(José Niño, Headline USA) Since resigning under a cloud this spring, former Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, has routed tens of thousands of campaign dollars to two companies his wife recently formed. Neither business shows any physical or online footprint, the San Antonio Express‑News reported.
Federal Election Commission filings show Gonzales’s campaign and an affiliated PAC paid $54,350 between April and September to Adulting Consulting and Casagrande LLC. Texas registered both firms after Gonzales left office. Each lists Angel Gonzales as manager and shares the campaign committee’s San Antonio address. That address appears to belong to a UPS store roughly seven minutes from the couple’s home. Neither firm has a website, and both filed identical boilerplate business descriptions.
The campaign labeled the payments “data management,” “compliance” and “compliance consulting.” No other candidate reports paying either firm.
Federal law lets former candidates hire businesses run by relatives. However, Michael Beckel of the nonpartisan group Issue One told San Antonio Express‑News the work must be necessary, legitimate and priced at standard commercial rates. Spending campaign funds for personal use breaks the law.
An unsigned campaign statement insisted the spending followed federal law but dodged questions about what the two firms actually did.
“As the campaign transitions from active status there remain ongoing administrative expenses to include but not limited to compliance requirements, storage, data management, and others,” the statement said.
Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called it suspicious that the campaign hired two separate companies for seemingly overlapping work. The same spouse runs both, and both were born after the resignation.
“I’ve never seen a case where these steps were taken before, especially with the timeline they were taken in,” Libowitz said.
The FEC declined to comment. The commission has lacked a quorum to pursue campaign finance violations since October 2025.
Gonzales quit amid bipartisan outrage over his affair with a staffer who later died by suicide. His committee still holds $197,049. His leadership PAC, Honor Courage Commitment, operates under looser rules. It paid the two firms $27,200 and reported $200,106 on hand in October. His vacant district now hosts a midterm fight between Republican Brandon Herrera and Democrat Katy Padilla Stout.
San Antonio Express‑News reported that Rep. Pat Fallon tried to shut this loophole in 2023 with a bill banning campaign payments to family members. Reports that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., paid her daughter’s company fueled that push. The bill was never voted on.
Beckel warned that vague expense labels deepen the problem.
“Payments to entities like Adult Consulting for ‘compliance consulting,’ ‘compliance,’ and ‘data management’ and Casagrande LLC for ‘storage’ might still raise questions about how exactly that money was spent,” he said.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
