The Media’s Obsession with Republican Money

The legacy media’s obsession with Republicans and money is well-illustrated by two pieces filed this week in the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Hot Dish Politics blog.  Both were posted by newish political reporter Allison Sherry and each involves a Republican challenger to a vulnerable incumbent Democrat Congressman.

The media’s obsession with Republican money stems from three sources.  First, liberal newspapers still pine for the days of yore when they could control the narrative around political campaigns based on their near monopoly on the mass market for information.

Rethinking Electricity Policy

Thursday morning, I had the privilege of presenting the electricity chapter of the Center of the American Experiment’s new Minnesota Policy Blueprint.

We were hosted by the River Heights Chamber of Commerce and in the capacity crowd, elected officials, candidates, policy wonks, and utility managers were well represented.

Just a couple of days before our launch, I was pleased to see columnist Joel Kotkin echoing many of the themes from our report in a recent piece written for the Orange County Register.  Green energy policies are increasing the costs of energy and the working classes are the hardest hit.

We’re hoping to start a conversation about energy policy in Minnesota, which has seen the price of energy go from among to most affordable in America to among the least.

Birds and Parks

Two adjacent headlines at the top of Saturday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune metro section neatly encapsulate the status of modern government.  Oddly enough, both involve the under-construction new Vikings football stadium.

“Park Board now balks at 'Yard'” tells the take of a much-hyped public private partnership going sideways.  “Council flocks to birds' support” is the too cute headline for a story describing the   

Let’s take the latter, first.  Bird advocates are concerned that the design of the new Vikings football cathedral, with floor to ceiling windows may not be…how do we put this…bird friendly.

The government agency actually building the stadium—the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority—doesn’t want to bust the budget to make the building more bird friendly.

So the Minneapolis City Council leapt into action, passing (via voice vote) a non-binding, symbolic, resolution in favor of birds.  As one city council member put it,

I believe this is a way to show the seriousness of the environmental issue at hand.

It’s all a very post-modern way of looking at the legislative function.

The other story involves government actually trying to do something.  The City of Minneapolis is working with a private developer to build a big development near the new Vikings stadium to revitalize the east end of downtown.  Unfortunately, no one bothered to check whether the City had the power to do the particular deal it did, first.

And now the Park Board is balking at the “fix” for papering over the legal niceties of the deal.  (It turns out that only the Park Board—not the City—can create a new city park.)

But why let the letter of the law get in the way of a much-needed public/private partnership that will make everyone so much money?

A Web of Influence

I borrow the title of this entry from an item posted at the Minneapolis Star Tribune website.  As a public service, the Star Tribune has created a graphical tool to chart the interrelationships between the big-dollar organizations inside Minnesota’s insular political world.

The graphic shows which group has given to which other group, with the size of the circle indicating the size of the dollars involved.  Each circle is colored either red (for Republican) or blue (for Democrat).

What the Star Tribune won’t say is that the number and size of the blue circles overwhelms the fewer and smaller red circles.  For the visually-minded the graph reveals just how lopsided are the state’s money politics.

Another useful graphic would be one that mapped the personal relationships between high ranking members of Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration and the state’s top political donors.  If they did, it would look something like this:

Gov. Mark Dayton à was married to Alida Rockefeller Messinger à who is (by herself) the state’s 5^th largest campaign donor (2007-2012 data).

Chief of Staff Jaime Tincher à is married to Adam Duininck à who sits on the Met Council and runs the state’s 3^rd largest campaign donor (WIN Minnesota).

Deputy Chief of Staff Bob Hume à is married to Carrie Lucking à who works at the state’s largest campaign donor (the Education Minnesota teachers union).

Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer O’Rourke à is married to Ken Martin à the Chair of Minnesota’s Democrat Party.

For those keeping score at home, Carrie Lucking has just moved from Alliance for a Better Minnesota to Education Minnesota. 

Democrats Are Winning the Money Race

One of the most persistent myths about modern politics holds that Republicans are the party of “the rich.”  The myth refuses to die, despite all available evidence indicating that the opposite is true.

Reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger, who covers campaign finance for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, posted a story with the headline “More than $715k poured into political groups recently.”

She documents the money that has entered Minnesota’s election since the most recent campaign finance filing deadline last week.  Ms. Stassen-Berger lists a total of $716,000.  Of that amount, $691,000 (96.5 percent) is going to Democrat-related candidates and causes.

But don’t get your hopes up, the remaining $25,000 came from a wealthy out-of-state supporter of same-sex marriage to back a vulnerable Republican who voted for the measure last year.

Comparing the left-to-right dollar total leaves us somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 0.

Project Lakes and Plains

As we are in another campaign finance reporting season, all eyes are on who donates to whom in the world of candidates, political parties and political action committees.

Oddly enough, relatively little attention is paid to who is receiving the vast sums sloshing about this election season.  Frequently, these industry vendors provide key links between candidates, parties, and the independent expenditure groups that support the other two.

On the Democrat side of the ledger, one group doing well is Project Lakes and Plains.  Headed by Denise Cardinal—founder of Alliance for a Better Minnesota and, more recently, her own political consulting firm, Cardinal Insight—Project Lakes and Plains has brought in more than $1.3 million in the past few years:

Client	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Alliance for a Better Minn.	74,250	22,500	255,000		124,000
MN DFL Party	5,000		81,000	59,500	163,000
House DFL Caucus	79,850		212,570
Senate DFL Caucus			121,930
DLCC for Minnesota	104,850
WIN Minnesota Federal PAC	14,900	9,000
Al Franken for Senate		9,000
Total	$ 1,336,350

Records on file at the state’s Campaign Finance Board and the Federal Election Commission indicate that Project Lakes and Plains provides a range of polling and consulting services to statewide Democrat Party efforts.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has described Project Lakes and Plains as a “taxable nonprofit,” whatever that means.  Minnesota Public Radio has described Project Lakes and Plains as “Cardinal’s firm.”

According to records on file at the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, Project Lakes and Plains is organized as a nonprofit corporation, begun in early 2010.  Cardinal is currently listed as the group’s president.

In fact, Cardinal’s efforts were important enough to the fortunes of the state Democrat Party, that they wrote Project Lakes and Plains into the Party’s 2012 Strategic Blueprint (page 29).

The Ties That Bind.  As this election season grinds on, we will continue to highlight the relationships between the players and the people behind the scenes.

Fighting for the Soul of the Middle Class

Last month a political group calling itself Middle Class Majority was formed, just in time for the 2014 election in Minnesota.

The group’s chair is Geri Katz, a self-described “wife, mother, and union thug” who works as a political organizer at the Minnesota Nurses Association labor union.

I guess I should be encouraged that the political left still thinks that there are votes to be had by invoking the middle class, a fast-shrinking demographic long ignored by the liberal-progressive elites.

Barely a month in existence, the Middle Class PAC has hit the ground running.  According to records on file at the state Campaign Finance Board, Middle Class Majority has raised a total of $95,000 from its four founding partners:  the nurses union, the Education Minnesota teachers union, the public employee union MAPE and Planned Parenthood.

To keep everything in the family, Middle Class is using No Coast Workshop, the direct mail consultancy of Minnesota House of Representatives staffer, Andy Pomroy.  Pomroy works as a research consultant to the House Democrat caucus and has been employed by the state House of Representatives and House Democrats in various capacities, off-and-on, since 2004.

According to his LinkinIn^TM profile, Pomroy’s No Coast work dates back to 2011.

Middle Class has already weighed in on behalf of 5 candidates, spending a total of $35,000 in support of incumbent house Democrats representing the most vulnerable suburban swing seats this year.

This effort appears to dovetail with the official House Democrat caucus campaign “to Retain a ‘Middle-Class Majority’ in the Minnesota House, put together by Pomroy's employer.  Although dropping the definite article and hyphen, the “independent” effort on behalf of the Democrats has adopted the same campaign language.

Using the “Middle Class” name allows the group to avoid the stigma of a union or abortion group’s name on its direct mail pieces aimed at swing voters.

Who knows, perhaps political independents and low-information voters will buy into this faux-grass-roots effort to identify Democrats with the struggles of the middle class.  Unfortunately, middle-class Minnesotans will find little relief if the Democrats retain their one-party rule over state government.

Reaching Across Time

We are in one of those intervals on the state campaign finance calendar when big dollar donations have to be immediately reported.  Yesterday saw the biggest individual donation received so far this period:  the independent Democrat group WIN Minnesota reports receiving $50,000 from Stillwater attorney Jeff Anderson.

If his name doesn’t ring a bell, it should.  Anderson—and his law firm Jeff Anderson and Associates—is big in the business of representing plaintiffs in the clergy sex abuse    scandals.  His firm’s motto:  “Reaching Across Time for Justice.”

The $50,000 to WIN Minnesota is just part of his recent generosity to the state Democrat party.   According to records on file at the state’s Campaign Finance Board (CFB), Anderson’s newly discovered fondness for the state Democrat party has resulted in $175,000 in donations in the past three years:

	Donation Amount
Recipient	2014	2013	2012	2011	2010
Minnesota DFL Party	45,000	-	-	-	-
House DFL Caucus	25,000	5,000	25,000	-	-
Senate DFL Caucus	-	-	25,000	-	-
WIN Minnesota	50,000	-	-	-	-
Total (2012-2014)	$ 175,000

One 2013 legislative development has significantly assisted Anderson’s efforts to reach across more time on behalf of his clients.

On May 28, 2013, Democrat Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, signed a bill that repealed the time limit on filing lawsuits in such matters.  The law had been passed by the Democrat majority-led Minnesota House and Senate.

In the hearing before the state House Civil Law Committee, Anderson client Jim Keenan testified in favor of the bill.  Keenan had also testified in favor of the state Senate version of the bill before that body’s Judiciary committee.

The House author of the bill (HF681) was state Representative Steve Simon (D-Hopkins).  According to records on file at the CFB, Anderson donated $2,000 to Simon’s Secretary of State campaign in 2013.  In 2013, a Julie Anderson, sharing the same address as Jeff Anderson, also gave $2,000 to Simon’s campaign for Secretary of State.  (In 2014, Julie Anderson donated $1,000 to the re-election campaign of Gov. Mark Dayton.)  Anderson’s law partner, Mike Finnegan, gave Simon an additional $2,000 in 2013.

It always pays to Follow the Money.

Where Everyone Is Above Average, Part 3

To put my recent posts [1, 2] regarding executive compensation at Minnesota Public Radio in context, it’s useful to compare their pay to other organizations’ pay.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has just published its newest edition of the Top 100 list for CEO executive compensation at Minnesota’s top companies.  The latest data cover the year 2013.

If MPR were a for-profit company, the Fiscal Year 2013 pay for its current CEO (Jim McTaggart) of $557,014 would rank 68th on the highest-paid private company CEO list.  Not bad for a quasi-governmental agency. 

The FY2013 pay for MPR’s retired CEO (Bill Kling) of $1,086,351 would place him 49^th on the latest private company CEO list.  That puts compensation for MPR CEO’s in the league of companies like Digital River, Christopher & Banks, and Fastenal.  In 2013, Fastenal produced revenue of more than $3.3 billion, with profits of $448 million.  In 2013, Fastenal paid their current CEO a mere $794,761, about $300,000 less than MPR paid its retired CEO.

In fact, Kling’s FY2013 pay exceeds the CEO pay of the sole media company on the Star Tribune Top 100 list (ValueVision).

As it happens, MPR’s parent non-profit, American Public Media Group, ranks only 38^th on the Star Tribune’s list of Minnesota’s largest non-profits (based on 2012 data), with revenue of $110,800,000 (2012 figure).  That revenue figure for public radio works out to less than ¼ of Fastenal’s profit.

With MPR executive pay ranking up there with private company compensation, it should come as no surprise that it also ranks highly against non-profit-sector pay.

McTaggart’s 2012 pay of $494,500 ranked him higher on the list than many non-profit CEO’s running much larger charitable organizations.  In 2012, only 6 non-profit CEO’s in Minnesota ran smaller organizations and got paid more than MPR’s McTaggart.

As the retired MPR CEO, Bill Kling’s total FY2012 compensation of $780,025 would have ranked him as the 16^th highest paid non-profit CEO.  His FY2013 compensation of $1,086,351 would have moved him up to 11^th in the state.  Either figure would have made Kling the top-paid leader of any arts organization that year.

Of the higher paid non-profit CEO’s, all head either health care or educational institutions.

In 2012, current CEO McTaggart earned more than the heads of Carlton College and St. Olaf College and the heads of medical outfits including Fairview Health and Olmsted Medical Center. 

All of which makes a certain amount of sense.  For-profit companies have an obligation to return profits to shareholders.  MPR does not compete for customers, nor does it have shareholders.  Any excess then accrues to senior management in the form of compensation.

Minnesota Public Radio’s website lists no fewer than ten senior executives (c-suite officers and the different ranks of vice president).  These 10 senior executives join the legions of managers, directors, managing directors, and assorted other officers who populate the staff.  As I noted in Part 2, 10 MPR employees make more than $300,000 and 15 more than $200,000 per year.

Remember, the tote bag is yours at just the $8/month donation level.

Where Everyone Is Above Average, Part 2

In my recent post detailing the lucrative post-employment package of now-retired MPR founder Bill Kling, I hope I didn’t leave behind the impression that the management team he left behind was toiling in penury.  Because they are not.

In Fiscal Year 2013, Kling’s successor as MPR’s CEO, Jon McTaggart, received $557,014 in total compensation from the non-profit corporation.[1]

Including McTaggart and Kling, a total of 10 MPR employees made more than $300,000 in FY 2013.   A total of 15 made over $200,000.  Keep in mind that Minnesota’s Governor earns only $120,303.

Rest assured that MPR’s on-air talent is sharing in this largesse.  Kai Ryssdal, the host of MPR’s nationally-syndicated program Marketplace, took in $446,732 in FY 2013.  At that level of compensation, he was MPR’s 2^nd highest paid current employee.

But don’t worry, if you donate just $5 per month, you get a free "I Listen" coffee mug.

In Part 3, I see how MPR's pay compares to that offered by other organizations.

Note:  All MPR financial data, including tax returns, can be found here.

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[1] See MPR’s Fiscal 2013 IRS Form 990 Income Tax Return, Schedule J, Part II.