By James Thompson

Greg Abbott is the Republican Party’s nominee for governor of the state of Texas in the November, 2014 general election. In order to better understand the candidate, it is crucial to understand who is supporting him. Project Vote Smart http://votesmart.org/ lists his campaign contributors and this website will take on the task of helping voters to better understand the background of this candidate’s financial contributors.

The first contributor that Project Vote Smart lists is deceased billionaire Harold C. Simmons from Dallas who reportedly contributed $575,000 to candidate Abbott prior to his death. Mr. Simmons also called Pres. Obama “the most dangerous man in America.” According to Christopher Helman, of Forbes magazine, upon his death, Mr. Simmons controlled three companies with a combined market cap of $7.5 billion. He was an avowed libertarian and contributed heavily to gay rights and abortion rights organizations which contradicts Mr. Abbott’s far right anti-gay and anti-abortion agenda.

According to Mr. Helman, Mr. Simmons showed “an omnipresent eagerness to invest in the dirtiest of industries, in recent years one of his primary foci had been Waste Control Specialists, which successfully beat back opposition from environmentalists to open a low-level radioactive waste dump in Andrews, Texas, near the New Mexico border. So far thousands of tons of waste have been buried there.”

He was notorious for the number of lawsuits filed against him for massive contamination of the environment by the companies he controlled.

Texas voters should consider this financial contributor as well as all the others of candidate Greg Abbott before casting their ballot in November.