Home is Where the Money Is

Embattled Democrat state senator Jeff Hayden was back in the news yesterday.  The former Community Action of Minneapolis board member has been insisting for weeks that he took no perks from the now closed anti-poverty agency.

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Alejandra Matos has found a Community Action receipt for airfare for Sen. Hayden and his wife to travel to New York back in 2012.  So his previous denials are, as they say, no longer operative.

An August 7, 2014 state audit of Community Action’s spending raised questions regarding the perks received by senior management and board members of the taxpayer-funded non profit.  The Star Tribune reported on the audit on September 22^nd.  On September 27^th, state regulators shut down the Minneapolis non-profit, distributing its caseload to neighboring agencies.

The scandal has proven to be an embarrassment to some Democrat state politicians, coming in the closing weeks of the 2014 election.  As it turn out, the state’s Community Action agency network has a political group of its own.

According to records on file at the state Campaign Finance Board, the Minnesota Community Action Partnership Political Action Committee was formed in 1996.  As PAC’s go, it’s a rather modest affair, raising and spending only a few thousand dollars a year.

The agencies themselves do not contribute to the PAC.  Contributors are individuals, including local agency employees and friends of the community action movement.

As you would expect from an organization with roots in LBJ’s Great Society, the PAC leans a little to the left.

The PAC’s most recent contribution was $250 to the campaign of Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton on September 16^th, in the midst of the Community Action of Minneapolis scandal.  The only other itemized candidate contribution in 2014 was $300 to Jay McNamar, a first-term Democrat state representative locked in a tough re-election battle.

The PAC is bipartisan, donating $500 to Democrat legislative caucuses and $300 to the Republicans in 2014.

In 2013, the PAC donated an even $500 to each party.  The other donations given by the PAC were too small to be itemized.

In 2012, the PAC gave $250 to Mark Dayton, $500 to the Democrats in the legislature and $600 to the Republicans (who were then in the majority).

In 2011, the PAC’s itemized contributions went exclusively to Democrats.  In 2010, the PAC’s contributions again leaned to the left, with $1,000 going to Democrats and $550 to Republicans.  In 2009, the numbers went $250 to Democrats and $200 to Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

These dollar figures are too small to hold any real meaning.  But to paraphrase the old cliché, home is where the money is.

Donor No. 1

Wow.  Talk about you heavyweight campaign contributor.  A single individual--Rockefeller-heiress and ex-wife of Governor Mark Dayton, Alida Messinger--has contributed more than $2 million this election cycle to the Minnesota Democrat cause.

I’m not claiming that this represents all of her donations the last two years, but here is what I have documented to date:

Alida Messinger Dontions, 2014 Cycle
Date	To	Amount
3/4/2013	Mark Dayton	500
9/30/2013	Mark Dayton	3,500
7/12/2014	Rebecca Otto	2,000
8/29/2014	Steve Simon	2,000
5/13/2014	2014 Fund	50,000
9/30/2014	WIN Minnesota	5,000
10/7/2014	WIN Minnesota	620,000
10/20/2014	WIN Minnesota	175,000
6/27/2013	DFL House Caucus	100,000
3/24/2014	DFL House Caucus	150,000
10/20/2014	DFL House Caucus	80,000
12/11/2012	MN DFL State Party	50,000
2/28/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
4/19/2013	MN DFL State Party	40,000
5/14/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
7/10/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
11/4/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
3/10/2014	MN DFL State Party	150,000
6/30/2014	MN DFL State Party	100,000
1/23/2014	MN DFL Federal	10,000
Total		$2,038,000

To put her contributions in perspective, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported today that Gov. Mark Dayton and Jeff Johnson have each raised about $2 million this year for their respective campaigns.  Messinger is one person. 

Heads Up

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety has formed a Minnesota political action committee.  Its first act was to give $25,000 to the anti-Republican group Public Safety Matters, according to records on file at the Campaign Finance Board.

Public Safety Matters will use the $25,000 to convince voters that Republicans are pro-criminal.  You read it here, first.

Public Safety Smears

If the pattern from the 2012 election holds again this year, Minnesota Republicans should brace themselves.  They are about to be smeared, again.

The shadowy left-wing group Public Safety Matters is gearing up to slander Republican candidates for state representative as "anti-police."

I profiled the group last year.  Today, according to records filed at the state Campaign Finance Board, the funding arm of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (WIN Minnesota) transferred $75,000 to the Public Safety group.

WIN Minnesota is run by Adam Duininck, a board member of the Met Council regional government and married to one of the Deputy Chiefs of Staff of Democrat Governor Mark Dayton.

You have been warned.

The Banana Republic of Minnesota: Solar Power, Part 2

Consider the career of Minneapolis Democrat politician Mark Andrew.  He served on the Hennepin County Commission from 1983 to 1999.  According to his LinkedIn profile, Andrew then joined the public relations firm Tunheim, and served as a Senior Vice President until 2006.

Tunheim claims credit for leading the effort to create a new baseball park for the Minnesota Twins during this period, one of Andrew's clients at the firm.  The ballpark, Target Field, is coincidentally owned and financed by the good taxpayers of Hennepin County.

After leaving Tunheim in 2006 to develop his GreenMark firm, Andrew’s business took off in 2010 with the completion of the new Twins field (named for Target, a Tunheim client).  The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on June, 22, 2010,

Three years into an entrepreneurial foray into the greening of America's professional sports, former politician and communications consultant Mark Andrew is starting to make some green.

Andrew, [then] 58, is a former Hennepin County commissioner who championed the Hennepin County waste-to-energy plant and the county's recycling program.  He quit a $150,000-plus consulting job at Tunheim Partners three years ago to test his vision that the Minnesota Twins, a Tunheim client, and other teams could turn their stadiums into environmental showcases.

Around the time that the Twins were taking the field in the inaugural season at the new County-owned stadium, Andrew’s firm was really taking off, as the Star Tribune reported in 2010,

"Everything I made until this year, mostly some consulting, all went back into the company," Andrew said.  "We will have something close to $1 million in revenue this year, before we pay our [two] employees, contractors and consultants.  That will be three times bigger than last year."

He said the company makes money two ways.  One is consulting for the Twins and others, including the managers of Target Center, Xcel Energy and Northwest Airlines (now Delta).  The other is to build repeatable commissions from corporate sponsorships.

While Mark Andrew was starting to make it big with GreenMark, another Mark, former U.S. Senator Dayton, was locked in a fierce election battle for Governor of Minnesota.

Mark Andrew, a former Chair of the state Democrat party, contributed $200 to Dayton’s campaign that year and another $150 in 2011 to Dayton’s re-election effort.  In 2013 and 2014, Andrew donated an additional $1,250 to Dayton’s campaign for a second term.

When Dayton took office as Governor in 2011, one of his early appointments was to name Tunheim head partner Kathy Tunheim as his Senior Advisor for Job Creation at the Minneapolis Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

The Tunheim firm boasts an impressive client list.  The list goes well beyond the Twins to include everything from major corporations to the controversial construction company URS, to state government agencies, like the Met Council, to local governments, like Hennepin County, to renewable energy companies to major nonprofits.

Among the many other appointments that a new governor makes are the members of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), the governing authority of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

According to a spokesperson for MAC, the state government agency hired Andrew and GreenMark in 2011 to develop a solar power project (see Part 1) at the facility.  According to MAC, it paid GreenMark a total of $65,021 in fees from 2011 to 2012.

In 2013, Andrew ran for Mayor of Minneapolis, finishing 2^nd in the multi-candidate race.

In 2014, the solar project was officially announced by Governor Dayton and Mark Andrew last week, along with a new study of green energy issued by DEED.

I’m told by the MAC spokesman that GreenMark has been hired for additional work involving partnership marketing at the airport facility.

As for the Xcel Energy-sponsored (Tunheim and GreenMark client) solar project at the airport, if I understand the economics correctly, it will produce $35 million in total revenue over the next 30 years.  Assuming the revenue is level over the life of the project, it will pay for itself after 21 years, if the equipment lasts that long.

A 21-year payback is no great shakes in corporate America, but it is good enough in the Banana Republic of Minnesota. 

The Banana Republic of Minnesota: Solar Power, Part 1

With great fanfare, our local airport announced that it will build—with your money—the state’s largest solar power project.  Yes, the same airport whose grasp of tarmac security is well, less than airtight, is diversifying its portfolio into electricity production.

As project developer Mark Andrew himself reported on his Minneapolis Star Tribune-sponsored blog,

The solar project that is the subject of today’s post was initiated by my company, GreenMark, and presented to the Metropolitan Airports Commission.  GreenMark was subsequently hired by the MAC to help develop all aspects of the enterprise, which began construction Oct. 2nd.

Yes, that Mark Andrew.  The Democrat Mark Andrew, former county commissioner, former state DFL-party chair, and first-runner-up in last year's election for Mayor of Minneapolis, is heading up the project.

The aforementioned Metropolitan Airports Commission—a state government agency, whose leadership was appointed by Democrat Governor Mark Dayton—hired Andrew’s environmental sports marketing firm to develop the state’s largest solar power project on top of two parking structures at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

What an environmental sports marketing agency would know about utility-scale solar power is beyond my ability to comprehend.  However, Andrew does list Xcel Energy as one of his clients.  Xcel is contributing $2 million of its customers’ money to help fund the airport solar project.

The $25.4 million, 3 MW project was announced last week by Gov. Dayton himself, with Arctic explorer—and Mark Andrew client and state government grantee—Will Steger by his side.  Mark Andrew reportedly kicked off the news conference portion of the launch event.

Of course, the good Democrat he is, Mark Andrew has donated $1,250 to Mark Dayton's re-election effort so far in 2013 and 2014.

As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported,

It’s a signature project that highlights Dayton’s clean energy initiatives, including a new solar energy standard enacted by the Legislature last year requiring investor-owned utilities to produce 1.5 percent of their electricity from solar by 2020.

To recap:  a Democrat politician uses your tax money to hire a Democrat politician and campaign donor to make the first politician look good.

Once again, in our Banana Republic, it always comes down to not what you know but who you know.

In Part 2 of this series, I dig deeper into the origins of this shady solar project.

Slipping Through the Cracks

Events happen with such haste in Mark Dayton’s Banana Republic that every now and then one slips through the cracks of my otherwise comprehensive reporting.

In late 2013, Mark Dayton’s MNsure health insurance exchange awarded a series of “outreach grants” to local community groups in the state.  One such group receiving a $50,000 grant in December 2013 was the Minneapolis-based Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota. 

Around the time the group was receiving the grant (based on an earlier application), board member Mohamud Noor was named as the group’s new leader.  As you know, Noor serves on the Minneapolis School Board and has twice run (unsuccessfully) for the Democrat nomination to serve in the state legislature.

In the future, I'll try to keep up.

Doing Well by Doing Good, Part 5

Now that the state has raided and shut down the controversial nonprofit Community Action of Minneapolis, it may be useful to take a look at some of the similar nonprofits operating around the state.

The Minneapolis agency is part of a network of a couple of dozen that serve throughout the state, operating programs funded by taxpayers aimed at helping low income households.

One of the most eye-catching facts in the Community Action Minneapolis scandal was the compensation of its CEO.  Bill Davis was reported to have received $273,060 in total compensation in the last year for which data is publicly available.

I took a look at the CEO compensation for all local agency heads, as shown below,

Community Action Agency	Location	CEO Comp. $
Community Action MPLS	Minneapolis	$273,060
Ramsey & Washington	St. Paul	172,872
Local Government Salary Cap		162,245
Scott, Carver & Dakota	Shakopee	139,628
Three Rivers	Zumbrota	131,552
Arrowhead	Virginia	118,877
Anoka County	Blaine	118,741
Mahube-Otwa	Detroit Lakes	116,974
Suburban Hennepin	St. Louis Park	113,662
Lakes & Prairies	Moorhead	109,215
West Central	Elbow Lake	109,163
Minnesota Valley	Mankato	97,699
Tri-County	Little Falls	97,368
Lakes & Pines	Mora	95,259
Tri-Valley	Crookston	95,018
Heartland	Willmar	93,821
Southwestern	Worthington	92,498
Northwest	Badger	92,131
Semcac	Rushford	90,510
Wright County	Maple Lake	90,055
Tri-County	Waite Park	85,436
Western	Marshall	84,091
Bi-County	Bemidji	83,834
KOOTASCA	Grand Rapids	80,475
Prairie Five	Montevideo	69,434
Duluth	Duluth	60,220
Inter-County	Oklee	56,392

[Compensation listed is as reported in the agency’s last available IRS Form 990 income tax return (either 2012 or 2013, depending upon the fiscal year used).  For CEO’s not serving a full year, the previous year’s figure was used.]

For comparison purposes, I’ve included the salary cap used by local governments for 2014, $162,245.  Local governments can, and do, seek waivers to pay above that amount.

It turns out that Davis’ compensation is quite an outlier for this type of organization, representing something close to three times the median CEO compensation.

The other agency that sticks out in this analysis is the one across the river, the Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties, based in St. Paul.  Its CEO, Clarence Hightower, received total compensation of $172,872 in the year ending September 30, 2013.  Hightower’s compensation comes in close to twice the median compensation of local agency CEO’s.

You may recall that Hightower’s name came up recently in connection with the Community Standards Initiative controversy.  The CSI controversy was the first count in the recently filed ethics complaint against state Sen. Jeff Hayden.  Count 2 in the Hayden complaint centered on Hayden’s board membership in Community Action of Minneapolis.

According to the St. Paul Community Action agency’s 2013 income tax return, the east-metro agency spent over $676,000 on travel, conferences and meetings.

In 2012, the St. Paul agency spent even more on travel and conferences, totaling $756,272.  In 2011, the amount for the agency for those items was $722,028.

To compare, the Minneapolis agency spent a little over $233,000 on these items in 2012.  True, the east-metro agency represents a larger organization—roughly twice the size of the Minneapolis group—but its spending on travel and conferences was three times the amount of the agency on the other side of the river.

Perhaps further investigation would prove useful.  In a later post, I look at the political donations of the community action network.

They Fly By Night

[Updated:  this post has been updated.  See below.]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has compiled the most recent campaign finance figures into a handy spreadsheet.  The big names—Education Minnesota, Alliance for a Better Minnesota, etc.—you will have heard of if you follow state politics.

One group that cracked the top 20 will be new to most of you:  DLCC for Minnesota.  Formed only in June of this year, DLCC for Minnesota is the local chapter of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.  As the name would imply, the DLCC is a political committee dedicated to electing Democrats to state legislatures around the country.  As you would expect, DLCC is headquartered on K Street in Washington, DC.

Two Minnesotans serve on the DLCC's board:  Speaker of the House Paul Thissen and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk.  The DLCC’s man in Minnesota is David Griggs, a longtime Democrat operative who has worked for Bakk, among others.

According to records on file at the state’s Campaign Finance Board, DLCC has pumped $161,700 into its Minnesota operation since its June start.  Of that amount raised, the DLCC has disclosed that most of it ($99,000) was provided by the public employee union AFSCME.

Where did the money go?  A total of $160,950 went to pay invoices submitted by Project Lakes and Plains.  As the Star Tribune describes,

For years, Democrats have participated in a polling and research consortium, called Project Lakes and Plains, that allows them to share information.

The result is they read from the same playbook and that playbook says in the midterm election that Minnesota voters care deeply about education issues. 

In other words, Project Lakes and Plains is the entity that allows candidates, political party units, and outside groups to work together, without running afoul of election laws against coordination.  Here is a partial list of the money paid to Project Lakes and Plains in recent years,

Project Lakes and Plains Revenue
Client	2014		2013		2012		2011		2010
Alliance for a Better Minn.	164,279		22,500		255,000				124,000
MN DFL Party	10,000				81,000		59,500		163,000
House DFL Caucus	160,950				212,570
Senate DFL Caucus					121,930
DLCC for Minnesota	160,950
WIN Minnesota Federal PAC	14,900		9,000
Al Franken for Senate			9,000
Total (2010-2014)	$ 1,568,579

What is unusual about the DLCC situation is that the Democrats appear to have created an entity purely for the purposes of paying some of Project Lakes and Plains’ bills, invoices that had previously been paid by other party units.

Curiously, on the same day the DLCC created the Minnesota Fund, it created a separate Victory Fund PAC.  The Victory fund has taken in over $164,000 from just 10 individual donors.  Nine of the 10 donors are out of state and include the well-known Tim Gill and James Hormel.  The Victory Fund is still holding $147,000 in cash on hand.  Its only expenditures have been to send small amounts of money out of state, to Michigan and North Dakota.  So far, not a single dollar of the fund has been spent in Minnesota.

The largest donor—giving slightly more than half of the Victory Fund total—is computer scientist and businessman John Koza, who heads up the National Popular Vote effort.

It’s amazing the places you’ll go when you follow the money.

[Update:  It turns that the June 2014 creation of the two MN DLCC entities is no mystery.  It fulfills the terms of a settlement between the Campaign Finance Board and DLCC arising from a complaint filed two years ago by the state Republican Party.]

Banana Republic of Minnesota: Mayo Clinic Edition

It's fun to write fiction.  But the power of speculative theories comes from their ability to explain current and future events.

My theory--based on complete speculation and no facts--that Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton (if reelected) plans to step aside to make way for his Lt. Gov. running mate/Chief of Staff Tina Smith--is looking better by the minute.

The Rochester Post Bulletin writes today about the political donation habits of the Mayo Clinic's top executives.  They have been giving--and giving generously--to the Dayton/Smith ticket and not a penny to the Republican nominee for Governor, Jeff Johnson.

You will recall that the Democratic state legislature and the Democratic Governor got together in 2013 to give $585 million in taxpayer funds to the private Mayo Clinic to expand its operations in Rochester.

Called the Destination Medical Center (DMC), the project was important enough that Dayton appointed his then Chief of Staff/now running mate/chief fixer/power behind the throne/(and in my fevered imagination) the next Governor Tina Smith as chair of the DMC board.

Executives at the private Mayo Clinic have reciprocated by donating to the Dayton/Smith campaign, $7,000 so far in 2014.  The Post Bulletin notes that many of these Mayo executives are recent converts to the Dayton cause, not having backed the Gov. with contributions during his 2010 run for a first term.

But that's just the way business is done in a banana republic--public tax dollars are steered toward private interests and the recipients reward with cash the politicians who made it happen.  Pay to play?  Perish the thought, it's all for the greater good, of course.

Making the List

Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune front page features a big story on the Minnesota’s governor’s race.  One detail jumped out at me as I read the account of Democrat Mark Dayton’s bid for re-election,

The Dayton campaign has also gotten an assist from Minnesotans United, the political action committee that grew out of the successful effort to defeat the 2012 gay marriage ban and then pass the 2013 law that made same-sex marriage legal.  Minnesotans United assembled one of the most sophisticated grass roots operations the state has seen in years, and has vowed to protect allies like Dayton, who signed the gay marriage bill.

“We encourage our volunteers to volunteer on behalf of the governor,” said Richard Carlbom, the strategist who ran Minnesotans United.  The group has shared its lengthy donor list with the DFL.

That last sentence—about sharing the donor list—set off all manner of red lights, sirens, and air horns as I was enjoying my breakfast this morning.

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.