A QPQ Tracker study · Texas · 2023–2026
Texas: who paid for the data centers and what the state decided
Texas bars companies from giving to candidates. The money moves through PACs, and separately through executives’ own cheques. Oncor’s state PAC gave Gov. Greg Abbott $300,000, Vistra’s $150,000 and NRG’s $75,000. Oncor’s chief executive gave him $655,000 personally and Energy Transfer’s chairman $2.26M. Executive money is a different money type and sits outside the payer total on this page.
Sen. Phil King wrote SB 1015 in 2023, which let Oncor file for rate increases twice a year, and SB 6 in 2025, the large-load interconnection law. Oncor’s PAC gave him $30,000. Oncor’s chief executive gave him $20,000 nine days after SB 1015 was signed and $20,000 ten days after SB 6 was signed, each in the first week after the post-session fundraising moratorium lifted. Every gatekeeper of SB 6 took utility PAC money in 2023 to 2026. No repeal of the sales-tax exemption reached a floor.
The exemption stands. The Comptroller put its cost at more than $1.3B in fiscal 2026 and $3.2B over two years. Then the money and the policy parted. In June 2026 Abbott told the utility commission that data centers must bring their own power and pay their own costs. At the end of June he said they should be prohibited from rural neighborhoods. On August 3 he ordered an audit of ERCOT’s interconnection queue. On September 21 he directed TCEQ to halt data center permits until the audits finish.
Meta’s treasury money went to Forge the Future, its own Texas committee: $1.37M in February 2026. Meta, Google and Crusoe gave nothing to Abbott, Patrick, King, Schwertner or Hunter in the filings.
Who paid
Each company's direct giving from its treasury and employee PAC, as filed in Texas. Executives' personal cheques, super PAC spending and lobbying are different kinds of money and are not added here.
| Payer | Class | Direct giving in Texas | Filings (every state the payer files in) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energy Transfer | Trade group, developer, pipeline or investor | $1,491,912 | 2 filer rows → |
| CenterPoint Energy | Utility | $1,277,259 | |
| Oncor | Utility | $1,274,900 | 2 filer rows → |
| Vistra | Utility | $649,500 | |
| NRG Energy | Utility | $557,709 | |
| Black Mountain Power | Trade group, developer, pipeline or investor | $520,000 | Filings and recipients → |
| El Paso Electric | Utility | $289,015 | 2 filer rows → |
| Crow Holdings | Data center operator | $60,000 | Filings and recipients → |
| Skybox Datacenters | Data center operator | $31,000 | Filings and recipients → |
| AEP | Utility | $20,000 | 6 filer rows →
|
| Hyperscaler | $5,000 | ||
| Amazon | Hyperscaler | $1,552 | |
| Meta | Hyperscaler | $715 | 2 filer rows → |
Who took it
The Texas officeholders and candidates who received the most from the payer set, and what each did on the state's data center measures: the votes they cast, the bills they authored, the orders they signed. A yea is a vote for the measure as titled.
4 actions on measures
- issuedGov. Abbott directive: TCEQ to halt data center permits pending the ERCOT and TWDB auditsEnacted
- issuedGov. Abbott directive: PUCT/ERCOT verification and audit of all data centers in the interconnection queueEnacted
- enabledSB 6: Large-load interconnection, curtailment and co-location rules for ERCOTEnacted
- enabledSB 1015: Periodic (semiannual) rate adjustments by electric utilitiesEnacted
Dade Phelan
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
Ken King
1 action on a measure
- advocated forSB 6: Large-load interconnection, curtailment and co-location rules for ERCOTEnacted
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
Phil King
2 actions on measures
- advocated forSB 6: Large-load interconnection, curtailment and co-location rules for ERCOTEnacted
- advocated forSB 1015: Periodic (semiannual) rate adjustments by electric utilitiesEnacted
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
Charles Schwertner
1 action on a measure
- advocated forSB 6: Large-load interconnection, curtailment and co-location rules for ERCOTEnacted
Charlie Geren
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
Rafael Anchía
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
Nathan Johnson (Texas Senate)
No recorded vote or action on a tracked measure.
The 12 largest recipients of any kind, committees included
| # | Recipient | Kind | From the payer set |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Greg Abbott | person | $1,087,174 |
| 2 | Judicial Fairness PAC | PAC or committee | $1,000,000 |
| 3 | Texas Now PAC | PAC or committee | $750,000 |
| 4 | #PROJECTREDTX | PAC or committee | $250,000 |
| 5 | El Pasoans for Prosperity | PAC or committee | $200,000 |
| 6 | Dade Phelan | person | $122,333 |
| 7 | Ken King | person | $93,500 |
| 8 | Dustin R. Burrows | person | $88,000 |
| 9 | Dan Patrick | person | $70,000 |
| 10 | Todd Hunter | person | $67,000 |
| 11 | 2024 Dallas Bond Campaign (DISSOLVED) | PAC or committee | $60,000 |
| 12 | Phil King | person | $56,000 |
What they decided
Every Texas bill, regulator's order, executive action and election the study tracks, with its result, its recorded vote and the people and companies on the record for it. Each links to the official document.
Texas7 measures
- Executive actionEnactedSep 21, 2026Greg Abbott issued
- Executive actionEnactedAug 3, 2026Greg Abbott issued
- BillEnactedJun 20, 2025Greg Abbott enabled; Ken King advocated for; Charles Schwertner advocated for; Phil King advocated for
- BillEnactedFeb 13, 2025Lancium LLC benefited from
- BillEnactedJun 18, 2023Greg Abbott enabled; Phil King advocated for
- BillEnactedJun 10, 2015
- BillEnactedSep 1, 2013
Hood County
Eight proposed data centers in a county of 62,000, a commissioners court that would not pause them, and the state law it says ties its hands.
Hood County sits an hour southwest of Fort Worth, around Granbury and the lake. By June 2026 developers had proposed eight data centers there, more than 7,600 acres in all. Seven went to the county. The eighth was annexed into the City of Granbury. The largest is Comanche Circle, about 2,100 acres on the Paluxy River valley, from Sailfish Investors of Florida. Its developer told the county that Comanche Circle and two smaller projects could draw up to 3 gigawatts, about the load of 3 million homes.
The county’s record on it runs through its own meetings. In July 2025 the court voted 3-1, on a nonbinding motion, to send a letter of support for Project Patriot. Commissioner Nannette Samuelson dissented. On January 13, 2026 the court tabled a moratorium and gave Comanche Circle conditional approval. Commissioner Dave Eagle was the lone dissent. In February the court rejected a moratorium twice, 3-2 each time. The county attorney advised against it. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston and State Rep. Jared Patterson wrote that counties have no such authority and urged the Attorney General to act if one tried. The county asked the Attorney General for an opinion instead. By June it had not come.
On June 9, 2026 the court approved the Comanche Circle concept plan without conditions, 3-1. Samuelson dissented. Eagle was absent. Outside counsel told the court the engineering questions residents raised belong to a later stage. Days earlier, Hill County had rescinded its own moratorium after a developer sued it for $100M. On October 13 the court turned the other way. It rejected Sailfish’s settlement offer 3-1 and denied its permit appeal 4-0. The developer told the court that Subchapter K of the Local Government Code limits what a county may regulate, and warned of a $100M suit.
A separate fight predates the data centers. MARA runs a bitcoin mine behind the meter at the Wolf Hollow gas plant in Granbury. In October 2024 residents, as Citizens Concerned About Wolf Hollow, sued Marathon Digital Holdings in Hood County district court over the noise. The case was still in discovery in September 2025. A cryptomine is not a data center under the study’s definition, but it is the county’s first experience of a large load next to homes.
What the Tracker can and cannot show here
County officials file their campaign finance reports with the county clerk, not the Texas Ethics Commission. The Tracker holds no Hood County commissioner’s receipts and makes no claim about them. What it holds is the state filings. Hood County is in Senate District 22 and House District 59. The Senate seat is vacant: Brian Birdwell of Granbury resigned in May 2026 for a Pentagon post, and the special election is on November 3. His filings show $8,000 from the payer set in 2023 to 2026, Oncor’s state PAC $5,000 and NRG’s PAC $3,000. Rep. Shelby Slawson of Stephenville shows $11,500: Oncor $6,500 across three cheques, Energy Transfer $2,000, NRG’s PAC $2,000 and Vistra’s PAC $1,000. Neither figure is large by the standards of this page. The decisions that shaped the county’s position were made in Austin, in SB 6, the exemption statutes and the governor’s 2026 directives, listed above, and by the senator who wrote SB 6.
Readers in Hood County should start from the commissioners court’s own agendas and minutes, then the state legislators’ entity pages, then the Texas Ethics Commission for anything the Tracker has not loaded.
Sources for this section (11)
- Texas Tribune, The 8 data centers that could transform one Texas county, June 2, 2026
- FOX 4, Hood County once again rejects moratorium on data centers, February 24, 2026
- Public Citizen, Hood County residents left vulnerable as commissioners reject data center moratorium, February 10, 2026
- KERA, Hood County approves Comanche Circle data center without conditions after contentious meeting, June 9, 2026
- Hood County News, Hood County rejects data center settlement offer, permit appeal, October 16, 2026
- Texas Tribune via Houston Public Media, Gov. Greg Abbott calls for ban on data center development in rural Texas neighborhoods, July 1, 2026
- Earthjustice, Granbury residents sue local bitcoin mine over health-threatening noise pollution, October 7, 2024
- Earthjustice, motion to compel in Citizens Concerned About Wolf Hollow v. MARA, September 3, 2025
- Texas Senate membership directory (District 22 counties)
- Texas House, Rep. Slawson, District 59 (counties represented)
- Texas Tribune, Special election set for Brian Birdwell's open Texas Senate seat, May 18, 2026
How to read this page
The money is corporate-treasury and employee-PAC giving reported in Texas’s own filing system, the Texas Ethics Commission, from January 2023 to the latest filing loaded (1,313 contributions, January 2023 to September 2026). Transfers between a politician’s own committees, conduit memo lines and gifts from the opposing side are left out. Executives’ personal cheques, super PAC spending, 527 transfers and lobbying are different kinds of money. The report keeps them apart, and the written part of this page names them as such. Nothing on this page adds across kinds.
The votes are the legislature’s own roll calls, loaded for the members the study follows. A yea is a vote for the measure as titled. The measures are the bills, commission orders, executive actions and elections the study identified; each links to its official record.
Every payer total was reconciled against the payer’s own reports where the state publishes them. The checks are in the report’s verification log. Figures on this page were last recomputed on October 31, 2026. Correlation is not proof of causation; the record shows what was paid and what was decided.