Bob Perry: GOP ATM Texans for Public Justice October 2012 Bob Perry: GOP ATM Contents: Introduction 3 One-Room Homebuilder 3 Texas Republican Revolution 4 Brio Superfund 5 Taking Texas’ Supreme Court 6 Robert and Jane Cull v. Perry Homes 8 Torts Drive Texas’ Biggest PAC 9 Tom DeLay and the 2002 Election 9 Launching Swift Boat 11 527s and Super PACs 12 Texas’ No. 1 Contributor 14 Appendix: All in the Family 15 Notes 17 Texans for Public Justice is a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy organization that monitors money in Texas politics and promotes campaign finance and judicial-selection reforms. Texans for Public Justice 609 W. 18th St., Suite E Austin, TX 78701 PH: (512) 472-9770
[email protected] http://www.tpj.org ©Copyright Texans for Public Justice Texans for Public Justice Page 2 Bob Perry: GOP ATM Introduction Houston Republican Jack Fields rode Ronald Reagan’s wave to narrowly defeat veteran Democratic Congressman Bob Eckhardt in 1980. Shortly thereafter Fields paid less than $1,000 for 150 shares in a company founded three weeks after his election. Within 26 months that extraordinary investment was worth somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000, a stock pop of more than 5,000 percent. In 1982 that investment also paid the congressman dividends of $50,000 to $100,000. The following year the stock— then valued at no more than $100,000—paid Fields dividends surpassing $100,000.1 Rep. Fields owed this extraordinary fortune to a passive investment of less than $1,000 in Perry Contractors, Inc.