Vicente Gonzalez Has Funneled Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Campaign Cash to His Own Company, Records Show
Texas Democrat has long history of ethics issues
Rep. Vicente Gonzales (WikiMedia Commons) Collin Anderson • October 5, 2022 5:00 am
Texas Democratic congressman Vicente Gonzalez has funneled tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to a company he owns and directs, a move that elicited condemnation from liberal media outlets and ethics experts when employed by former president Donald Trump.
Since 2018, Gonzalez has sent $33,000 to a mundane-sounding property management company, Tenant Services LLC, for office rent, according to federal campaign finance disclosures. As it turns out, Gonzalez owns that company, financial statements and corporate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The setup allows Gonzalez to use his job as a politician to pocket more than just his congressional salary, through which the Democrat earns $174,000 a year.
Members of Congress are allowed to pay themselves for office rent so long as the monthly amount matches a fair market rate. Still, similar arrangements have prompted criticism from ethics experts. When Trump’s political entity used donor funds to rent office space at Trump Tower, for example, the Huffington Post and the Washington Post quoted watchdog groups that called the setup “sleazy,” “a scam,” and “a con.” The University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, meanwhile, likened Rep. Tom Suozzi to Trump after the New York Democrat used campaign funds to pay a company he owns nearly $40,000. “You shouldn’t be running for office or serving in office to enrich yourself in any form,” Sabato told the New York Post. “Trump was a master of this.”
Gonzalez, who is embroiled in a high-profile campaign against Rep. Mayra Flores (R., Texas), has a long history of ethics issues. For at least eight years, the Democrat and his wife improperly claimed a homestead exemption on two separate properties, saving the couple thousands of dollars in taxes, the Texas Tribune reported in August. Roughly two months earlier, a Business Insider report found that Gonzalez violated a federal conflict-of-interest law by waiting nearly a year to disclose a stock trade. That law requires Gonzalez to
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