Two PACs Get Busy in Dallas Elections
If you hadn’t already heard, it’s municipal election season in Dallas. Early voting has begun. And like budding flowers to springtime, so are burgeoning PACs to election season.
Two new political action committees have recently distributed physical mailers and digital ads endorsing slates of Dallas city council candidates. But until now, the PACs’ funding has been a mystery. They were only recently created, and mandated financial reports weren’t released until this week. One PAC is an apparent surrogate for the Dallas County Republican Party. The other is a vehicle for the interests of Airbnb. Let’s take them one at a time.
The Dallas County Republican Party has previously issued direct endorsements for city council candidates, but this time around it has instead funded an arms-length PAC to push endorsements. On February 10, the wonderfully named Committee for a Strong Econcomy PAC was created. Yes, the name is misspelled on official filing documents. Its only donor is the Dallas County GOP, which has contributed $6,000. The Committee for a Strong Econcomy has endorsed candidates in 10 of the 14 council districts, as well as in a number of municipal and school board races in Garland, Irving, Richardson, Carrollton, Farmers Branch, and Lancaster. The treasurer for the group is Fred Tate, an officer in the Tarrant County GOP and a former Texas Republican Party treasurer.
Here are the Dallas candidates backed by the Committee for a Strong Econcomy: John Sims, District 3; Avis Hardaman, District 4; Elizabeth Matus, District 5; Machelle Wells, District 6; Jose Rivas Jr., District 7; Eugene Ralph Jr., District 8; Ernest Banda, District 9; Cara Mendelsohn, District 11; and Diane Benjamin, District 13.
https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2025/04/two-pacs-get-busy-in-dallas-elections/