Billionaire currency speculator George Soros is behind at least five liberal groups seeking to flip the Republican stronghold of Texas for the Democrats in the 2024 US presidential election, Fox News reported on Sunday, citing campaign finance records.
The current Republican governor of Texas is engaged in a stand-off with the White House over control of the state's border amid a wave of unprecedented illegal immigration into the country.
Soros, according to Fox, has contributed over $3 million to a network of political action committees (PACs) in the state. He is the only funding source for one, the Texas Majority PAC, donating with his Democracy PAC II a total of $2.25 million last year.
While the group had no public profile last year, local media reported earlier this month that it had been started by former staffers from the failed gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Beto O’Rourke. The former congressman's electoral efforts to unseat Republican Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 and then to replace incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott in 2022 fizzled out despite setting fundraising records for the state.
A representative for the Texas Majority PAC told the Texas Tribune that the donations were meant to assist the organization in mobilizing the vote “on a scale never seen before, year after year in the key regions of our state.” As for finances, the group was just getting started, deputy executive director Katherine Fischer said in a statement, insisting “we need millions of more dollars and hundreds of more full-time staff to do this.”
Soros also donated at least $300,000 in the second half of 2023 to CTX Votes, apparently a reference to Concordia Texas University, $200,000 to the Dallas County Democratic PAC, and $100,000 to a group called First Tuesday that did not appear to have an online footprint.
The billionaire also gave $250,000 to the Texas Organizing Project, which he and his organizations have supported to the tune of several million dollars over the last several years and which saw one of the beneficiaries of its bail payments go on to gun down the parents he had been locked up for assaulting before it got him released.
While Texas has historically been considered a solidly Republican state, Democratic candidate Joe Biden only lost to then-incumbent Donald Trump by six points in 2020. In recent years, the state has seen a population influx of hundreds of thousands of Americans fleeing liberal strongholds like California, where skyrocketing crime and high housing costs have triggered an ongoing exodus.
Given its location on the Mexican border, Texas has also seen a significant population increase from illegal immigration. While illegals may not vote in Texas, critics of open-borders policies like those favored by Soros and his fellow travelers have accused them of inviting hordes of migrants in order to fatten their voting rolls through a variety of underhanded means.