The ad on your couch

If you live in Texas, you are tired of these ads. One comes on. It says it is from Texans for a Conservative Majority. The name sounds like a room full of your neighbors.

It is not. The friendly name is the costume. And the only place the real face is written is the public filing.

The 2026 race for an open U.S. Senate seat in Texas was the most expensive Senate race in the country. More than $110 million in outside money shaped the primaries. Most of it is not from the people running. It comes from outside groups called super-PACs. A super-PAC raises huge checks and buys ads. It just cannot hand that money to a campaign. So the names on the ads are not the candidates. They are the groups. And every group picked a name that sounds like you.

We pulled the public FEC filings — every super-PAC has to tell the government who pays it — and traced the friendly names back to the people who actually wrote the checks.

Receipt 1 — "Texans" is one beer billionaire, and the money lost

Texans for a Conservative Majority (FEC committee C00542217) spent about $60 million in this race. It was the pro-Cornyn group. The split: about $39 million against Ken Paxton, $11 million for John Cornyn, and $10 million against Wesley Hunt.

The crowd is not a crowd. It is mostly one man:

  • John L. Nau III — about $7.9 million. His family business distributes beer across Texas. He is a billionaire.
  • "Ohio Works Inc." — $5.55 million, a pass-through.
  • Energy Transfer Partners and oilman Trevor Rees-Jones — about $1 million each.

A name that says "Texans" is, in the filing, a beer billionaire and a few corporate checks. They spent $39 million trying to stop Ken Paxton. On May 26, 2026, Paxton won the runoff anyway, with 63.8%. The money lost.

Receipt 2 — both sides wear the costume

You might think only one side does this. We thought so too. We were wrong.

Lone Star Rising PAC (FEC C00918268) spent about $17 million inside the Democrats' own primary — about $9 million against Jasmine Crockett and $8 million for James Talarico. It sounds like proud Texas folks. But its backers include a pass-through called "Government That Works PAC" ($3.75 million) and California tech billionaire Reid Hoffman ($1.5 million). Liberal money, a Texan-sounding name. Talarico won the primary with 52.4%.

Receipt 3 — the out-of-state pass-through

Conservative Texans PAC (FEC C00932707) spent about $9.8 million, almost all of it against Wesley Hunt in the GOP primary. Where did it come from? 100% through a single out-of-state pass-through, "Conservative Americans PAC." The original donors are one filing removed, and not itemized. We say so. We do not guess.

The honest gaps

  • Some donors behind the pass-throughs ("Ohio Works Inc.," "Conservative Americans PAC," "Government That Works PAC") are one filing removed and not itemized. We label the gap rather than fill it.
  • Older ads you may remember attacking Colin Allred were the 2024 race (Allred vs. Ted Cruz). Allred dropped out of the 2026 Senate race in December 2025 to run for the U.S. House. None of that 2024 money is in this race.

Where it landed

The general election is Ken Paxton (R) vs. James Talarico (D). Incumbent John Cornyn lost. Jasmine Crockett lost. Picture the woman who drives across town after work to vote. She gets one ballot. A billionaire gets millions of dollars of airtime. That is the gap. The next ad will sound like your neighbors. It will not be. You do not need a reporter to find out who really paid. It is one filing. It is free. And it is already yours.

Method

Every figure here comes from public FEC committee filings (independent-expenditure Schedule E totals and Schedule A contributions), retrieved May 2026, filtered to spending dated on or after January 1, 2025 so 2024-cycle money is excluded. Dollar amounts are rounded. Where a committee's donors are not itemized, we label the gap rather than fill it.