We've been waiting to see where 3M's money has seeped into the groundwater of campaign fundraising in the Minnesota Senate District 54 special election.
The release today of yearly campaign finance reports reveals where that corporate money got dumped: according to a disclosure statement posted at the reports and data tab at the Minnesota's Future PAC, $5000 of 3M Company PAC (a federal PAC) money was given to the Senate Victory PAC (a federal level PAC), along with an equal amount of tobacco PAC money and Safelite auto glass money.
We include a screenshot at the top of this post, with hopes that voters in the east metro remember the funding stream as they set down their bottled drinking water and pick up their campaign junk mail from Minnesota's Future.
Minnesota's Future PAC is an independent expenditure committee run by the partners at Republican-leaning public affairs and lobbying powerhouse WeberJohnsonPA.
Here's a screenshot of the Senate Victory PAC's contribution to Minnesota's Future, from the latter's report:
The Senate Victory PAC, not registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, shouldn't confused with the Senate Victory Fund,aka the Republican senate caucus campaign, even though they share the same address: 161 St Anthony Ave Ste 902 St Paul, MN 55103.
Indeed, the Senate Victory PAC is federal campaign whose treasurer is Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, who also serves as Minnesota Senate Majority Leader.
After all, the Senate Victory Fund cannot accept corporate money or money from federal PACs, so it has to have its own federal account. Here's the entire disclosure statement:
Senate Victory Pac Disclosure form to the Minnesota Future PAC posted by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
Minnesota's Future PAC has been flooding the mailboxes of voters in the district with postcards either against the DFL-endorsed candidate Karla Bigham or for the Republican candidate, Denny McNamara. The latter claims to be pure from any special interest cash; Bluestem reported how that's done in With one stupid trick, Denny McNamara got plenty of business and industry leaders' cash.
Why does this money trail matter?
In late November, Bluestem pointed out In 2008, Denny McNamara praised 3M for dealing with PFC contamination "in a positive way":
The Star Tribune's Josephine Marcotty has been covering another story in the east metro: State alleges 3M chemicals caused cancer and infertility, alleges $5 billion in damage. Marcotty reports:
. . .for many years, the company dumped waste containing PFCs at four sites in the southeast metro, contributing to one of the most severe and pervasive groundwater contamination problems in the state, which affected the drinking water for Lake Elmo, Cottage Grove, Oakdale, Woodbury, and St. Paul Park. 3M says all the waste disposal was legal and permitted by the state at the time.
Swanson’s estimated $5 billion in total damages includes the costs of treating and replacing drinking water, the effects on fish and wildlife, and the impacts on the health of residents in the affected communities.
That's scary stuff.
That's what we'll hoping voters will remember if they read this post and learn who's sending out all that anti-Bigham junk mail. While the expenditures are "independent," there's going to be some closeness between McNamara and that nice Senator Gazelka if the 3M-favoring Hastings Republican returns to office.
We're also curious why the DFL-leaning funds with independent expenditures aren't mentioning the McNamara fawning over 3m: however, with senator Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, in charge of that caucus, we're afraid to ask. Perhaps these folks know.
But there's even more fun with independent expenditures spent to get McNamara elected.
Driving Minnesota PAC scores Minnesota Political Irony award
A kind reader sent Bluestem the pro-McNamara postcard sent by Driving Minnesota, another independent expenditure committee registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board. It doesn't report much activity in its 2017 year-end report (not even for this special election), but the 2016 year end report shows the fund spent $134,189.16 for that year, mostly on independent expenditures.
The committee's vender paid all of that IE money was WeberJohnsonPA. Small world. The contributions? In-kind research to the tune of $4,412.00 by the Minnesota Automobile Dealership Association, which shares an address with Driving Minnesota; the fund started the year with $189,961.09 cash on hand.
We find the fact of a special interest group would send out a postcard telling voters that a candidate won't listen to special interest groups to be highly entertaining, regardless of who the candidate is.
But with McNamara, it's spit-out-your-beer funny (we say beer because we don't want readers in the district drinking tap water, after all) to talk about McNamara being financially free from corporate and special interest cash. As we reported in With one stupid trick, Denny McNamara got plenty of business and industry leaders' cash:
While in office, former state representative Denny McNamara liked to brag that he never took PAC money in his political career.
True, but that's only part of the story of his political fundraising, a story illustrated by his campaign finance report for the special election in Minnesota Senate District 54. The rest of the story is cash--big contributions--from CEOs and other executive level leaders of companies who may have business at the state legislature.
On the federal level, many journalist use the Open Secrets database to report on fundraising, while overlooking the methodology that includes giving by owners and upper level management among industry cash.
Let's give that methodology a try in looking at very large ($1000) contributions to McNamara's senate bid in the special election.
In McNamara's pre-general report, large contributions from the executive class and their family members add up to $21,000, as analysis of the report embedded below reveals. . . .
Read the details and the report in the post.
Here's the explanation of our methodology:
As we explained back in 2015 in Of the loners at the Center for Responsive Politics & McNamara's campaign finance fables:
McNamara began his floor speech by dismissing claims that he's in the back pocket of Big Business:
I think it's interesting how we paint a bill and unfortunately we end up so partisan. Kind of interesting to hear how I'm the one in the pocket of big business. Fourteen years that I've been here and never taken a penny from a PAC, lobbyist, or special interest group and spent more time door-knocking than anyone in the body and I'm the one about big business. . .
. . . the respected Center for Responsive Politics--which focuses mostly on federal campaign finance and public disclosure issues--describes on its FAQ page in one item in a section on research and methodology:
In tracking campaign contributions from industries, why do you include contributions from individuals, and not just PACs?
CRP is the only organization that invests in categorizing campaign contributions by industry in a way that includes individuals' contributions, not just money from political action committees. Here's the logic behind our methodology: Since corporations and other organizations are prohibited from making political contributions from their treasuries, one must look at the contributions from people associated with the institution to gauge its political persuasion and how it might be trying to exert influence in Washington. Also, the Federal Election Commission requires disclosure of a donor's employer and occupation if they contribute more than $200, which suggests the government is concerned about individuals' economic, or industrial, interests. We know that not every contribution is made with the donor’s economic or professional interests in mind, nor do we assert that every donor considers their employer’s interests when they make a contribution. But our research over more than 20 years shows enough of a correlation between individuals’ contributions and their employers’ political interests that we feel comfortable with our methodology. We have also observed that the donors who give more than $200, and especially those who contribute at the maximum levels, are more commonly top executives in their companies, not lower-level employees.
This methodology, applied on the state level, may be what produces the sense of some that Representative McNamara is in the pocket of special interests.
No one has suggested that McNamara takes money from lobbyists or PACs. Instead, loners who accept the methodology of CRP's Open Secrets--and data there is used by both parties in critiquing federal candidates-- agree with this premise:
But our research over more than 20 years shows enough of a correlation between individuals’ contributions and their employers’ political interests that we feel comfortable with our methodology. We have also observed that the donors who give more than $200, and especially those who contribute at the maximum levels, are more commonly top executives in their companies, not lower-level employees.
The disclosure threshold for state giving is $100, rather than $200, but the principle is the same.
Bluestem reported in Hot potato politics: Offutt family members gave Representative Denny McNamara campaign cash:
In No small potatoes: Dept of Natural Resources requires EAW for pinelands to spud fields project, Bluestem noted the $50,000 contribution by R.D. Offutt, the potato industry leader that's deforesting parts of northern Minnesota, to the Minnesota Jobs Coalition Legislative IE Fund.
The MJC is credited as being one of the forces that flipped the Minnesota House; Ben Golnik, its chair, has become the executive director of the Minnesota House Republican Caucus.
The company itself funded the group, but several Offutt family members also gave campaign contributions to Representative Denny McNamara (R-Hastings), who was the lead Republican on the House Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee in the last session.
From the searchable contribution database at the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board:
McGovern, Keith 09-17-2014 McNamara, Dennis House Dist. 54B Committee RDO $250.00
McGovern, Rondi 09-17-2014 McNamara, Dennis House Dist. 54B Committee RDO $250.00
Neal, Scott 09-16-2014 McNamara, Dennis House Dist. 54B Committee RDO $500.00
Keith McGovern and Scott Neal are the sons-in-law of RDO director emeritus Ron Offutt; Rondi is his daughter.
While that's a mere $1000--dwarfed by the privately-held company's contribution to Golnik's PAC--there's a fair chance that the donors (who don't appear to live in McNamara's district) understood that McNamara would once again chair the committee with oversight of the Department of Natural Resources budget.
Perhaps the company's $50,000 payment to Golnik's PAC had something to do with 2013-2014 chair Jean Wagenius (DFL-Minneapolis) getting booted from the committee entirely, in contradiction to House custom to approve minority caucus picks for committee minority leads.
According to Minnesota Legislators Past and Present, McNamara chaired the committee in the 2011-2012, and became the minority when the DFL retook the House in the 2012 election. The courtesy was discontinued with the ascendance of Speaker Daudt and Golnik.
So there's that--and earlier in Friday's debate, McNamara brought up the need to rewrite a law so that unnamed company wouldn't have to put up with the trauma of getting a sudden phone call from the Department of Natural Resources about how the agency was going to do a discretionary Environmental Assessment Worksheet about the consequences to water of your plan to turn pinelands into potato fields.
Not a penny of lobbyist or PAC cash directly to McNamara, but the interests of the Offutt family are being served by McNamara, who received their largesse--and benefited from its channeling to the MJC Legislative Fund PAC.
Conclusion? When McNamara bloviates about not taking PAC money, consider where he is raising money--and what the consequences might be for taking that might.
Screengrabs: from the campaign finance reports.
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