Why campaign ethics violations rarely yield repercussions in Texas

In 1989, Bo Pilgrim, an East Texas chicken plant magnate, strolled the floor of the Texas Senate and dispensed $10,000 checks to nine members in an effort to stop a worker’s compensation bill from passing.

The scandal, dubbed “Chickengate,” was shocking but legal.

But the chicken man’s brazenness—what he called campaign contributions, many Texans saw as bribes—ruffled enough feathers to usher in a rare era of good government reforms.

Lawmakers would soon pass laws prohibiting themselves from accepting donations inside the Capitol and creating the Texas Ethics Commission, an independent body with investigative power, that would enforce the state’s campaign finance laws.

Three decades following its inception, the commission is toothless. Compliance of Texas’ ethics laws is largely voluntary. That’s because the agency relies on the Texas attorney general to enforce payment of fines for violations.

And under Ken Paxton, who himself owed $11,000 in ethics fines until recently, that has rarely happened.