On Sunday, we posted about a meeting this evening in Opposition to CoreCivic bid to re-open Appleton Prison as ICE detention center meet to Tuesday. Here's the place and time:
If you would like to learn what you can do to discourage CoreCivic from opening an ICE Detention Center in our region, you are invited to come to the meeting from 6:30-8 p.m. Tuesday at Shooter’s bar in Appleton.
We've been looking in Federal Election Commission and Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board data to see where CoreCivic, the private prison corporation that owns the Prairie Correction Facility, puts its campaign dollars in Minnesota. Here's the latest, from the October Quarterly Report:
| Senate Victory PAC | 161 St Anthony Avenue Suite 902 Saint Paul, Minnesota 551032459 |
09/28/2018 | Political Contribution | 2500.00 | |
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| House Republican Campaign Committee | 161 St Anthony Avenue Suite 950 Saint Paul, Minnesota 551032341 |
09/28/2018 | Political Contribution | 2500.00 |
The PACs--Senate Victory PAC and House Republican Campaign Committee--are federal political action committees (PACs). The money is intended for federal-level political activity, which of course Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka and then-Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt (he lost control of the House in just weeks after pocketing the check) totally need.
Federal level corporate PACs can't give to state-level candidates or committees, but their lobbyists can give. In 2018, four lobbyists were registered to work for CoreCivics. One of them, Richard Gephardt, made no political contributions to Minnesota state-level candidates or registered committees. Lobbyist Todd Hill represented a variety of registered associations, so it's difficult to pair his many contributions to a particular client.
Such is not the case of CoreCivic employees Kelly Durham and Brad Regens, who represent only the private prison corporation. The men gave a total of four identical contributions that add up to $2000: two $500 contributions to Jeff Johnson's gubernatorial campaign and two $500 contributions to Prinsburg Republican state representative Tim Miller's relection. View contributions for Durham and Regens by clicking on their names.
The contributions to Johnson make sense, given that Johnson toured the prison while campaigning in west central Minnesota, as Bluestem noted in Johnson campaigns at shuttered private prison, touts CoreCivic joint as safety measure for guards. Guards? Not so much.
Miller's CoreCivic campaign cash haul definitely declined from the amount we reported in 2016's Swift Co Monitor endorses Falk, & all Tim Miller got was some lousy cash from CCA execs:
He did manage to snag some campaign cash from Corrections Corporation of America's executives and their spouses, as well as from a couple of CCA corporate lobbyists. From his pre-general election report to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board (available here):
There's $250.00 each from CCA Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President David Garfunkle and his wife Carrie, both of Franklin, Tennessee, followed by the same amounts from CCA Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer Anthony Grande and his wife, as well as from CCA President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director Damon Hininger and his wife (page 4 of Miller's 2016 pre-general report).
Former Appleton warden Daren Swenson, now CCA's Tennessee-based Vice President, Facility Operations, Business Unit 2 also gave Miller $250 (page 6 of Miller's 2016 pre-general report).
Finally, there's the $500 each of CCA's corporate lobbyists (Kelly Durham and Brad Regens, page 7 of Miller's 2016 pre-general report) handed over.
All that money must be smooth as Tennessee whiskey for blunting the blow of rejection by Swift County's finest news source (We're not being snarly about the Monitor, whose editor is highly respected among country newspaper people).
An we haven't even touched on CCA's contributions to the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has given $755,000 in the last ten days to the MN Jobs Coalition Legislative Fund. Earlier this year, the MN Jobs Coalition tracker Kip Charles Christianson jostled parade volunteers at Raymond Harvest Fest Parade.
Those were the glory days of the CoreCivic gravy train. Perhaps it will return this next cycle.
Photo: The shuttered private prison at Appleton, Minnesota.
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