Unsurprisingly, Julián Castro and Beto O’Rourke are getting more money here than from any other state. But other candidates are playing in Texas, too.
Carla Astudillo
Carla Astudillo is a senior data visuals developer with a focus on elections and political data. Before joining the Tribune in 2019, she was a data and interactive visuals journalist at NJ.com and The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, where she helped build a database of police use of force in the state as part of a 16-month investigative project. She earned a master’s degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. Carla was born in Antofagasta, Chile and moved to the United States when she was 7 years old. After brief stints in Texas and New Mexico, her family settled in Lakeland, Florida, where she grew up. She is based in Austin and speaks Spanish fluently. Read Articles by Carla Astudillo
Dennis Bonnen, Michael Quinn Sullivan and who? We break down who was in the room and who’s mentioned on the tape.
Here’s who was mentioned in the recording where Republican Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen urged a hardline conservative activist to politically target members of their own party — and suggested he could get the activist’s group media access to lawmakers next legislative session.
Five takeaways from the $80 million raised by Texas campaigns the first half of this year
Gov. Greg Abbott is a fundraising juggernaut, and Republicans still dominate campaign finance in the state.

