On Saturday we posted an article detailing the similarities, and apparent coordination, in misleading “Absentee Ballot Application” mailers sent out to Democratic voters by both the David Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity – Wisconsin and a mysterious group calling themselves United Sportsmen of Wisconsin.
The Americans for Prosperity mailer, sent out in Wisconsin last week in advance of tomorrow’s state Senate recall election of six Republican state Senators, included instructions that absentee ballots must be submitted by August 11th — even though the election in question is actually tomorrow, August 9th.
The PO Box described as the “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center” on those mailers belonged to a Rightwing family group tied to the anti-abortion movement. A spokesperson for the group, as we reported, said that while they were part of a “coalition” with AFP, they claimed to have had no idea AFP was using their PO Box on the mailers until they started receiving them, and that they hadn’t seen the mailer before it went out. For their part, AFP claimed the incorrect date was simply a “typo” in two districts where they had sent the mailings, and that “liberals” were making a “mountain out of a molehill” about it all. Late last week, however, in a followup mailing, the group admitted that it had gone out to “everyone” in all of the state Senate districts, rather than just the two where Democrats will face recall elections next week (as opposed to tomorrow’s GOP recalls) and blamed the incorrect date on their printer.
The United Sportsmen of Wisconsin (USW) mailers, almost identical in form, font, content, and type-setting, as we showed, had no information about who had paid for the mailings on them, and instructed voters that they needed to return their absentee ballots to the elections clerk by August 4th — even though ballots may be delivered to the Wisconsin election clerks as late as the close of polls on August 9th.
Since we ran our article over the weekend, which suggested, among other things, previously-undocumented coordination between AFP and USW, and since there was little information to be found about USW on the web, a number of readers have been digging in to try and figure out exactly who the so-called United Sporstmen of Wisconsin actually are, as have we.
And, whaddaya know, a bit of digging reveals that the group was very recently founded by one John W. Connors, a long-time staffer and director of Americans for Prosperity, a College Republican leader, and a rather prolific founder of a number of hard-right political front groups with a record of deception in recent Wisconsin elections…
As we noted over the weekend, the web presence for United Sportsmen of Wisconsin is sparse at best, including a hastily slapped together Facebook page (which now appears to be either removed or set to private, following most of the comments on the page coming from critics of their recent misleading absentee ballot request mailing); a members-only Facebook page just created last month, days prior to their absentee mailing having gone out, and a one-page UnitedSportsmenWI.com page featuring little more than an application to join their group, along with the promise that, in doing so, “you will join a network of thousands of sportsmen across Wisconsin who will stay informed about important issues and band together to protect their rights.”
Examination of the HTML for the application web page reveals that the form is an iFrame embed from a webpage at: http://jconnorsandco.us2.list-manage2.com
A reader who filled out the form found and then confirmed her web application via email, was invited to “continue to our website.” Clicking on that link then took her to the website of J Connors Company, LLC at JConnorsAndCo.com.
Neither the UnitedSportsmenOfWi.com or JConnorsAndCo.com websites seem to actually offer any information whatsoever about gun ownership or hunting legislation or issues.
So who is John W. Connors?
Connors is listed as the president and owner of J Connors and Company LLC, whose address is listed at 1126 South 70th St S240, Milwaukee WI 53214.
The same building on 70th St. in Milwaukee houses the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity in a suite just down the hall, S219A. The shared building could be considered a coincidence, but for the fact that Connors turns out to have been a longtime staffer and director for AFP. The dots suggesting coordination between the two groups, as we detailed over the weekend, are quickly becoming very well connected.
Connors is described at the website of Americans for Prosperity — a non-profit activist group founded by oil and chemical conglomerate billionaire brother CEO David Koch — variously in 2007 and 2008 as “National Coordinator for Americans for Prosperity”, “AFP-WI staff member” and “National Director, Students for Prosperity”. Connors is not currently listed on their Staff page.
In an in-depth article published earlier this year by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Lisa Graves, a former Deputy Asst. Attorney General in the U.S. Dept of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, revealed that Connors is deeply involved with other front groups in Wisconsin which sound very similar to United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. Those groups have also been responsible for similarly misleading campaign material.
Graves details several misleading television spots by a group calling themselves “Citizens for a Strong America” (CSA), which aired earlier this year attacking WI Asst. Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg and supporting state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser prior to their exceedingly contentious and disputed election contest last April (as covered in great detail by The BRAD BLOG.)
Graves investigative reporting at CMD reveals that CSA was a very well-funded front group with little more than a claim to having a 501(c4) non-profit status and a mailbox address at a UPS Store.
“This mysterious group lists no information about its leaders, employees, or funders on its website, citizensforastrongamerica.net,” reported Graves before updating her story with the discovery that the Internet domain for the group had been purchased by John W. Connors of Milwaukee, who quickly had its Internet domain registration set to private after the CMD report was published.
The United Sportsmen of Wisconsin registration is similarly private, though the links embedded within it’s single web page clearly lead to J Connors and Company, LLC., which describes itself as “an all-inclusive grassroots strategies company located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” that “serves the political, non-profit and corporate sectors, making us an extremely experienced and well-connected company.”
Who they are “well-connected” to is not stated.
“We are not hired by our clients,” their slogan reads, “we support our clients.”
On its “What We Do | Grassroots Strategy” page, the company claims:
Indeed, “tools” provided by Connors for the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin effort appears to include telephone scripts and instructions on how to make automated GOTV phone calls from your home phone, in support of Republicans in the recall races. As brought to our attention by a reader following our weekend report, this Google site page for USW, is a bare bones page claiming “USW is a very unique group in contrast to other hunting or gun organizations because it will be the voice for sportsmen in Madison and stand up against legislation that threatens hunting, fishing and gun rights.” The page then goes on to explains the phone system used to make these calls: “The impact dialer allows you to make phone calls efficiently without having to manual dial on your phone. The dialer is a predictive dialer so it will mostly deliver ‘live’ people to your phone.” Quite a sophisticated operation for a newly formed “gun group,” eh?
There is no information on that page, or any other, about who is funding either it or the USW group itself.
Connors’ History of Deceptive, Mysteriously-Funded Political Organizations
The same address for Connors’ company in Milwaukee is also used, as Graves discovered, by a group calling itself “Campaign Now,” another domain name registered to Connors. Campaign Now, according to Graves, “uses the same phone number AFP used to register riders on the buses used to get people to the capitol hearing of the ‘Joint Finance Committee,’ a committee meeting other citizens did not learn about until the morning of the meeting,” during the state’s extraordinary battle over Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation.
“It seems he has been very busy,” adds Graves, who reports that during college, “Connors interned for Walker and worked on his campaign” and had been the President of Marquette University’s chapter of the College Republicans (Karl Rove’s old group of dirty tricksters.)
As Graves explains at the Center for Media and Democracy, there are a number of questions surrounding the background and funding of Connor’s CSA, questions which are remarkably similar to those now surrounding the so-called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin whose deceptive absentee ballot mailers were almost identical to the ones sent out by his former(?) employers at AFP:
All this raises questions of whether a recent college graduate is somehow bankrolling the CSA’s ads, or whether others who fund Connors’ work at AFP are involved in any way. (AFP Wisconsin was led until recently by Mark Block, who paid a fine in a settlement of a case a few years back after the state alleged that Block had coordinated a campaign worth $200,000 with an outside group when he was serving as Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox’s campaign manager.)
…
[T]here is literally zero information about who is actually giving Connors or others associated with CSA the money to create or make the expensive ad buys in this election. What is clear is that CSA is most definitely linked to people backing and leading the extreme agenda of the Tea Party.
…
Accordingly, a virtually anonymous group is running ads on the eve of a major election with no public disclosure of who runs the group or who funds the group. Voters have no idea who paid for the video editing for the ad or who underwrote the purchase of the ads. There is no indication whether the group’s funders are one person or a handful of people, or a company or business group or CEO. There is no indication, besides its postal box and its link to Connors, that it is funded by anybody in Wisconsin, or where its donors actually live in the United States or elsewhere.
Graves goes on to point out just one more, somewhat ironic (or perhaps not) reason why it was difficult to figure out exactly who was funding CSA earlier this year, and why the same is still true concerning Connors’ so-called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin:
Justice Prosser and a narrow majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court enjoined the state from enforcing rules to require key disclosures by groups like CSA running so-called “issue” ads to influence elections.
Messages left by The BRAD BLOG at both Connors business phone number, as well as at the offices of J Connors & Company, LCC, where an associate said Connors was currently on the phone, have so far gone unanswered.
Nonetheless, evidence seems to suggest that, in addition to the money that AFP spent on their own misleading absentee ballot mailer, they are likely to have funded — or at the very least, coordinated — with Connors’ United Sportsmen of Wisconsin front group on their misleading absentee ballot mailers.
So, who, other than the Koch brothers, funds Americans for Prosperity (and thus “United Sportsmen of Wisconsin” most likely)? AFP is notoriously secretive about their own funding sources, despite their widespread political activities across virtually every state in the nation, including their funding of the so-called “grassroots” Tea Party movement, as well as the Global Warming Denialist movement.
The vaunted secrecy behind some of the Koch brothers’ anonymous sources of funding for their political operations, however, may soon experience a few cracks. But more on that in the coming days…
Related previously at The BRAD BLOG…
• Dirty Tricks in WI: Deceptive Absentee Ballot Mailers Appear to be Coordinated Hoaxes
Fabulous, Brad. This is what investigative journalism is supposed to look like.
If WI voters had any doubt, this piece should serve as a reminder that what is at stake tomorrow is nothing less than a restoration of the rule of law.
This sleazy criminal assault on democracy should be but will not be prosecuted unless the GOP is removed from power in that state.
Awesome job, Brad! I wonder if the College Republicans have ever produced anyone who is NOT evil.
Back when he was working for Nixon’s Re-Election campaign, Donald Segretti dubbed this form of dirty tricks as “ratfucking.†Perhaps, given his past position as a former national director of AFP, John W. Connors should be dubbed the “Ratfucker-in-chief.â€
Hart Williams at http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/ and also here at http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2...in-lab-oregon/
Does much to describe in detail the Billionaire conservative political money laundering operation and the faces behind it.
What’s most scary is, they’ve been doing this for a couple of decades now and the public is “just” beginning to catch on.
Remember the name Sal Russo and the lawfirm, Russo-Marsh in Sacramento. His name pops up in or near almost every “conservative” astroturf effort to manipulate votes and voters through these faux grass roots groups.
It’s disgusting.
The heart of the T-party waxes even more criminal.
I wonder if Al Qaeda is donating to 501 c(4) political groups overseas, who do not have to disclose their donors. There are also drug dealers and foreign governments to fret over interfering with out political system.
We will never realize the promise that appears above the portico to the Supreme Court — Equal Justice Under Law — until a Velvet Revolution leads to arrests of billionaire sociopaths like the Koch brothers. Instead of jail time, justice would be better served by the confiscation of their wealth.
Justice would be the circumstance in which billionaires were forced to experience the misery of poverty they say meanly forced upon others.
What address were the fake absentee ballots supposed to be sent to? Is it the same as the real absentee ballots? Or were they directed to be sent to the back door of a Koch house?
The answer to your question, Mannapat, is set forth in Brad’s previous article which contains one of the fake absentee ballots from United Sportsman.
The fake ballot contains the mailing address as:
But, that is actually a “PO Box owned by an anti-choice group calling themselves Wisconsin Family Action.”
What is unknown at this point is whether anyone fell for the ruse, and, if so, whether the scam artists will try to use the fake ballots received by WI Family Action to challenge those individuals at the polls should they discover the fraud and attempt to vote in person.
To answer Mannapat’s question (and correct a few points in Ernie’s response to it, which was largely correct in spirit, though incorrect on a few arcane, if important, details)…
There were, at least, two different misleading Absentee Ballot Request mailers sent out. One was from the Americans for Prosperity – WI, and the address where recipients were told to send their request for an absentee ballot (note: not their actual absentee ballot!) was:
That PO Box turns out to be owned by Wisconsin Family Action, a group who says they work in “coalition” with AFP and other groups on the right, but claims that they did not know AFP was using their PO Box for this mailing until they started receiving them.
That mailer incorrectly advised voters that they had to submit their absentee ballot to the clerk (once they received it) by August 11th, even though the election is today, August 9th.
The other known misleading Absentee Ballot Request mailer came from the so-called United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. As described in the article above, they appear to be a front group for AFP. The address where recipients were told to send their request for an absentee ballot on that mailer was:
It now appears that USW does, indeed, rent that PO Box. However, the mailer told recipients that once they received their absentee ballot, it needed to be “received by your city clerk before August 4th”.
In fact, as the recall election is today, August 9th, absentee ballots may be turned in to election clerks anytime before the close of polls today. If you had received USW’s mailer, you might have thought it’s too late to vote at all by now.
Both of the two mailers were misleading, in two different ways which might have disenfranchised voters.
Neither “Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center” was an official address of any sort. It was nothing more than a PO Box in both cases and, in theory, the groups were then to forward that on to election clerks. Whether they did or not would be anybody’s guess.
Hope that helps to clarify!
Great investigative journalism Brad. My thanks also to Lisa Graves with CMD.
Perhaps Lisa knows if any election laws in Wisconsin were violated by sending out this deceptive mailer, especially considering that it was never intended to actually result in absentee ballots being sent to the senders.
The mailer was a request for an absentee ballot, not the absentee ballot itself. Some people are thinking it was the absentee ballot itself.
The information requested could be used for identity theft, especially the date of birth.
With some digging by the US Justice Department and the FBI it would appear this looseknit (?) cabal of operatives could be charged with conspiracy. There is also many questions raised about the flow of money: claims to be a non-profit which raises the specter of the IRS revoking their non-profit status, and better, fraudulently making false claims to the IRS when they obtained their non-profit status, and/ or filing false reports, etc. Possible tax fraud by those providing the money to the groups in how they did, or did not, report that money on tax returns.
Even with the Citizen’s United case, the Supreme Court can say that corporations are simply exercising their 1st Amendment rights, but there are many areas of business law where corporations have to be accountable to their stockholders, who are the actual owners of the corporations. With corporate money flowing into these few Wisconsin races at the rate of 10 times the rate of last fall’s election, the SEC should be investigating.
This has all the appearances of a criminal conspiracy, and should be investigated as such. Perhaps Attorney General Eric Holder will decide to expend resources on this instead of raiding peace activists’ homes.
My biggest fear is the outrage of the citizens expressed at the polls will be nullified by the manipulation of the election as occurred in the Supreme Court election. When citizens realize they have lost their only means of removing the vermin peaceably from their midst, they are only left with civil disobedience. These criminals need to come face to face that they are attacking the core values, economic futures, and standard of living of the majority. They are no better than a gang that engages in home invasion robberies until the citizens say no more, and fight back.
Since USW has indicated on its website “it will be the voice for sportsmen in Madison and stand up against legislation that threatens hunting, fishing and gun rights,” it sounds like it will do lobbying. I wonder if it has registered, or if Mr. Connors has registered, with the GAB for lobbying purposes?
Organizations
Wisconsin law requires your organization to register with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board if your organization employs an individual:
* who for compensation
* communicates with state officials
* to attempt to influence state legislation or administrative rule-making on its behalf, and
* that individual communicates with state officials on 5 or more days during either the first or last six months of the year.
Lobbyists
You have an obligation to obtain a lobbying license from the Government Accountability Board, and
the organization that pays you is required to authorize you as its lobbyist, if you attempt to influence
state legislation or an administrative rule on behalf of a business or organization that employs you or
from which you receive a payment (other than reimbursement of expenses) and you communicate with
a state official or legislative employee about such matters on 5 or more days within a six month
reporting period.>
Just a quick follow-up: Neither John Connors nor USW are registered as lobbyists, and the AFP lobbying list does not include either Mr. Connors or USW issues.