UPDATE BELOW:

AUSTIN — Michael Quinn Sullivan’s Empower Texans nonprofit has pumped $64,250 into the state senate district race in the Woodlands to help state Rep. Steve Toth’s bid to replace former Sen. Tommy Williams.

In a Thursday filing with the Texas Ethics Commission, Empower Texans reported it used the money to pay a Longview-based firm called Campaign Innovations for mailers to announce the group’s endorsement of Toth.

Toth, R-Woodlands, is facing Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, former state Sen. Michael Galloway and Woodlands Township treasurer Gordy Bunch in the May 10 special election. Early voting began Monday, and Creighton carries the cash advantage heading into the final days of the campaign.

The roughly $64,000 from Empower Texans, a 501(c)(4) that does not disclose donors, is the first reported injection of dark money into the Senate District 4 race, according to state filings. It comes as disclosure of anonymous campaign cash has become a hot topic for lawmakers and as the Texas Ethics Commission continues its investigation of Empower Texans for allegedly failing to disclose corporate political expenditures prior to 2012.

According to filings, Empower Texans has poured more than $900,000 of dark money into races across the state since 2012, making the group the highest-spending C4 to report expenditures with the Ethics Commission.

UPDATE:

In an email, Sullivan says his group actually made a mistake on its most recent expenditure filing with the Commission, over reporting the spending total by almost $50,000. Sullivan said he found the mistake after reading this post and has since filed a corrected report, which is not yet available online.

The final spending total, per Sullivan, was $10,684.50 to help out Toth with mailers.

Sullivan chalked the goof up to a “good ol’ user error.”

His email explaining the mistake below: