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Matt Stiles covered government and politics for the Tribune, with a focus on data journalism, from 2009 to 2011. He oversaw and developed the Tribune’s library of web applications and interactive graphics. Previously, he was a government reporter at the Houston Chronicle. While there, he won the newspaper’s Jesse Award for service journalism and beat reporting and was its reporter of the year in 2007. Before joining the Chronicle, Stiles worked as a reporter for nearly four years at The Dallas Morning News.
Could you give away $8 million in a week? The state's top political donors did just that during the last seven days, raising the stakes on the governor's race and, mostly, on a relatively small number of bare-knuckle House races. Full Story
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Over the last decade, two Republicans with the last name Perry have dominated the Texas political landscape. One is Rick, the state’s longest-serving governor. The other is Bob (no relation), the state’s largest individual political donor during that time — with no close second. Since 2000, the wealthy Houston home builder has contributed about $28 million to more than 400 candidates and political action committees in Texas, according to an analysis of campaign-finance data by The Texas Tribune. During that time, he's also contributed at least $38 million more to candidates and groups outside of Texas. Full Story
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A month ago, we started tracking the whereabouts of the major-party candidates in the governor's race — Rick Perry and Bill White — using an interactive map and Twitter feed. Today we launch an update with improved navigation and an embed feature. Full Story
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Candidates in Texas political races filed reports this week itemizing how they financed their campaigns from Sept. 24-Oct. 23. The data show each candidate's totals for fundraising, spending, outstanding loans and cash left to spend. Sort the records by selecting the field headings or filter them by election type, political party and candidate status. Full Story
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Gov. Rick Perry outraised his Democratic challenger, Bill White, by roughly $5 million in the last month, according to the latest reports with the Texas Ethics Commission. Full Story
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This week we added more than 20 new public agencies to The Texas Tribune's government employee salary database. The application now features payroll data on more than 620,000 employees from 88 school districts, cities, community colleges, universities, state agencies and transit authorities. Full Story
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A new rule that took effect this summer allows — for the first time — real categorization of campaign spending. Full Story
Texas political candidates and committees filed reports October 4 with the Texas Ethics Commission listing the total amount of cash they have to spend ahead of the Nov. 2 election. Use this table to sort through or download those records. Full Story
Since The Texas Tribune launched in November 2009, the Ads Infinitum blog has collected and posted political advertisements — more than 70 in all — from candidates in both parties running for various offices during the primary and general election campaigns. We recently went back and collected data on all the ads we've posted and created a treemap data visualization so readers could sort them across categories. Transcripts of the ads and the videos themselves are also available via an interactive table. View the treemap and a video tutorial on how to use it. Full Story
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With a month to go before Election Day, challengers in fifteen House races outraised incumbents during the most recent reporting period, according to the most recent filings with the Texas Ethics Commission. In eight of those races, the challengers led in combined spending and saving, a rough measure of each campaign's financial strength. Full Story