As Texas voters gear up for elections on November 4, 2025, new developments in the special election to fill Texas Senate District 9’s seat is raising eyebrows from taxpayers, with a deluge of out-of-state casino money pouring into one candidate’s coffers.
John Huffman, one of the candidates and former mayor of Southlake, has positioned himself as a fiscal conservative. Yet, campaign finance reports reveal that the bulk of his funding stems from entities tied to the Las Vegas Sands Casino Group, the sprawling gambling empire owned by billionaire Miriam Adelson. This influx raises troubling questions about whether Huffman’s loyalties lie more with out-of-state casino conglomerates than with Texas families.
Huffman’s latest campaign finance report,1 covering July 1 to September 25, 2025, reveals that he raised a total of $575,792.39 to fuel his bid for the seat vacated by Sen. Kelly Hancock. Of this sum, a staggering $500,000, roughly 87%, came directly from the Texas Sands PAC, a political action committee explicitly linked to Las Vegas Sands casinos, an organization focused on expanding casino gambling into the Lone Star State.
But the story doesn’t end there. The Texas Defense PAC, another vehicle heavily funded by Adelson herself, filed its own report2 for August 21 to September 25, 2025, detailing $595,260.46 in direct expenditures supporting Huffman’s campaign, all aimed at boosting his visibility and support in the North Texas district. Combining the direct contribution from Texas Sands PAC with Texas Defense PAC’s spending, the total financial backing from Las Vegas Sands-linked entities surges to nearly $1.1 million. That’s roughly 93.53% of all of Huffman’s financial support, demonstrating how casino dollars are not just supplementing but absolutely dominating his war chest.
Las Vegas Sands has long eyed Texas as a lucrative frontier for legalized gambling, with hundreds of casino lobbyists and millions of dollars descending on Austin over the last few legislative sessions, pushing for the legalization of casinos.
Texas has resisted widespread casino gambling in recent years, defending Texas’ longstanding constitutional prohibition, citing concerns over addiction, crime, impoverishing families and communities. and the erosion of family values.
Huffman’s embrace of Sands Casino money, especially considering its the vast majority of his funding, seems to indicate pretty clearly where he likely stands on the issue of gambling expansion.
This isn’t Huffman’s first brush with fiscal scrutiny. During his tenure as Southlake’s mayor from 2021 to 2024, he touted himself as a guardian of taxpayer dollars, yet his record tells a different tale. Huffman led the charge on building the “Taj Mahal of pickleball,” a pickleball complex costing taxpayers $3.85 million.
Also under Huffman’s watch, Southlake’s budget swelled. Total appropriations ballooned from $104.6 million in FY 2022 to $126.7 million in FY 2024, for a total increase of more than 21% in government spending in just 3 years. Actual expenditures in 2022 to appropriations in 2024 skyrocketed with a 36% increase, reflecting Huffman’s failure to rein in government, despite his claims of tax rate cuts that masked the overall bloat.
In a race where every dollar counts, Huffman’s million-dollar casino lifeline is a red flag. With Election Day looming, voters have a chance to demand transparency and independence from their elected leaders, not politicians bought and paid for by out-of-state gambling giants. Texas has thrived for decades without casinos calling the shots; and it shouldn’t start now.
- https://prd.tecprd.ethicsefile.com/public/cf/2025/pdfs/ScrubbedReport_101018549.PDF
- https://prd.tecprd.ethicsefile.com/public/cf/2025/pdfs/ScrubbedReport_101018637.PDF
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