofounded by the notorious Karl Rove and is a Republican Super PAC. Gov. Rick Perry is the current Republican governor of Texas who is well-known for his thinly veiled references to Texas seceding from the union. He recently called out 1000 National Guard troops and sent them to the Texas Mexico border in high drama. Rick Santorum is a notorious right-wing Republican Sen. from Pennsylvania who ran for and lost the Republican nomination for president.

Voters in Texas should connect the dots from the various financial contributions and political affiliations of Greg Abbott before casting their ballot in November.