Financial support for Proposition B — the ballot initiative that targeted Austin’s poorest residents by reinstating a criminal ban against camping in public — included contributions from many of the city’s wealthiest residents and business leaders.
An examination of campaign finance records revealed Save Austin Now — the political action committee behind the successful push to bring back the ban — tapped into the wallets of dozens of local millionaires and billionaireswith financial stakes in the city’s economic success.
In total, Save Austin Now raised $1.9 million in support of Prop B — the second largest amount ever in a city of Austin election. It received about 4,100 donations. Of them, 71 were for $5,000 or more and 47 for $10,000 or more.
That money funded robust efforts to communicate with voters ahead of the May 1 election during a time leaders for the opposition fundraising group say they struggled to do the same because of limited resources. Among the pro-Prop B expenditures from the money raised — advertisement space on 29 billboards.
With four weeks to go before early voting opened April 19, the anti-prop B group Homes Not Handcuffs had raised just $23,000 in monetary and in-kind donations — $415,000 shy of Save Austin Now’s total at the time.
Save Austin Now raised an additional $819,000 by the next reporting deadline, eight days before election day. It picked up $655,000 the rest of the way.
“There were enough progressive voters for us to win if we could have reached them,” said Heidi Sloan, a former congressional candidate who served as treasurer for Homes Not Handcuffs. “Fundraising was a really limiting factor for us.”
Homeless camping ban:Here’s how different areas in Austin voted to reinstate
In an off-year election in which one-fourth of registered voters submitted a ballot, Proposition B passed by more than 24,000 votes, 57% to 42%. It came two years after the Austin City Council voted to repeal the camping ban by a 9-2 vote, a decision based on their belief that it would be wrong to penalize people who cannot afford housing since shelters were full.
The ban went back into effect Tuesday, beginning with a 30-day grace period, during which city staff and the Austin Police Department will provide education on the new law and give verbal warnings but hold off on issuing written warnings and citations.
In approving the measure, voters also agreed to more restrictivelaws on panhandling and sitting and lying in public.
Outraising Project Connect, but not Uber and Lyft
Save Austin Now’s fundraising success upstaged the then-record $1.2 million Mayor Steve Adler raised for his campaign in 2014 and the $1.5 million Mobility for All raised in support of the 2020 mass transit initiative Project Connect.
After the early lag, Homes Not Handcuffs ended up raising a total of $198,000. Its largest donor: Adler. He contributed $10,516.
The only fundraising effort in an Austin election that exceeded that of Save Austin Now came in 2016, when Uber and Lyft spent $10.3 million out of their own pockets in a failed attempt to overturn a city law requiring fingerprint background checks for drivers.
“Fundraising was the single most important component to our victory,” Save Austin Now co-founder Matt Mackowiak said.
Camping ban takes effec:Why didn’t Austin have a better plan to house homeless?
Mackowiak, the Travis County Republican Party leader, said the immense amount of money underscored the furor of residents and businesses owners as areas where they live, work and play became dotted with tent encampments.
“I believe there was a civic purpose, a truly civic purpose, by everyone who donated to our effort,” he said.
Save Austin Now received 20 contributions of at least $20,000. They came from 15 donors. It was the first time nine of them had contributed financially in an Austin election, records show. Two others contributed for the second time after donating last year to Fight For Austin — another PAC Mackowiak helped organize prior to the November election to support conservative candidates in races targeting incumbent council members over public safety and social issues, including homelessness.
David Butts, a local political consultant, said Save Austin Now benefited not only from fundraising but also from ugly incidents leading up to the election that portrayed the homeless population in a negative light.
Among them: fires that spread from encampments to the historic Buford Tower downtown and shut down multiple lanes of highway at Interstate 35 and East Ben White Boulevard.
“Those were like TV ads to thousands of people,” Butts said.
Epstein’s donation
The big-money donors who supported bringing back the camping ban included Austin billionaire software investor Joe Liemandt, who gave $50,000 in his first contribution in a city election in five years; a management company led by Austin FC co-founder and owner Eddie Margain, which gave $10,000; and the Austin Police Association PAC, which donated $36,000 over two transactions.
The police association PAC gave $27,000 on April 22, the same day it received $30,000 from Circuit of the Americas Chairman Bobby Epstein. Four days later, it contributed $9,000 more.
In a text message to the American-Statesman, Epstein said he did not make the donation to the police association with the purpose of routing it to Save Austin Now.
Valencia Escobar, treasurer for the Austin Police Association PAC, said she could not immediately comment when reached by phone late Friday.
If Epstein did use the police union PAC to funnel that donation, the transaction might have been unlawful for both of them.
Under the Texas election code, the police union PAC would not have been able to make a payment on behalf of Epstein unless it disclosed it in writing so that Save Austin Now could make a proper disclosure. According to records the Statesman checked, that did not appear to happen. Likewise, Epstein would not have been permitted to authorize such a transaction under state election code.
Campaign finance lawyer Roger Borgelt said the transaction raises suspicion but any evidence of wrongdoing is merely circumstantial. “It’s not a case that I believe the ethics commission would find a violation,” Borgelt said, “and it’s certainly not a case you could take to criminal prosecution.”
Lawyer Doug Ray arrived at a similar conclusion. “It may look suspicious, but I can’t tell you whether there was an agreement or not. The burden would be on the person claiming there was an agreement. If you have no email, if you have no recorded phone call, if you have no third party saying ‘I overheard them’ … those kind of cases are typically almost impossible to make.”
Epstein said this was not the first time he made a donation to the police association.
The Statesman tried to verify that claim but campaign records do not show any other donations Epstein contributed to the police union. Since 2008, he has given money to more than 100 other local and statewide committees and candidates.
‘We’re going to lose tourists’
The Statesman reached out to more than a dozen of the largest donors to Save Austin Now to learn of the motivations behind their giving.
Three of them responded: former Greater Austin Crime Commission President David Roche, a retired commercial real estate agent who gave $15,000; Central Texas auto dealer Benny Boyd, who gave $30,000; and Dallas billionaire Robert Rowling, a major supporter of Texas Republicans who made his first foray into Austin politics and donated $50,000 through his holding company.
With a net worth of $3.9 billion according to Forbes, Rowling is tied for the state’s 20th wealthiest resident with the widow of the late Houston Texans owner Bob McNair.
Rowling reinvested family oil money into the purchase of Omni Hotels & Resorts. He owns two properties in Austin — one downtown, another in the Barton Creek area — and he said he fears the city’s tourism industry will be harmed if the homelessness problem escalates and scares away visitors as he believes it has in San Francisco.
Rowling also owns an Omni property in San Francisco.
“That was my first exposure to what can happen to a city when they don’t control this,” he said. “We’re going to lose tourists in Austin. That’s the motivation for the contribution.”
Austin’s tourism industry has largely been untested by the homelessness crisis because the COVID-19 pandemic arrived eight months after the camping ban was lifted and prompted officials to cancel events that would’ve attracted swarms of visitors.
Rowling is a major player in Texas politics: In 2020, he gave a combined $357,000 to Republican candidates and committees. That included $100,000 each to the Associated Republicans of Texas Campaign Fund and the Texas Latino Conservatives PAC.
His concerns about Austin turning into San Francisco mirror those of donor Joe Lonsdale, an entrepreneur who moved his venture firm to Austin from the Bay Area six months ago. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal at that time, Lonsdale cited an erosion of public safety in San Francisco among his reasons for leaving.
“Three of my colleagues’ wives have been harassed and chased by derelicts in San Francisco’s streets, which are littered with needles and human waste,” he wrote. “My wife is afraid to walk around the city with our young daughters.”
Lonsdale made two contributions to Save Austin Now totaling $65,000.
Boyd, the automobile dealer, said he became concerned about the unsheltered homelessness problem not long after he and his wife moved into a condo in downtown Austin last summer.
“The city just went from being one of the most beautiful cities in the United States to one of the dirtiest,” he said. “Everywhere you look, trash, tents. It just drove me crazy.”
Roche, the former crime commission president, said an accumulation of violent incidents involving homeless people prompted him to donate. They included the strangulation and sexual assault of University of Texas student Haruka Weiser in 2016, the sexual assault of a female runner on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail in 2017, and the stabbing attack that killed a Freebirds World Burrito employee in 2020.
“All of those instances told me I had to do something,” Roche said.
He added that he has spent more money supporting homeless people than he did supporting Save Austin Now. He gave $25,000 to the local nonprofit Foundation Communities, which owns and operates affordable housing communities in Austin and North Texas. The director, Walter Moreau, confirmed Roche’s donation, which he made in installments from 2014 to 2016.
The biggest contributor to Save Austin Now, with three donations totaling $200,000, was University of Texas supporter Phil Canfield.
Public records show Canfield moved to Austin in 2020 and registered to vote in October.
The business honors program at UT is named after him, a designation that came after Canfield and his wife, Mary Beth, donated $20 million to the school in 2018.
Donating $148,000 — second most to Canfield — was Danielle Royston, a longtime Austin resident involved in cloud-based technology. This was the first time she contributed financially in a city election, records show.
Notable $10,000 donors were the Alamo PAC, which is associated with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and McWhinney Real Estate, a Colorado developer building a Hyatt hotel in downtown Austin.
Those donating $50,000 included PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek, whose Austin venture capital firm Gigafund invested in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and The Boring Company. Gigafund co-founder Stephen Oskoui also contributed $50,000.
Need for reform?
Butts, the political consultant, said the presence of large donations to Save Austin Now suggests to him the city needs to make it easier for nonwealthy residents to fund elections.
An effort that would have done that by giving registered voters up to two $25 vouchers to contribute to the campaigns of local candidates was defeated May 1. The vouchers would have gone to candidates for mayor or city council, not for ballot initiatives like Prop B.
Story continues below.
Sloan, of Homes Not Handcuffs, said the fundraising disparity in this election to her screams for the need for stronger state restrictions on wealthy business owners whose financial interests can be at odds with the interests of people experiencing homelessness. She spoke about the importance of better wages and work conditions for rank-and-file workers to prevent them from going broke and entering into homelessness.
“We are striving to protect the most exploited, those who have been pushed out of that economic system,” she said. “Folks want to continue to drive down wages because they have a stake in the game.”
Sloan said the money raised by Save Austin Now could have made a greater impact had it gone to housing instead of the election.
That effort to criminalize public camping raised more money than the now-abandoned effort led by the Austin Chamber of Commerce to acquire and operate a 300-bed tent shelter. The chamber’s nonprofit raised just $1.4 million of a $14 million two-year goal.