Texas Papers See First Corporate Political Ads

A Texas developer looks to be the first corporation to take advantage of the January Supreme Court decision allowing them to pay for political ads, with KDR Development buying space in three East Texas newspapers to attack a state representative for being insufficiently Republican. The ads ran before this month’s primary, in which Chuck Hopson—who switched from Democrat to Republican last year—won handily.

The president of KDR lost an election to Hopson in 2006, when Hopson was still a Democrat, the Texas Tribune reports. Larry Durrett says his company is on solid legal footing, and merely wanted to give Hopson a nudge: “If you continue to point out that people aren’t as conservative as you are, it moves them to the right.”
(More political advertising stories.)