{"id":479023,"date":"2026-10-28T06:46:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479023\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T06:46:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:46:19","slug":"groups-tied-to-trump-anthropic-pump-cash-into-houston-area-house-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/479023\/","title":{"rendered":"Groups tied to Trump, Anthropic pump cash into Houston-area House race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Super\u00a0PACs connected to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the artificial intelligence developer Anthropic\u00a0are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fec.gov\/data\/independent-expenditures\/?data_type=processed&amp;most_recent=true&amp;is_notice=true&amp;candidate_id=H6TX09140\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">pumping money into Alex Mealer&#8217;s<\/a> race for Texas&#8217; ninth congressional seat, the Houston district Republicans redrew last year to help boost their U.S. House numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past two weeks,\u00a0Defending our Values, which is part of a political network supported by\u00a0Anthropic, spent just over $258,000 on digital ads supporting Mealer, while the Trump-aligned No Going Back super PAC spent more than $543,000 on a combination of text messaging, mail and advertising, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.\u00a0Musk&#8217;s America PAC also spent more than $110,000 in the race during that time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/politics\/article\/texas-gop-redistricting-cd-9-alex-mealer-22468641.php\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">A poll by the University of Houston<\/a> released released this month\u00a0showed\u00a0Mealer, an Army veteran and former oil and gas investment banker, with only a six-percentage-point\u00a0lead over Democrat Leticia Gutierrez. Mealer has been\u00a0heavily favored to win the\u00a0district, which was long held by U.S. Rep. Al Green before the redistricting, which\u00a0pulled in GOP voters from eastern Harris County and Liberty County. The Cook Political Report still has the race rated as &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cookpolitical.com\/ratings\/house-race-ratings\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">likely<\/a>&#8221; Republican.<\/p>\n<p>Mealer&#8217;s and Gutierrez&#8217;s campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On her campaign website, Gutierrez criticizes Mealer for taking money from &#8220;national special interests&#8221; and &#8220;a super PAC backed by companies building data centers all over Texas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They know she will prioritize their profits over hardworking families in our community,&#8221; the\u00a0website reads.<\/p>\n<p>Just a week from Election Day, polling\u00a0and early voting data suggest\u00a0Republicans could face a tougher-than-normal night, as some voters appear to be souring on Trump. In Texas, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/politics\/texas\/article\/south-texas-midterms-redistricting-22487052.php\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">seats in South and West Texas<\/a> once considered sure bets for the GOP are now being forecast as competitive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Super\u00a0PACs connected to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the artificial intelligence developer Anthropic\u00a0are pumping money into Alex&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-479023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}