Barbara Nash, the PAC’s top recipient, has collected $25,000. Nash, an Arlington incumbent, faces two challengers in her newly-drawn district. Recently Aman Betheja of the Texas Tribune marked her as endangered.

Chuck Hopson, a reeling Straus lieutenant, has received $19,000 from the Speaker’s fund. Hopson is a recent convert to the Republican Party who famously remarked that he would not be changing his Democratic voting practices in the Texas House just because he was changing parties. According to the Young Conservatives of Texans and Empower Texans Hopson honored his word, maintaining a liberal voting record.

Hopson was also singled out by the Texas Tribune as vulnerable in his primary.

Hopson clearly paid his Speaker dues. In early 2011 as chair of the House Ethics Committee Hopson ran cover for Straus ally Larry Phillips when Brian Hughes revealed that Phillips (representing the speaker) threatened reprisals for conservatives who opposed Straus’ reelection to speaker. The threats that Phillips leveled and Hughes reported were, in fact, carried out.

House freshman Lance Gooden is another recipient of contributions from the Fund. Gooden’s in-district support has been slipping steadily over the course of the election. During the session Gooden was a reliable workhorse ridden by Jim Pitts, chair of Appropriations. Gooden was even caught admitting to earmarking the budget by conservative stalwart Jodie Laubenberg.

Texans for Conservative Government is one of many PACs that have been set up to discredit conservative candidates with conservative sounding names slapped on false mail and advertising. Other PACs with conservative sounding names like Texans for Limited Government, Texans for Accountable Government and Texans for Fiscal Accountability have also been started to mislead voters.

These PACs are creatures meant to be discredited and discarded after use, but they aren’t working because they are being outed prematurely.

Take for instance the last PAC in the list above, Texans for Fiscal Accountability. It also has ties to Murphy Turner. According to the Texas Ethics Commission Brad White, the group’s front man, share’s an address with the Turner Advisory Group and he was a donor to the campaign of Chris Turner’s wife Holly Turner in 2010.

Texans for Fiscal Accountability has been misleading voters exclusively in districts where Murphy Turner and Associates has clients.

These front groups have remained dormant until the last minute but are now flooding mailboxes and computer screens. The aim of these groups is to elect moderate big government lackeys over conservatives and springing them at the last minute in an attempt to dupe voters.

Murphy Turner has been collecting massive sums of money statewide running an effort to keep moderates in power and knock off conservatives.

Calls to Murphy Turner were not returned.

Link to Daily News article on Murphy Turner shadow PAC

1. Tea Parties, the most powerful force in Texas politics right now, uniformly oppose Joe Straus.
2. Straus is on the wrong side of the other most powerful force in Texas politics, the Governor, by opposing the Texas Budget Compact, the Governor’s signature off-season policy initiative. Gov. Perry has endorsed legislators who voted against Joe Straus for Speaker in the 83^rd Lege.
3. In the first possible year, Straus attracted a speaker challenge, and will again if he can get past his primary.
4. Several Speaker team incumbents are in primary fights, and it is largely because of their association with the Speaker.
5. Speaker team candidates are faring poorly in the many open seats in play this cycle.
6. Straus will forever be the Texas Speaker who squandered the hugely advantageous pledge card system due to inability to secure pledges.
7. In a state where pro-choice Republicans are teetering on extinction, Straus was pro-choice until his post speaker challenge “conversion”. Though wishing to avoid the accountability of the proper label, in his Evan Smith interview days after being elected speaker, Straus articulated his pro-choice position when he said he was not in favor of changing the current abortion laws.  In addition, Straus has personal and spousal ties to Planned Parenthood.
8. Straus was brought to power by the trial lawyer party, the Texas Democrats, and has proudly advertised his uncommon “fairness” with “all sides” ever since, angering all Republican party quarters accept his own Republican-only-because-they’re-in-Texas cardinals.
9. Straus is the only Texas Speaker to attract a primary challenge according to the Secretary of State website’s 20 years worth of data.
10. To the embarrassment (on several levels) of the entire establishment, Speaker Straus’s primary battle is very real. The average margin of victory of challenged Republicans in 2010 was 23% and none of them had anywhere near the Speaker’s considerable advantages. Speaker Straus is in a fight to win his primary.
11. Speaker Straus was easily knocked off of his off-season message about needing new revenues, now the Governor has buried it.
12. Speaker Straus has specially targeted extremely popular Republican incumbent James White after previously claiming to never oppose incumbents. He’s helped fund raise for White’s opponent Tuffy Hamilton.
13. Straus managed his way through an entire session with 101 Republicans without any reform of bloated and arcane bureaucracies, public education, or budgeting practices, and helped kill a popular TSA anti-groping bill.
14. The friendly San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board (they endorsed Obama in 2008) had to resort to a particularly shameless brand of campaigning, desperately defending Straus’s credentials as conservative in the pages of their newspaper this week.

Texans should be thinking about which Straus clones will run for Speaker as conservatives, something almost sure to happen ahead of the 83^rd Lege.

–San Antonio Express-News campaign piece

In reality, Truitt was weak in 2010, as she is now. Her constituents were alerted to her voting record in 2009, specifically how she tried to raise gas taxes. The exposure cost Truitt, who despite outspending her opponents 10 to 1, only avoided a runoff by the skin of her teeth. For perspective, the average margin of victory for challenged Republicans was 20 points. Truitt’s margin of victory was the smallest in the party.

The situation is worse for Truitt in 2012 as her rematch is outing the baggage she acquired as one of Joe Straus’ lieutenants during the 2011 session. Adding to her resume of “falling on her sword” to increase taxes, Truitt decreased government transparency in 2011.

There is another bad omen for Truitt. None of the other Republicans who won by less than 10% in 2008 or 2010 – and there were only a handful that weak – will be in the 83rd Legislature.