Flores, Peña, receive $50,000 each from Craddick-backed PAC
EDINBURG, Feburary 5 - Rio Grande Valley lawmakers Kino Flores and Aaron Peña have defended their decision to accept $50,000 each in campaign contributions from a political action committee largely financed by House Speaker Tom Craddick.
Flores’ House District 36 challenger, Sandra Rodriguez, and Peña’s House District 40 opponent Eddie Saenz, are outraged, saying the incumbents should just come clean with the voters and admit they are Republicans running as Democrats.
“I get campaign funds from all sorts of PACs. I get campaign donations from across the spectrum, from Republicans and Democrats. Yes, I got $50,000 but I do not know who contributed to that PAC,” Flores said.
The political action committee in question is called the Texas Jobs & Opportunity Build a Secure Future Inc., PAC. The PAC’s campaign finance report shows that three so-called “Craddick Ds” received $50,000 each on Jan. 11 to help finance their primary campaigns.
Campaign finance reports show that the Texas Jobs & Opportunity Build a Secure Future Inc., PAC raised $332,500 in January, doling out $150,000 in donations to the three Democrats. Craddick deposited $250,000 into the PAC from the Tom Craddick Campaign Fund.
When reporters asked Peña why he accepted a $10,000 campaign contribution from Perry, he said: “I’m in the middle of a war. If somebody wants to hand me a load of bullets, I’m not going to turn them down.”
Asked to comment of the $50,000 from Texas Jobs & Opportunity Build a Secure Future Inc., PAC, Peña said: “Lacking the experience for the job, my opponent has made it clear that he is willing to spend several hundred thousand dollars of his personal fortune to attack me and my family.”
Peña said he had an “obligation” to his constituents and his family to “set the record straight and not let these vicious lies go unanswered.”
He added: “I will defend myself, my family and this community using the legal contributions from citizens who want to see an end to the corrupt machine politics of the past.”
Saenz said that “having been caught with his hand in the pockets of the Republican Party’s top donors,” Peña was “playing victim again.”
Saenz said the “special interests” represented by Texas Jobs & Opportunity Build a Secure Future Inc., PAC, were working against South Texas.
“Their money fuels everything from Swift Boating our presidential candidates to siphoning millions of tax dollars out of our public schools for their private-school voucher schemes,” Saenz said. “It’s time to assure voters that you will put South Texas first and your Austin Republican friends last.”
As your can see Aaron Pena is playing the victim. Why me? Why do people hate me? Why are people voting against me? Why me?
Well, Aaron I will tell you why! You are a Republican. That cut funding for CHIP bill 109. You are the reason 10,700 hidalgo county kids are uninsure. You are the reason we have not gotten one damn thing in our dist.
That is why people are running against you. And that is why you will lose come march.
