Carpetbagging: Hollywood Donating Big Bucks to Texas Dem Beto O’Rourke

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Jerome Hudson

Some of Hollywood’s most affluent and influential power players have poured tens of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s general election opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Director Rian Johnson, who last helmed Star Wars: The Last Jedi, gave O’Rourke’s campaign $5,400, the individual maximum amount, as did Nashville and 9-1-1 star Connie Britton, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Solo: A Star Wars Story executive producer and 22 Jump Street director Phil Lord contributed $5,400 to O’Rourke’s campaign. Super-producer Joe Roth gave $5,400, while former Netflix talk show host-turned Hulu and TNT executive producer Chelsea Handler gave O’Rourke $2,500.

While O’Rourke’s Senate bid has been boosted by donations from high-profile Hollywood figures, like Game of Thrones executive producer Carolyn Strauss and Warner Bros. executive Courtenay Valenti, celebrities have also used their social media cache to gin up support for the Democratic candidate.

Indeed, many of O’Rourke’s showbiz backers are also some the most vocal celebrity critics of President Donald Trump.

Ten months before Texans cast their votes in the state’s primary election, comedian and former View talk show host Rosie O’Donnell declared that Rep. O’Rourke is the man who’s going to unseat Sen. Cruz.

“If u loathe trump – then u must abhor ted cruz – donate to beto o’rourke … SAVE AMERICA,” O’Donnell tweeted last May.

In May, actress and gun control activist Alyssa Milano tweeted the amount in donations given to Cruz by the NRA “gun lobby.” The tweet included an image that appeared to connect Cruz’s “Career NRA Money” to the purported 15,152 “Career Gun Deaths” that have occurred since he took office.

Handler has been encouraging her nearly nine million Twitter followers to donate to O’Rouke’s campaign since last December. All told, more than 13 million Twitter users have been urged to support the Democratic Rep.’s bid to defeat Sen. Cruz.

Entertainment industry figures from Los Angeles to Manhattan have already poured over $20 million into 2018 House and Senate races. This, after Hollywood was slapped with a stunning rebuke in 2016 and again last fall when failed House candidate Jon Ossoff — who received support and campaign cash from Milano, O’Donnell, Jane Fonda, and Samuel L. Jackson — was handily beaten by Republican Karen Handel in Georgia’s Sixth District special congressional election.

Large individual contributions account for nearly 60 percent of O’Rourke’s contributions, with California and New York funneling in, collectively, more than $1.4 million, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

A Democrat looking to steal a seat in a deep red state, O’Rourke, like Ossoff, is facing an uphill battle. In a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988, O’Rourke is currently down nine points to Sen. Cruz according to the latest Gravis Marketing poll, provided exclusively to Breitbart News.

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

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