Harris County Campaign Finance · January – June 2026

The Price of the Courthouse

Thirty Harris County campaigns — commissioners, judges, the DA, the sheriff, the constables — just filed their mid-year money reports. Read together, they reveal something one report never shows: the same names, writing checks across the whole building.

$5.43M

raised by 30 campaigns

1,993

donors

194

donors gave to 2+ campaigns

32¢

of every dollar came from those repeat donors

01 · THE WEB

194 donors tie the county's campaigns into one network.

Each arc below links two campaigns funded by the same donors. The web is not evenly spread: it concentrates hard on Commissioners Court — the body that votes on the county's contracts and budget.

How to read it: each dot is a campaign — dot area = money raised Jan–Jun 2026. An arc joins two campaigns that share donors; thicker arc = more shared donors. Hover a dot to isolate a campaign's connections; hover an arc for the pair's numbers.

Arcs shown for pairs sharing 2+ donors. Campaign office as listed on the filing; three offices (Garcia, Ramsey, Teare) not stated in filings were added from public record.

02 · THE TRIANGLE

Three commissioners, one donor pool.

The densest edges in the network join Adrian Garcia, Rodney Ellis and Lesley Briones — three of the four county commissioners. Garcia and Briones alone share 68 donors. These are the offices that award the county's engineering, construction and professional-services contracts.

Shared-donor counts between commissioner campaigns, Jan–Jun 2026 filings. Ellis raised $1.79M in the period — the county's largest war chest.

03 · THE REPEAT PLAYERS

Who writes checks across the whole building?

The twelve biggest repeat donors put in $602,000 between them. Engineering money, lobby money — and in one case, a sitting commissioner's own campaign fund giving to two other county candidates.

How to read it: one row per donor. Each dot is a campaign that donor funded — dot area = amount given, color = the campaign's branch of county government. Hover any dot for the exact figure.

Top 12 multi-campaign donors by total given. Donor names as reported on filings.

04 · THE VENDOR CROSSOVER

Two of the network's biggest donors also bill the county.

We matched the repeat donors against Harris County's own vendor-payment records. Two names appear on both sides of the ledger — funding the campaigns of the officials whose government pays them.

Cobb Fendley & Associates

Civil engineering firm · Houston

Its PAC gave to 4 county campaigns (Ellis, Garcia, Briones, Parker)

$73,500

Paid by Harris County since May 2023 (211 payments)

$18.6M

Campaign giving from July 2026 filings; payments from Harris County vendor-payment records, May 2023 – May 2026.

HillCo Partners

Austin lobby firm

Its PAC gave to 4 county campaigns (Briones, Garcia, Ellis, Plummer)

$47,500

Paid by Harris County since June 2023 (12 payments)

$256,250

Campaign giving from July 2026 filings; payments from Harris County vendor-payment records, June 2023 – July 2026.

A third repeat donor, ACEC Houston PAC — the political arm of the region's consulting-engineering industry — gave $27,965 across four campaigns. Its member firms hold county engineering contracts.

05 · WHAT YOU CAN DO

The filings are public. Read them.

Every arc on this page comes from reports candidates filed with the Harris County Clerk in July 2026. Commissioners Court votes on vendor contracts nearly every other Tuesday — the agenda is public too.

Search Harris County filings Commissioners Court agendas More from Local Insights

Method. Source: campaign-finance reports filed with the Harris County Clerk, including the July 2026 semiannual reports (filed Jul 1–16, 2026); contributions received Jan 1 – Jun 30, 2026, parsed from filing PDFs. Donors grouped by name as reported — name variants may split one donor, so shared-donor counts are a floor. Three campaigns' offices (Garcia, Ramsey, Teare) were not machine-readable on the filing and were added from public record. Vendor payments from Harris County's published vendor-payment ledger, de-duplicated by payment number. Contributions of $0 and non-itemized totals excluded. Analysis: Local Insights, from the Balthazar Texas civic graph.