California is sending more than corporate relocations and house hunters to Texas.
And Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t the only high-profile Californian attempting to influence the high-stakes gubernatorial race in Texas.
It turns out that the latest hot commodity moving from the Golden State to the Lone Star State is campaign donations from big names in California real estate.
The Houston Chronicle’s recent analysis of campaign donations to incumbent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, revealed a number of California connections.
The most money has come from industrial developer Ed Roski, best known for his Majestic Realty and stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, as well as the Crypto.com Arena, formerly known as Staples Center. Roski has so far dished out $1.5 million for efforts to see Abbott re-elected.
Roski is no stranger to Texas, where Majestic currently has a major industrial project in the works in San Marcos, a growing manufacturing hub located between Austin and San Antonio. Those plans come in addition to ongoing Majestic business park projects in Austin, Fort Worth and Kyle, Texas, as well as a major logistics hub in the works in the border city of Laredo.
Nor is Roski the only L.A.-area real estate player supporting the Texas incumbent, who has taken in nearly $3 million from a state he frequently employs as a political punching bag.
Robert Olson, the president of the R.D. Olson firm in Newport Beach, one of the region’s biggest hotel developers, has donated $100,000. David Horowitz, the CEO of the Orange County-based Horowitz Group, an investment firm with an expansive real estate portfolio, has kicked in $25,000.
O’Rourke hasn’t pulled in L.A. real estate money that ranks anywhere near Abbott’s, but he has received SoCal industry support, including $75,000 from Robert Friedman, a Santa Monica broker and president of the firm YF Group. Another $25,000 came from the iconic architect and old-school liberal Frank Gehry, who also lives in Santa Monica and has numerous high-profile projects in the works, although none in Texas.
Richard Robbins, the founder of Wareham Development, a major commercial player in the Bay Area, also kicked in $55,000.
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