Happy New Year folks. The Austin Independent is returning from a long break after losing part of our Christmas season to the Council runoff election (a little on the election results below). I realize that a lot of folks can’t face looking at the news right now, or just don’t want to do so. I also realize that, of those paying attention to the news, many of them are focused on the upcoming national transfer of power and the impending presidential inauguration of Donald J. Trump. Local politics, such as reducing the number of nights per week that East 6th Street is pedestrian-only, just can’t compete with that.
So here I’m going to try writing about a national/international figure who is involved in the Trump presidency but is also, to an extent, part of our local scene.
I’m talking about international/local businessman Elon Musk. Musk of course was on the winning side of the presidential election — in a really, really big way. We now know, however, that last February and March he undertook a secretive, and much less successful, venture into local Austin politics.
Yes, thanks to the Wall Street Journal we know that Elon Musk was pouring money into the sleazy, counterproductive dark money group called Saving Austin which ran an anonymous campaign attacking Travis County District Attorney José Garza during the March 2024 Travis County Democratic primary. OK, I know there were some derisive adjectives in that sentence. But, I think they are merited and will explain.
Let’s begin by looking at what the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. Here’s their lead: “Elon Musk secretly channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into a local race in Travis County, Texas, in an unsuccessful effort to unseat a prosecutor who had won the office with the backing of the investor and Democratic donor George Soros.”
The article continued, “A group primarily funded by the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive, which called itself Saving Austin, sent out fliers and texts and spent more than $650,000 on television ads attacking District Attorney José Garza in the Democratic primary race earlier this year, according to people familiar with Musk’s involvement, as well as Federal Communications Commission filings and corporate documents.”
The Journal wrote that the group’s approach was “provocative,” and explained: “One of the fliers sent to voters in February bore Garza’s photo above an image of a rumpled teddy bear, stained with what appeared to be blood.
‘José Garza is filling Austin’s streets with pedophiles & killers,’” the flier said. “The next victim could be your loved one.’”
The Journal further explained, “On the back of the flier was a photo of a man’s hand covering a child’s mouth.”
I remember that flyer and also television and online ads by the group. I saw them at the time. The flyer was mailed to my house (see photo above), and probably yours too if you live in Travis County. As soon as I saw the mailer I realized that it was going to help, not hurt, José Garza’s reelection campaign. The Journal reports that they found that phenomena during their reporting: “Some voters also recoiled from it, saying on social media that the flier had motivated them to get to the polls to support Garza.”
Exactly. Democrats, not without reason, associate this kind of extreme language with Republicans. Also, many Democratic voters, like numerous voters of all persuasions, don’t dig very deep. For instance, Garza’s Democratic challenger, Jeremy Sylestine, condemned the ads. Several media outlets reported that it was a dark money group which did not have to report its expenditures. We explained that in a March 3 article, “Unlike political action committees, dark money groups do not have to report their officers, donors, or expenditures. This lack of transparency is due to Supreme Court decisions and a lack of follow-up action from Congress.”
The Journal article described Saving Austin’s designation as “a tax-exempt ‘social welfare’ organization that doesn’t have to reveal donors.”
Figuring out the group was dark money, understanding what that meant, and realizing it was not affiliated with Sylestine’s campaign, that was asking a lot from the average voter. It’s too bad that is the case, but I’m afraid it’s true.
There were plenty of legitimate examples of Garza’s policies and decisions to make a solid case against him; including letting perpetrators of violence and perversion against women walk free with no jail sentence. We covered a lot of that.
I wasn’t the only one who realized the Saving Austin ads would help Garza. At the time I contacted some of the veteran consultants working on the Sylestine campaign. They were demoralized that the flyers had been sent and worried that the campaign couldn’t recover from the impact.
For one thing, Saving Austin played right into Garza’s strategy of labeling Sylestine as his “MAGA opponent” and claiming that Sylestine was being funded by “Republican money,” without giving any examples.
Does Musk’s now revealed involvement mean that the “MAGA” charges were accurate? Let’s take a look.
First of all, given that no examples were given, there is no evidence that Garza or any of his backers, knew of Musk’s involvement with the dark money group. In fact the Journal reported, “Neither Garza nor his opponent, Jeremy Sylestine, said they were aware of Musk’s involvement in the race until the Journal contacted them.” Neither would comment beyond that for the article.
At the time Musk had not yet endorsed Trump or launched his America PAC which backed Trump. According to the Washington Post, in February Musk had spoken in favor of Trump at a gathering of high level Republican skeptics, including Karl Rove. Even if this would qualify as making Musk’s money “MAGA” money, it was given to a group with which Sylestine was not, by law, allowed to coordinate or communicate with.
So it doesn’t look like José Garza had Musk in mind when he maintained that Sylestine was “MAGA,” without explaining what he meant.
The Saving Austin attack mailers and ads did sound pretty MAGAish, especially to Democratic ears; thus, the boost for Garza’s campaign, and the damage to Sylestine’s by a group targeting Garza. The Journal says the Saving Austin effort “included Republican consultants, lawyers and former staff members of Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), according to FCC and corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.” By the way, the Journal also notes that, unlike Saving Austin, “America PAC, Musk’s pro-Trump project, is registered with the Federal Election Commission and must disclose its donors.” At the time the Journal published the article in late September, they reported that “Chris Gober, the founder of the law firm that formed the organization, is the treasurer of Musk’s pro-Trump PAC, according to FEC filings.”
To sum up, I’m definitely not saying that the group Musk poured money into made the difference in the election. Sylestine had some other things going against him. He wasn’t well known. He started late. Garza has a strong political base in the local Democratic party. And, ultimately, Sylestine lost by an almost two-to-one margin despite a well funded, well organized and articulate campaign.
There can be little doubt, however, that the Musk backed effort damaged Sylestine’s campaign and helped Garza — the latter being Musk’s intended victim. While we can’t know the actual amount of damage the Saving Austin effort did, one thing this does show conclusively is that Musk, and/or whoever he hired to run the Saving Austin campaign, has little, if any, idea of what the electorate in Austin is like, especially in a Democratic primary.
But, let’s not be too hard on Elon. After all, he’s sort of a local guy now. And, more importantly, we’re still counting on him to bring those astronauts stranded in space back to Earth. Let’s hope he doesn’t forget about that with everything else he has going on.
In closing this section I will note that the Austin American-Statesman carried a summary of the Journal article (in case you haven’t paid the $500 annual cost of subscribing to the Wall Street Journal). The Journal article was also featured on Apple News, where I found it, under the headline “Elon Musk’s Secret Effort to Oust a Soros-Backed Prosecutor.”
Bledsoe Gets MAGA’d Too
Saying your opponent is getting MAGA or Trump money — or MAGA backing — is a very effective strategy in today’s Austin politics. It worked not only for José Garza, but also, more recently, for Mike Siegel in his recent narrow victory over legendary Texas Civil Rights leader Gary Bledsoe. That was in the District 7 City Council race, to replace Leslie Pool. In Siegel’s case he at least cited one specific example of a PAC contributor.
For instance on his campaign website Siegel posted a series of graphics talking about contributors to PACs that were backing Bledsoe or attacking Siegel in the runoff election. For example, one graphic (see below) listed “Protect Austin PAC” under the headline, “Meet the PACs Supporting Gary Bledsoe.” The “Funders” of this PAC were described as, “GOP and pro-Trump donors including mega-donor Gary Farmer.” At the top of slide was an upside down cowboy hat, clearly meant to represent Bledsoe’s trademark hat, with $100s bills falling into it.
Here, let’s note that Bledsoe — like Jeremy Sylestine before him — could not, by law, coordinate or communicate with any of the PACs who got involved in the runoff. In other words, Bledsoe had no control over who donated to the PACs or over which PACs supported him or opposed Siegel. Once again, we have the US Supreme Court to thank for this sort of situation, along with the failure of a string of Congresses to fix the situation.
Something to watch going forward is whether the “progressive” politicians accusing their opponents of benefitting from “Trump donors” will police their own contributions and refuse contributions from anyone who has also given to Trump or other Republicans? That’s not likely. We’ll try to keep an eye on that.
It’s really amazing that Bledsoe could be tarred with Trump, but Siegel’s “progressive” campaign pulled it off. Readers should keep in mind that not just anyone can be successful at this strategy. It really needs to come from trained Austin “progressives” to be effective. And, they are selective in how they apply it. For instance Gary Farmer, the Trump “mega-donor” cited by Siegel, also contributed to Mayor Kirk Watson’s reelection campaign. Farmer was not the only Watson donor who has also given to Republicans. Additionally, PACs supporting Watson received donations from people who also support Republicans.
Readers should keep in mind that not just anyone can be successful at this strategy. It really needs to come from trained Austin “progressives”
But, during his two-year term, from 2023 through 2024, Watson prioritized winning the support of “progressives,” mainly by voting their way on almost every issue. So, no charges of MAGA or Republican donations were flung at him. Actually I can’t say for certain that no candidate ever brought that up, because I wasn’t at all the forums. But, if they did, it didn’t get any legs, because, like I said, it has to come from the right — or rather, the left — people.
Despite being charged with ties to “Trump donors,” Bledsoe did better than most candidates in recent years who have run against a Council candidate anointed as the “progressive” choice. In fact he won the early voting and led all night, until the last batch of votes came in. He pulled almost 49% of the vote and ultimately lost by only 206 votes.
Greg Casar takes helm of Congressional Progressive Caucus and almost immediately faces labor strife
As noted in our pre-election article on the District 7 race, Austin’s junior Congressman, Greg Casar, supported Siegel. After Siegel’s victory, Casar tweeted a picture of himself and Siegel with the caption, “Two progressives ready to take on the Trump Administration.”
Casar though may be taking on the Trump Administration with a Congressional staff that only works 32 hours a week.
You see, staffers to “progressive” members of Congress have their own organization, a fact I didn’t know until a few days ago. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Staff Association. On Thursday January 16, exactly four days before Donald Trump takes office, the group released a letter calling on Congressional leaders to adopt a 32-hour work week for Congressional staff. The letter was addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Congressional Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Casar wasn’t mentioned in the letter, but he will likely have to deal with this in some fashion, given that he was recently chosen to head the Congressional Progressive Caucus — replacing Pramila Jayapal of Seattle who was term limited in the position.
The letter talked about staffers burning out and leaving their jobs too soon. The staffers may have some points about that, but, at the very best, their timing seems more than a little bit off.
First of all, progressives nationwide are on high alert for what Trump may do in his first days and weeks, not to mention his whole four year term. Until seeing this letter, I would have assumed that those on high alert included people on the frontlines, like staffers to “progressve” members of Congress. I mean if the situation is so serious, and I think it is, this sure doesn’t seem like the time for people on the front lines to start working less hours.
Also, when your party just lost a national election, in large part because they lost the working class, it seems amazingly clueless to propose cutting the workweek for Congressional staff members when no one else in the country is going to get a reduction in hours. Sometimes it’s best to lead by example. This doesn’t seem like one of those times.
Does wanting to end Daylight Savings Time make you MAGA?
Now, here’s an issue where there could actually be agreement with a Donald Trump and Elon Musk position among millions of Republicans, Democrats, Independents and many others. I’m talking about Daylight Savings Time. Please, can we agree on getting rid of that? It’s just not natural to have two different times for different parts of the year. I could go on, but I would hope this is something Trump can deliver with a broad coalition behind it. Even if it’s MAGA, I’m for that one.
How Cold Is It Out There?
President-Elect Donald Trump has decided to move his inauguration indoors, to the Capital Rotunda. He cited the predicted cold temperatures, in the low 20s.
Some are speculating that Trump made this call because he fears his crowd will be smaller again this time than the record crowd for the Barack Obama inaugural in 2008.
Maybe so, but perhaps Trump is just trying to make it easier on his core supporters. After all, he knows that they know how to get to the Capital Rotunda.
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