The Shadow Party: How a Washington-Based Liberal Activist Is Trying to Turn Texas Blue (Whether Texans Want It or Not)
Most Texans would probably be shocked to learn that the man whom Texas Democrat operative Glenn Smith recently described as “the de facto state [Democratic] party right now” isn’t even in Texas most of the time. The media here has certainly done little to explain who Angle is or what he’s up to. But according to an article published in Roll Call in early 2010, Angle runs his Texas operation out of a row house in Washington, D.C. From that Washington lair, Angle directs operations at the Texas Democratic Party by controlling its purse strings via a massive slush fund left him by the late Fred Baron, a Dallas trial lawyer primarily known for asbestos lawsuits and for helping John Edwards cover up his relationship with his then campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter. That fact alone strongly argues against any notion that Baron left his money to Angle for any real good-government purpose, and at the same time lays waste to any idea that Angle even cares about good government. He is a partisan who cares about power. Baron reportedly left Angle as much as $10 million, a cache Angle has used to replicate what has been called the “Colorado Model” and operate the Texas Democratic Trust. That fund is among the Texas Democratic Party’s primary sources of income, as is Lisa Blue Baron — Baron’s widow. Angle uses the Trust to fuel projects like the Lone Star Fund, the Lone Star Project, and the Texas Justice Fund, while he uses his relationships with former Democratic Rep. Martin Frost staffers like Container Store heiress Aimee Boone to keep the Texas Democratic Party and its nominal chairman under his thumb. Roll Call also reported that Angle uses the Baron fortune to keep himself at the center of a web of Democratic intrigue, and to enrich himself.
For example: According to state and federal campaign records, the Lone Star Fund (Treasurer Matt Angle) pays rent to E St. Properties for use of the Capitol Hill row house (owned by Matt Angle), pays Angle & Associates Inc. for consulting services (about $100,000 between 2004 and 2007) and has donated about $20,000 to the Texas Democratic Trust (Treasurer Matt Angle). The Texas Democratic Trust since 2005 has paid Angle & Associates more than $1.2 million for consulting services, travel reimbursements and rent, and it pays retainers as much as $7,000 a month to a variety of political consultants and researchers who also work for the Texas Democratic Party, the Lone Star Trust or other affiliated organizations.
According to Texas Ethics Commission reports, available online, Angle has personally made over $700,000 from the operation. And nepotism is part of the program.
Two of Angle’s organizations, the Lone Star Fund and the Texas Justice Fund, are also listed as clients of a consulting firm run by Angle’s bother, J.D. Angle.
- Key – Lone Star Project – Angle’s online attack vehicle
- Texas Trial Lawyers Association – Houston trial lawyer and Democratic bankroller Steve Mostyn’s organization, pushes against sensible tort reform on behalf of trial lawyers
- Texas Freedom Network – anti-Christian organization run by Cecilia Richards
- Back to Basics PAC – Texas version of MoveOn.org, bankrolled by Houston trial lawyer Steve Mostyn, has launched extreme attack ads on Republican Gov. Rick Perry
- Texans for Public Justice – nominally nonpartisan watchdog funded by Soros and Heinz-Kerry that attacks Angle’s chosen targets
- Texas Democratic Trust – Angle’s massive slush fund, left to him by John Edwards’ benefactor
- Texas Democratic Party – under Angle’s control from Washington
- Texas Progress Council – left-wing PAC that funds Democratic candidates
Because of his position as the Texas Democratic Party’s shadow chairman, Angle exerts a great deal of influence over several left-wing groups across Texas, some of which pass themselves off as non-partisan. Among those is Texans for Public Justice, a group that claims to be interested in “tracking the influence of money and corporate power in Texas politics.” That interest is decidedly one-way: TPJ never takes on Democrat operatives like Angle, and in media hit after media hit, is always on his side. This makes sense when you take a look at who funds TPJ: Open Society Institute (George Soros, whose fortune also directly funds candidates even at the local level in Texas) and the Tides Foundation (Teresa Heinz-Kerry, among many others). Scratch the surface of most “nonpartisan watchdogs” in your state and you’ll probably find the same money sources, and perhaps a similar network of activists and groups. They are Soros’ “Shadow Party.” TPJ is a left-wing front masquerading as a nonpartisan watchdog.Somehow the mainstream media in Texas consistently misses the fact that TPJ never takes on Democrats, about anything, ever. Ditto for “non-partisan” groups like the Texas Freedom Network (founded and run by Cecilia Richards, daughter of the late acerbic Democratic Gov. Ann Richards) and the Texas Values in Action Coalition (TEXVAC), both of which have been very active in the 2009-2010 election cycle dredging up and amplifying attacks on Republicans, which then get major interest from the mainstream media.
The Angle operation hunts as a pack. It starts when Angle and his operatives manufacture an ethical charge against a vulnerable Republican. The allied groups, Texans for Public Justice, TEXVAC, and Back to Basics PAC, generate a flurry of press releases decrying the evil Republican. Mainstream media dutifully reports and amplifies the charge, quoting the spokesmen with the furrowed brows at the Angle-allied groups. A Democratic candidate, funded and controlled by an Angle ally, Houston multimillionaire trial lawyer Steve Mostyn, waits in the wings while the Republican crashes and burns.
This model was used to great effect in Colorado a few years back, and Angle has replicated it for deployment in Texas, refined it, and added a new weapon in the form of Mostyn (more about him in a future article), who by the time we get to November will have funded half a dozen of these groups and a couple dozen Democratic candidates including gubernatorial nominee Bill White, all to the tune of $3 million out of his personal fortune. Don’t worry, though, his hurricane lawsuits have netted him so much that he won’t miss it.
Angle’s immediate targets are Republicans, but ultimately, his target is Texas as a whole. Texas is one of the few large states with an economy that manages to create jobs, and is one of the few states run by leaders who don’t see a tax increase as the solution to every problem. This was hammered home when, in 2002, lame-duck Democrats in the legislature saddled the incoming Republican majority with a $10 billion budget shortfall as a way to force them to institute a state income tax. The Republicans chose to cut spending instead, keeping the state’s tax burden among the lowest in the nation. If Angle’s Tangle were to succeed and return Democrats to power, there’s no reason to expect them to do anything but roll back the Republican success story here, and push Democratic statism on Texans who year after year say with our votes that we don’t want it.
I’ll close with this thought. Angle’s efforts brought the Democrats to within a couple of seats of taking over the Texas House in 2008. Chances are he’ll lose ground this year, but as long as he has the Baron money to spend he isn’t going away. If his model of left-wing activism succeeds in Texas, it will be replicated in other states, if it hasn’t been already. If it succeeds in Texas, one of the most naturally conservative states in the country, it can succeed just about anywhere else. Keep an eye on the “watchdog” groups quoted in the media where you live whenever a Republican is under fire. Research those groups and find out who funds them. Chances are, there’s Soros and other out-of-state money involved, and there may be a Matt Angle spinning webs behind the scenes, too.
Update: Dan Riehl finds an Angle-like operation at work in Nebraska, and warns us that complacency elsewhere will be fatal. He’s right.
Update: Michele Samuelson’s Blue Dot Blues provides extensive detail about Steve Mostyn, the other major Shadow Party operator in Texas. Mostyn has made a pile of money off of mold lawsuits in the early 2000s (which drove Texans’ home insurance through the roof), and then off of lawsuits after Hurricanes Ike and Rita. Those hurricane lawsuits had the effect of draining the Texas Windstorm Insurance Agency while making Mostyn fabulously wealthy. He’s now using that money to fuel the Shadow Party alongside Matt Angle. Read the Blue Dot Blues post. It’s far more of an eye-opener than, say, this MSM softball interview with Mostyn.
Well, yes, of course.
Until some Conservative rich guys start up their own organizations to broadcast the truth about what is going on, the chowderheads who still get their news mainly from the MSM will continue to vote for the corrupt politicos. Time to pony up.
It will take a lot more money than the other side, because we do not have the MSM on our side, with all their free advertising. May be better to just buy these lousy MSM outlets. Change their programming or put them out of business.
Thanks for the info we do not need Soros money in this state.
What does “manufacture an ethical charge against a vulnerable Republican” mean? I ‘m not arguing against the facts stated above as to how Matt Angle or his associates operate. Still, a politician who is “vulnerable” to an ethics charge must be doing something imprudent.
My point is this: Politics is now and always has been a cut-throat business. If a pol is in it for his personal ambition or monetary gain, he will indeed, leave himself “vul;nerable’ some day or some way. Politicans who don’t want people to know what they’re doing should get out of the the people’s business.
That’s not really true. For the most part, though it seems illogical on the surface or at least wildly ironic, it is generally only nice and good people who are vulnerable to this kind of thing. Real jerks and lawbreakers seem to shrug this kind of thing off and go on with what they are doing. Names like Rangel, Frank, Waters, Clinton and others come to mind. This tactic has been very effective for the Alinsky left. It does not matter whether the charge will hold water – only public perception really matters. Bill Whittle has a great Afterburner segment on this that he did right after Sarah Palin’s resignation that proves this point, I think, very eloquently. I recommend it to everyone in this discussion – it is a classic.
The formula also involves timing. How many times have dems made completely spurious charges or started a bogus investigation of someone right before an election timed just so the person can’t mount a response in time. If I remember correctly, we have Barbara Boxer as a senator because of this kind of thing. She was behind a conservative in the polls until, a day before the election, a weird story came out of nowhere that at one time he had been seen going into a stripper bar or something. He dropped something like ten points in the polls and Boxer won. The rest is history. Hundreds more examples can be thought of. As Whittle points out – the innocent are destroyed by false allegations while the truly guilty seem to shrug them off.
Maybe what we need for the right is some sort of elite squad of high-profile lawyers to sue the heck out of these jerks. Or something. The real solution is an educated and grounded electorate, I suppose. Good luck with that…
Manufacturing ethics charges goes with the political process but isn’t it just a bit suspicious when all or most that are widely and conspicuously reported are against Republicans? And I don’t think this strategy is limited to Texas. Should the Republican party participate in kind? I don’t think so but they should at the very least immediately expose these tactics wherever and whenever they’re used with a very big megaphone. Unfortunately they don’t have one and the relative silence is what’s so damaging to the process.
Check out the criminal conduct of the dims, they pay no attention to laws, rules, there are no limitations on them as far as they are concerned. The left hounded a Conservative out of the House, he was from Texas, he is still battling the bogus BS charges brought against him by a DA down in Austin
The dims are corrupt to a fault, obummer is in office because no one had the nerve to call his hand on his birth certificate. He did illegal drugs and he is a demonstrated dirt bag and totally incompetent, yet he is in office. Some wonder if he still isn’t doing drugs, bet he is, my opinion of course.
“Still, a politician who is “vulnerable” to an ethics charge must be doing something imprudent.” Actually, I don’t think so. You can always find a vote on some issue that benefited some campaign contributor, or that disadvantaged some opponent, and claim that it constitutes corruption. You can always charge racism or some other -ism. I’ve been the target of Alinsky tactics, and they don’t require even a slight modicum of truth. In fact they rely on people thinking, “Where there’s this much smoke, there must be some fire.”
I thought Texas was made up of strong determined men that would, under no circumstance, allow any communist marxist individual to tarnish their state. I guess I was wrong! I guess the only thing left for Texas is the WOMEN to take over do the job the men are evidently not capable of doing
Mustang-though I dont live in texas, I travel there a few times a year on business. Trust me-Texas DOES have real men there who will have little use for the likes of George Sore Zero. They might FORM a “shadow party”-they wont SUCCEED.
Dude, are you serious???? Do you have any idea how many Mexicans we have in this state now? White people, statewide are UNDER 45% now.
Until we wrest control of the MSM from the Dems they will always out play us on 527s, organizations like Angle’s and ACORN, and control what is heard by the public. Even when we have big donors like the Kock brothers, or Richard Scaife they are enviscerated by the MSM until they are useless.
Nothing, nothing will ever change as long as the left controls the MSM. Even if by chance and overcoming the fruad the Dems will use in the next two elections, the MSM will tear us apart like they are doing to Christine O’Donnell in DE. Hell even our own GOP is getting in the act against her.
We need an organization that pulls together millions of conservative, right-minded and libertarian Americans who will force advertisers of the MSM to pull their advertising and shut them down. Then we need a Congress that will enact a law that any political organization will be taxed at 90% of what it receives in donations; charities and foundations need to be taxed at 90% if they give to any political organizations. These money machines need to be defunded. Then the playing field will be level and the people can make better decisions.
The left is TOO adept at this kind of war. And we haven’t got anyone to challenge this guy or the many others including Soros. So we need to fight them another way.
MSM? No need to boycott them, the last I looked they had the lowest book of all the news channels!
Texas has a cancer that is metastasizing and with any cancer you must first isolate it (which has been done by this brilliant wake-up article)and then deny it the protein it needs to grow-money. Promote and coordinate the cancellation of all subscriptions to print media and a corresponding mail,email,fax and phone call blitz to advertisers on these propoganda organs. Deny them their existance and they will fold.
The Dems want more tax revenue so give it to them.Any tax exempt organization that collects contributions for political action distribution should pay a state tax/fee on whatever sums it deems necessary to donate.
Argh. Thanks. I live in Texas. I had no idea. None.
I just didn’t know why Perry wasn’t strolling into the Gov’s Mansion, and Bill White had a chance. He’s a joke. He always has been a joke.
Our state works. I’ve looked at how all of my family for generations has ended up here- it’s because Texas is FREE and Texas Works! I left the state twice when I was young, to nightmares- Louisiana, where my best friend, whose husband had just died, violently. She was a widow with two small daughters.The Welfare woman denied her benefits. The people around her said ” Of course, did you expect benefits? You’re white!” All of them were complicit. These lovely little girls had obvious signs of malnutrition as she struggled to care for them for the next few years, until she caught on, and moved out of state. I took them in for months, myself.
I can’t send mail to Chicago, to my friend, because the mail system is politicized. The mailman cannot be forced to do good work, and deliver the mail to the right address, nor can he be fired. What sort of person votes for a person from a city like that?
I know people who have left, to go to the welfare rolls in Massachusets. Two sisters–one stayed to be free- she had a job- and one who went home- she wanted to stay in a welfare hotel and get a welfare check.
Why are politicians being nice to Dems here? They tend to have enormous, embarassing character flaws. The Republicans tend to be tall, handsome, hardworking, decent, humble guys. Make fun of GWB all you want, but when he was in a room full of Reps, they all looked the same- cowboys- real ones- with real ranches.
ari
montereyjack has it.
Go after the advertisers. In a country where the majority is fiscally conservative, and the economy not too hot; I don’t think too many companies will risk alienating the customer.
Every where you turn its Soros funding some left scheme! This man is the head of the Medussa!
Democrats are evil, evil incarnate. Simple as that.
I got news for George Sore zeroes. Your ass isnt wanted in Texas, the home of the Alamo
and defenders of freedom and capitalism. Your “shadow” (commie scum) “party” and its other self, the CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS, will not succeed. Unlike in 2002, Sore zeroes , no one knew about you then. Now your name is sheet in these parts, as well as yopur pals John Podesta and the racist punk Van Jones(we know they both work for YOU, Sore Zero). The best lawyers in the country happento be in Texas, and mos tof them DONT LIKE YOU. You see what happened to Mike Cas-ho in Delaware? Imagine 100 times worse Sore Zeroes.
#12. dv,
We could use you here in Nevada. The sheeple here that “love” Scarry Reid are multiplying as Kalifornians are coming here for more freebies. As promised by Mr. Reid.
What does “manufacture an ethical charge against a vulnerable Republican” mean?
You mean like leaking sealed divorce documents as Obama’s operation did when he was running for state senate in Illinois?
The Democ-rat Party is a malignancy that must be cut our of the American body politic. Both its programs of failure and the way they’re imposed are an explicit threat to America and its way of life. They wsill destroy our economy and our prosperity.
This is why we MUST drive the MSM out of business and do it the free market way. Stop all your subscriptions to magazines and newspapers. Do NOT watch the network news. Get the real and balanced news from FOX. This is what I did. If everyone did this, soon they will all sink into bankruptcy and we wouldn’t have to worry about their biased liberal reporting any more.
Many thanks for the heads up! I hope people all over this great nation read this and are forewarned to this particular form of domestic enemy of America.
Absolutely; stop subscribing to left wing papers and magazines. Starve them to death, and then don’t let the dems give them federal money to survive. This has been informally proposed by worried libs. If they want to survive, stop spinning the truth. I read the NY Times for forty years, until I couldn’t take any more. Now I read a better written paper,the Wall Street Journal, with writers who respect the Constitution, Christianity, Family Values, and American Exceptionalism. Let’s try to save this country while there is still time. I lived through WWII and I believe these are more perilous times for our liberties!
I’ve been living in Texas for over 10 years now and I think it’ll take more than George Soros and several billion dollars to pull one over on the average Texan. Of course if you ‘import’ more Californians here, it might be a close fight.
Republicans may actually already have a majority of elected offices in Texas, because many cities and towns in the state, especially the smaller ones, have nonpartisan municipal elections, including the small city I’m from. And Republicans dominate in most of the smaller cities and towns, except along the Mexican border, and in the suburbs of the large cities. The mainstream media in Texas probably does lean liberal, but it is still much more conservative than the MSM on the Coasts. The Dallas Morning News, for instance, has a conservative editorial board.
Texas would have been fully Republican as of twenty years ago, had the had the party refrained from embracing the far-out religious right.
Maybe so, but it wouldn’t have been worth it.
This month’s ‘TEXAS MONTHLY’ magazine (no real Texan actually subscribes to it because it has anti-Texas values and makes fun of our traditions) carried a silly article on cutting the budget which is the most destructive set of acts imaginable to anyone who understands where the tax revenues come from and where they go. The real problems with the current budget? The costs of educating 60% of public school children who speak only Spanish at home have driven the education budget billions in the hole. The skyrocketing costs of Medicaid are hitting hard, because of the influx of so much cheap labor which has driven down income for blue collar workers….The TM article did NOT even mention the root causes of our current budget problems; they ran the article just before elections, as an anti-Governor Perry ad for the leftist with a shady past, the ex-mayor of Houston, Bill White. The TM also ran an article on how White could win!! Such ‘journalism’ is popular with the large contingent of ex-Californians who came here when their companies moved…..The media hate Perry because he is a typical old-style Texan, clean-living, who was a West-Texas rancher with an Air Force stint as an airline pilot, who isn’t afraid of being honest, even when it isn’t politically correct. (His book on the Boy Scouts proves his courage.) God Help Us All who love our state.
Go back to the 1990-94 period, the last under full Democratic control in Austin, and you can see the plans under Ann Richards to implement a state income tax became the third rail of Texas politics — so much so that Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock saved his own skin as Richards was being ousted by George W. Bush by pushing the through a state law mandating that the implementation of an income tax had to be approved by the voters via amendment referendum. So that doesn’t mean if the Democrats get back into power some day they won’t try to do it, but there is a safeguard level to where they can’t just go down to Austin some spring in an odd-numbered year and implement it by legislative fiat, before the voters know what hit them (though I’m sure they’d love to have some state or federal judge mandate an income tax on the voters based on ‘failure to fund’ grounds).
In this election cycle, Bill White has actually been trying to run to the right of Rick Perry on a number of issues, which Perry left himself open to by moving to the left in the wake of the 2006 state elections. The Texas Toll Road/eminent domain kerfuffle, Perry’s push for mandatory cervical cancer vaccinations for all sixth grade girls in Texas and the reported $18 billion state budget deficit (which is shrinking due to the economy recovering faster than the rest of the nation) are where White’s trying to do the same thing some Rahm Emanuel-sponsored candidates did to Republicans in ’06 and ’08, which is peel off not-paying-attention voters who normally would trend moderate-conservative.
And it might have worked, too … if White had been the Dems candidate in 2006. Four years and a D.C. demonstration of what the Democrats really believe later, and not only is White not going to get the benefit of the doubt against Perry (who smartly tacked back to the right in 2008 because he saw Kay Bailey Hutchison’s 2010 primary challenge looming), but few of the down-ballot Democratic hopefuls are going to get in either, because the state’s voters are so mad at the national party. That will give conservative Republicans a major boost in 2011-12, since the Legislature will be doing the state and U.S. House redistricting over the next two years, and for the first time with the Legislature fully in Republican control. That will make it harder in the next few cycles for the outside activists to swing the state back to Democrats’ control, since odds are you’re going to see a handful of deep Blue Democratic districts surrounded by a sea of red ones when the lines are drawn for 2012.
I would not be too sure about the redistricting. Most population growth in Texas has been minority growth. The new seats Texas gets will have to reflect this per the voting rights act. Of the four or five that Texas might pick up…I would say at least three will be minority districts. Which means they will probably be Democratic.
they can come..they can build….and they can manipulate….but in the end….they will run with their tails between their legs…clean out of Texas
Angle should go Dangle
From funding the Orange Revolution in Ukraine to promoting Democrats in Texastan, my what a tangled web Mr. Soros weaves…
I think something amazing is going on in West Texas. The bluest part of the State seems to have a purplish haze … must be the expansion of Ft Bliss and the extra soldiers moderating the libs out here.
We can only imagine the terrifying power Dr. Evil is ammassing to put us all in Marxist chains. Be afraid, be very afraid!
Caution: Not just a shadow party in Texas, but a shadow government in the USA has been constructed, too, as envisioned by Sharpton, Shabazz, Obama and Holder, pretty much in their own words, if you’ve paid attetion to bizarre, not-exactly-subtle comments which they and other black leaders have made.
I had a ex-friend in Texas who was an active member within the official Texas Democratic Party. And he was openly boasting about how they were going to use illegal immigrants and every other method they had available to completely rewrite Texas voting districts so that Republicans could never win another election ever again. I was taken back by how militant and zealous he was to win no matter the costs. You could see the utter fanaticism in his eyes and hear it in his voice. It reminded me of how the militant leftist communist revolutionaries reveled in their bloodthrist when they raped and murdered the “bourgeoisie” during the 20th century. Watch out for the left. A lot of them are completely flipping nutballs and will stop at absolutely nothing to create their “socialist utopia”.
I had a ex-friend in Texas who was an active member within the official Texas Democratic Party. And he was openly boasting about how they were going to use illegal immigrants and every other method they had available to completely rewrite Texas voting districts so that Republicans could never win another election ever again. I was taken back by how militant and zealous he was to win no matter the costs. You could see the utter fanaticism in his eyes and hear it in his voice. It reminded me of how the militant leftist communist revolutionaries reveled in their bloodthrist when they raped and murdered the “bourgeoisie” during the 20th century. Watch out for the left. A lot of them are completely flipping nutballs and will stop at absolutely nothing to create their “socialist utopia”.
ghosrder69_1968@yahoo.com gsmith53@dc.rr.com glenn@drivedemocracy.org aaronthethinker@yahoo.com
These are the email addresses he uses
Okay… for every Dem that turned Repub… we just added another RINO to the ranks as I see it. There will be no clear majority of Repubs even if it looks like that on paper.
Here come yet another defense piece by Bryan Preston. It is getting so obvious, Bryan.