Tagged: john sinrud

Posted: November 14, 2011 at 7:48 am

Return of the Jedi

In 2010, the Empire struck back, hard. The Dark Side destroyed the Democrats, the first piece of sizable revenge exacted by the GOP ever since their Death Star (which had dominated the galaxy for two decades) was destroyed in the span of four years by Schweitzer, Tester, Bullock, McCulloch, Lindeen and Juneau.

The 2010 elections were bought, not won. There were millions of dollars brought in illegally by the GOP’s wealthy friends. Much of it was funnelled in by shell groups from undisclosed sources, and mostly by one particular front group called Western Tradition Partnership. This group is currently being prosecuted civilly in the Montana courts for their dirty 2010 campaign activity. Of the estimated million they brought in, none of it was reported nor the sources disclosed. In other words, we still don’t know who, exactly, owns the GOP-controlled Montana Legislature.

I’m told that the same shady GOP Darth Vaders who operated in 2010 were back at work this cycle, trying to buy themselves victories in city races around the state. They came up empty-handed, humiliated. Like John Sinrud, backed by the Montana Realtors, who wants to build high-rise condos and strip malls on farm land in and around Whitefish. Or Chuck Denowh, who is Rick Hill’s chief advisor but apparently took a hiatus to try to work some of the city races in the Flathead and elsewhere.

They were working hard behind the scenes trying to get victories. It hasn’t been calculated yet how many hundreds of thousands of dollars these losers spent on city commission races around Montana, but not a single Tea party candidate won election in Bozeman, Whitefish, Kalispell, Great Falls, Helena, Billings or Missoula last week.

Posted: November 9, 2011 at 8:47 pm

UPDATED Analysis: TEA Party Republicans Lose Big in Montana Local Elections

Montanans saw sweeping victories for progressives from across the state today. And while it is yet to be seen whether this will translate into a wave of momentum for the Dems next year, one thing is known. The TEA Party legislature proved itself guilty of a major overreach during the last session. In turn, TEA Party Republicans were soundly rejected by voters.

Nowhere did the phenomena manifest itself more dramatically than in the Flathead, where the TEA Party candidates backed by Chuck Denowh, John Sinrud and the Realtors, Ricky Lynn Blake and a slate of developers and self-funded shadow PACs spent big bucks on attacking their opponents–and were all defeated.

Congratulations to John Muhlfeld, John Anderson, Richard Hildner and Frank Sweeney and the large numbers of voters who turned out to defeat a well-funded crew of special interest nutjobs. The victories weren’t limited to Whitefish either. The only openly self proclaimed Tea Party candidate in the Flathead County elections, Erik Jerde, garnered a soul-crushing 34 votes out of 1275 cast in Kalispell. Those whom supported Tea Party poster boy Derek Skees in 2010 also all lost…Askew, Vail and Wise. Tea Party candidates lost in the Flathead Valley Community College Trustees election as well as the municipal elections.

In Great Falls, a woman who refused all donations beat the leader of the Cascade County TEA Party, Cyndi Baker. As the Great Falls Tribune reports, the TEA Partier had the most campaign signs of any candidate and the second largest campaign war chest. Baker blamed her defeat on teachers, despite losing by a margin of 84-16.

In Helena, the conservative candidate was defeated by Matt Elsaesser, who was re-elected by a wide margin, and newcomer Katherine Haque-Hausrath. Progressives also had major victories in Missoula including Caitlin Copple, Cynthia Wolken, Alex Taft, and others, as D. Gregory Smith at From Eternity to Here writes.

Billings also had a big win against the TEA Party, where the Billings “Montana Shrugged” TEA Party leader Jennifer Olsen was easily routed by Ken Crouch. Progressives Brent Cromley and Becky Bird also won handily. Denis Pitman, the conservative minister of Fuji Spa fame, is still in (proving the power of incumbency). However, Pitman’s opponent probably succeeded in halting his higher political ambitions now that voters know he checks his family man-of-God morality at the door once profits are on the table, and for that, we can be thankful.

UPDATE: In Bozeman, progressive Cyndy Andrus defeated Bill Fiedler by a whopping 4,289 votes to 2,209 votes. Fiedler was a member of the developers’ crew–he’s a member of the board of directors of the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association.

So, even though TEA Party Republicans won a legislative majority in 2010, they made a mistake in interpreting their one-time wins as a go-ahead to let voters know their true beliefs and goals. So it appears that focusing on nutjob bills over jobs was indeed a bad idea. They paid for it in the off-year elections. The progressives also won because they fielded some terrific candidates–people who actually cared about their community and its people more than getting a platform on which to scream TEA Party platitudes and shut down government. They worked very, very hard on the doors, raised money to get their message out, and voters responded well.

Congratulations to the winners! Here’s to a repeat of this in 2012.

Posted: July 17, 2011 at 10:29 am

Western Traditions Partnership Electioneering: You Be the Judge

The Billings Gazette is reporting today on the upcoming Sept 21 Montana Supreme Court hearing on the shadow group Western Tradition Partnership (who ditched its tainted name and became American Traditions Partnership under a barrage of bad press). Western TP is claiming that they didn’t break the law because they are involved principally in “educational” activity, not “political” activity.

Tell that to the candidates who had negative mailers from WTP dropped on them last election cycle.

The Commissioner of Political Practices says WTP was electioneering, the Billings Gazette reported last election cycle that John Sinrud’s so-called “Western Tradition Partnership” broke state law and should have to pay a civil fine because it failed to report its donors and register as a political action committee (PAC)

Unsworth’s office uncovered evidence that Western Tradition Partnership had been involved in 19 Montana legislative races in 2008 and that it had a budget of $660,000.

As the Havre Daily News reported, Unsworth ruled that:

The evidence shows that WTP’s ultimate purpose in Montana in 2008 was not to discuss issues, but to directly influence candidate elections through surreptitious means.

According to Unsworth, the group planned to spend $537,000 on targeted Montana elections in the 2010 cycle.

Here are a couple of examples of what they spent it on. Would you call this education or electoral work?

This flyer from Sinrud’s so-called “Western Tradition Partnership” suggests that Democratic legislative candidate Sheila Hogan will stop that darling little princess from becoming a doc, because her Mommy and Daddy will be forced spend all their dough on the utility bill, instead of saving it for her college. I guess this is because Hogan might like to see some effort on renewable energy.

Here is a PDF of another flyer , this time attacking Democratic legislative candidate Will Hammerquist, who ran against Derek Skees and only lost by 80 votes. (It appears that a moron, possibly John Sinrud who founded WTP and is now active in Flathead politics, designed this mailer. It is silly, over-the-top and largely illiterate, so it probably had little to no effect at all.) Guessing this is the same moron who so wounded and disgraced the name Western Traditions Partnership that it had to change the name to rid themselves that that association, and then thought that this would work.

Anyway, ~~Western Traditions Partnership~~ American Traditions Partnership and its other GOP counterparts spent $3,000,000 this cycle conservatively and maybe as much as $5,000,000, the overwhelming majority of it being spent on activity designed to influence legislative races. It is virtually all corporate money, the majority of which comes from out of state. At least a million of it, maybe more, is mystery money, about which we will never be able to learn the amounts, the sources, or even the races on which the money was expended.

Unfortunately, as Democratic spokesperson Chris Saeger points out, the most extreme legislature in Montana history was elected because of these election expenditures, laying the blame for this session at the feet of the GOP’s own shadow groups, rather than just the TEA party.

Posted: June 29, 2011 at 12:08 pm

Scary Types in the Flathead: Realtors Have Some ‘Splaining to Do

A national AP article ran across the country last week, highlighting the right-wing nut-jobs that are gravitating toward the Flathead Valley and particularly Kalispell.

These include Chuck Baldwin, Randy Weaver and a long list of others who are on various watch-lists of human rights groups like Southern Poverty Law Center and Montana Human Rights Network.

But there is a great irony to it all.

The business that suffers most from this trend is real estate. To have a community become known as a haven for lunatics is a sure way to cause real estate prices to suffer. And the Flathead valley does not need a drag on real estate right now, because the national real estate crash has hurt the Flathead, and hurt ancillary businesses there like wood products and construction and electricians and so on.

The irony? Realtors are partly responsible for the right-wing colonization effort in the Flathead.

For starters, the National Realtors Association had an enormous influence in creating the Montana Tea Party legislature, having spent over $2 million on Montana this past election cycle to get ultra-right-wing Republicans elected in the legislature by blanketing the airwaves with a series of campaign ads about impending taxes.

It brought new faces in the legislature like Derek Skees, who in turn started actively seeking the spotlight for himself and his crazy buddies and causes in the Flathead. Skees, in fact, was just featured in TIME Magazine, which did a profile about him being the national leader of the nullificaiton movement, headquartered out of the Flathead. And there have been other disturbing articles in the national press, like the recent Associated Press piece, about how right-wing crazies are getting elected in, and moving to, the Flathead valley. Not a good way to keep real estate values high.

But it gets worse. Right-wing Republican John Sinrud (pictured), the current head of the Northwest Montana Realtors (the major real estate group in the Flathead), is the man who assembled the Western Tradition Partnership, a group that spent roughly $700,000 of secret, unreported funds on the 2010 legislative races (this was in addition to the $2 million that the National Realtors brought in). Sinrud has also been active in county and local races up there as well, something that the NWMR group doesn’t seem to mind at all.

So be careful what you wish for. The Realtors came to the 2010 legislative elections loaded for bear. But they are now being chased by a giant, runaway elephant, and might be regretting having gone hunting at all.

Posted: May 18, 2011 at 12:34 pm

The Fight

Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock is continuing the fight to keep multinational corporate money out of Montana elections –and out of the nation’s elections. Now, national election watch dog groups are stepping up to join Bullock in the fight.

Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock is working on an appeal state Judge Jeffrey Sherlock’s October ruling that Citizens United invalidated Montana’s century old clean elections law. Montana’s law was passed because of the undue influence the copper industry had on Montana politics at the turn of the century. Today, thanks to this decision, corrupt corporate influence has been restored to its place in the political process; Bullock wants to change that. The average state legislative candidate in Montana raises some $10-$15,000 in Montana, meaning that large corporations can easily buy our elections.

The American Independent has the latest update in the fight.

Free Speech for People has filed an Amicus Curiae brief [FSFPAmicusBrief PDF] (a document that an outside party can submit to provide information to a court) with the Montana Supreme Court, which will be hearing Attorney General Bullock’s appeal of Sherlock’s decision.

Western Tradition Partnership (WTP) brought the suit that Bullock is now appealing. WTP is a shadow organization that has has been targeting pro-conservation candidates in both parties for the last few years, and specializes in nasty (and potentially illegal) campaign tactics. Tim Ravndal, the Montana TEA Party leader that was forced to resign over his comments about the hanging of gay people, and His Royal Shadiness John Sinrud have both been affiliated with the shadow group at one time or another.

If WTP wins in the Montana Supreme Court, Steve Bullock can, on our behalf as the state of Montana, take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court; if Bullock and Montana wins, WTP can do the same.

Posted: November 29, 2010 at 7:31 am

Bought, but by Whom?

Who are the moneybags that own the new Republican legislature? For starters, at least a half-million dollars was spent by a group called Western Tradition Partnership was directly Republican legislative candidates to help them get elected in 2010. Let’s assume that 20 races were targeted by these funds. That’s $25,000 per race. To put that in perspective, I’m told the average legislative candidate in Montana usually raises $10-15 grand for his or her own campaign.

Western Tradition Partnership is a group founded by his Royal Shadiness John Sinrud. We know this because an investigation by Dennis Unsworth, the Political Practices Commissioner, uncovered a power-point presentation belonging to a WTP operative, showing some sort of flow-chart of money and some rough calculations and budget items, and indicating a plan to spend half a million bucks in Montana on legislative races. What we don’t know is who funds the Western Tradition Partnership, though we may soon find out. At the end of Unsworth’s investigation, he found WTP guilty of breaking Montana campaign laws by not revealing where its money comes from. WTP claimed, in its defense, that its hundreds of negative mailers and other advertisements, blasted out during the closing weeks of the campaign and trashing democratic legislative candidates in every way imaginable, was not “campaign related” activity but rather “issue advocacy”. “Issue-related” organizations can set themselves up as non-profit entities under federal law. This means they can hide their donors as long as each donor gives less than $25,000. The only thing they may not do is “directly advocate” for or against a candidate.

The Commissioner’s ruling, however, means that the state of Montana has found that the WTP’s activity crosses the line from issue-advocacy to campaign activity under state law. So we may yet see the WTP’s books as the State of Montana continues its prosecution of these jerks. That would be a fun thing. We will then know who, exactly, owns the new Republican legislature.

Right now WTP has taken the offensive, suing the State, the Attorney General, and just about everyone else, claiming that Unsworth had no power to investigate them and claiming that Montana’s campaign finance laws are unconstitutional. Bullock should step up and slam these A-holes.

Posted: October 31, 2010 at 11:36 am

A Giant Handicap for State Democrats

The sad reality of the 2010 Montana elections is this: if the Dems can keep control of either chamber of the state legislature, it will be an astounding triumph.

Why? Put aside the obvious reason that Obama and the Washington Dems have offered very little in the way of persuasive rhetoric in defense of the big ticket items like health-care, stimulus and bailout. Put aside the enthusiasm gap. Put aside the frenzy of excitement among TEA-trash. In Montana, there is a far more disturbing obstacle: the millions of dollars in right-wing corporate money that has stealthily infiltrated the 2010 legislative races, unmatched by any such funds from the left.

Let’s look at some of the totals. First, there is the CI-105 group, run by GOP operative Chuck Denowh. This groups has spent $1.9 million, all raised from the National Realtors Association. These funds have been used to run TV ads for months, and the number of commercials that have aired is staggering, surpassing the amount of TV that is purchased by a major US Senate campaign. The commercials are ostensibly to promote the CI-105 constitutional amendment. But they are basically generic commercials for republican legislators. The ads falsely say that “Helena” is trying to raise taxes, which is basically a way to get people to vote for a Republican legislator since many Montana voters don’t know that Democrats, not Republicans, have delivered the largest tax cut in the history of the state.

To this whopping $1.9M, add a hundred or so thousand more from Chuck Denowh’s other two shady groups, the Better Goverment PAC and the Jobs for Montana PAC, also funded in whole or in part by corporate cash to the tune of hundreds of thousands, according to their Oct c-6 reports. Then you have an undetermined number of local groups that seem also to be controlled or influenced in some fashion by Denowh, such as the Flathead Business and Industry Council which has dropped a ton of money in select local races like that of Joe Brenneman, a commissioner from the Flathead who Denowh is trying to unseat to clear the way for abolishing all zoning in Flathead County.

Nauseous yet? We aren’t done. Throw in Erik Iversen’s Montana Business Leadership Council, which has made huge media buys around the state, for an undisclosed sum. And then add the Western Tradition Partnership. We don’t know how much they spent, but they said a few months back that they would be spending at least $500,000 this election cycle in Montana, most of it raised from out-of-state corporations, mostly energy companies who want environmental regulations defeated.

Grand total? An estimated $3-5 million. Why can’t I give you an exact tally? Because several of these groups have simply refused to disclose the amounts and sources of their funding. The Western TP and Iversen’s MBLC take advantage of a federal tax loophole to evade reporting, by claiming to be involved principally in “educational” activity, not “political” activity.

Tell that to Will Hammerquist, who had this mailer from WTP dropped on him today. WTP NEG (Fortunately, it appears that a moron, possibly John Sinrud who founded WTP and is now active in Flathead politics, designed this mailer. It is silly, over-the-top and largely illiterate, so it probably has no effect at all, especially this late in the game.)

Anyway, if you add it all up, Republican groups spent $3,000,000 this cycle conservatively and maybe as much as $5,000,000, the overwhelming majority of it being spent on activity designed to influence legislative races. It is virtually all corporate money, the majority of which comes from out of state. At least a million of it, maybe more, is mystery money, about which we will never be able to learn the amounts, the sources, or even the races on which the money was expended. Unfortunately, the Democrats in Montana don’t have access to this type of soft corporate money.

True, there are unions and wealthy individual donors, and environmental advocacy groups. But but none can, or will, write a two million dollar check in the blink of an eye. Not even close. There is no corporate interest that wholly owns the Democratic party in the way that the GOP is owned by entire corporate sectors. That’s a good thing. But it makes this season an uphill climb.

Posted: October 30, 2010 at 8:34 am

In Spite of Ruling that It Broke Montana Laws, Sinrud’s Western Traditions Partnership Keeps Attacking Democrats

The Billings Gazette reported this week that John Sinrud’s so-called “Western Tradition Partnership” broke state law and should have to pay a civil fine because it failed to report its donors and register as a political action committee.

As previously reported by The Gazette State Bureau, in two years of investigation, Unsworth’s office uncovered evidence that Western Tradition Partnership had been involved in 19 Montana legislative races in 2008 and that it had a budget of $660,000.

As the Havre Daily News reported, Unsworth ruled that:

The evidence shows that WTP’s ultimate purpose in Montana in 2008 was not to discuss issues, but to directly influence candidate elections through surreptitious means.

According to Unsworth, the group planned to spend $537,000 on targeted Montana elections this year. Here’s what they’re spending on. Would you call this advocating for issues or electoral work?

This flyer from Sinrud’s so-called “Western Tradition Partnership” suggests Sheila Hogan will stop that darling little princess from becoming a doc, because her Mommy and Daddy will be forced spend all their dough on the utility bill, instead of saving it for her college. I guess this is because Hogan might like to see some effort on renewable energy.

This “organization’s” address is 2020 Pennsylvania Ave N.W. #186, Washington D. C. 20006. Not exactly a grassroots local citizens group concerned about legislative races in Whitefish or Polson, or Jefferson County.