I’m at the lanes Thursday night, second White Russian in, half and half that’s maybe half and half, when Donny holds his phone out and reads me a number like it’s a bowling score.
A hundred and fifty-eight million dollars. One guy. One Senate race. Texas.
So I did the math, man, the only kind I trust. The ransom in the whole Bunny mess was a million bucks. That’s a hundred and fifty-eight ransoms. We lost a car, a rug, and most of a week over one. Somebody just wrote a hundred and fifty-eight of those and nobody even lost a toe.
Maude slides over from the next lane, because somebody in this conversation has to know things.
“The filings came out Thursday,” she says, flat, like she’s reading me a cholesterol result. “Elon Musk gave the Senate Leadership Fund seventy-five million on September ninth. The next day the fund moved seventy-five million to a brand-new super PAC called Texas PAC. On the twenty-third he gave eighty-three million more. On the twenty-fourth, eighty-three million went to Texas PAC. The amounts match to the dollar, one day apart. The filings cannot tell you whether they are the same dollars.”
“A dollar doesn’t have a return address, Maude.”
“Texas PAC is on track to spend nearly a hundred and sixty million on ads for Ken Paxton by Election Day,” she says, and goes back to her lane.
Walter’s been vibrating since the word “Senate,” which tracks.
“Dude, this isn’t a story. This is the party doing what parties do. You got a nominee, the party closes ranks around the nominee, that’s the whole fucking system. Am I wrong? This is not ‘Nam. This is the Senate Republicans. There are rules.”
And the thing is, man, he’s almost right, which is the worst way for Walter to be right. Because I read up, and Thune, the guy who runs the Senate Republicans, had been telling people their campaign committees couldn’t afford Texas’ media markets. The party said no. What looked like the party coming to the rescue in September was one guy’s money going through the party’s super PAC like a pipe with a logo on it.
“So why doesn’t the party just pay for it?” Donny asks.
“Donny, you’re out of your fucking element.”
“No, Walter, that’s the question. That’s the whole question.”
Maude doesn’t look up. “Paxton had raised about seventeen million at last count. Talarico, seventy-two. Talarico leads by three and a half in one poll and six in another.”
“Why’s he so far behind on money, though?” Donny asks.
“Donny, I swear to Christ, you’re out of your element, you’re out of your fucking element, you’re out of every fucking element on the table.”
“Securities fraud indictment in 2015, and he was re-elected twice with it pending,” Maude says, like she’s reading the specials. “Impeached in 2023 by his own party’s Texas House, acquitted by the Senate. His wife filed for divorce in 2025, citing adultery. And this week the Wall Street Journal published video of him on a balcony in Dubai on New Year’s Eve 2024, with his girlfriend and two men who had been indicted on healthcare fraud and had not come home. One of them had given his campaign a hundred and ninety thousand dollars, twenty-five thousand of it after the indictment. No report says he committed a crime on that trip.”
“Noted,” I say. “Very clinical.”
Walter’s about to blow a gasket. “This guy is about as popular as a used condom, Dude. A used fucking condom. And you know what he’s polling? Forty-four percent. Forty-four! A used condom doesn’t get forty-four percent. Am I wrong?”
“No, Walter. You’re not wrong. That’s the part that gets me.”
Because there it is, man. The base forgave the indictment. The base forgave the impeachment. It’ll forgive Dubai, and it’ll probably forgive the next thing, because a guy like this never needed anybody to like him. He only needed the team to like him, and the team does. What’s left to buy is a few points of margin. He can’t raise it himself, and the party said no. So somebody bought it, and ran it through the party’s own pipe so it would look like the party.
That used to be the thing that tied the room together, the party. Turns out the room is one guy’s wallet.
I don’t know what that says about Texas, or democracy, or any of it. I’m not a thesis guy. I do know a hundred and fifty-eight briefcases is a lot of briefcases, and I’m out of half and half.
The Dude abides.