|
 All North Dakotans know Republican super-villain Karl Rove was in our state recently. Rove was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame in Minot by North Dakota's top cop, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem (R), an old friend of Rove's. I'm convinced Stenehjem and Rove had an interesting secret meeting at which they conspired about how best to attack North Dakota's congressional delegation. Really? Yeah, really.
I got the first robo call I've gotten in a long time last week on Black Friday. It kind of took me by surprise. North Dakota has a law banning robo-calls (Ch. 51-28, NDCC), so this type of call is... well... uncommon. Because they're illegal. The first thing that went through my mind when the robot on the other end started speaking was, "Didn't I just read something about robo-calls in North Dakota?" Then I got distracted by something shiney and forgot about it. A full-page ad was published in the right-leaning newspaper, the Bismarck Tribune, also on Black Friday (click here to see it ). It's a preemptive hit piece intended to (a) buy (or, more accurately, make a rent payment for) influence at the Tribune for anti-health-reform corporate interests, and (b) distract North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad from participating in helping to fix our broken health insurance system. The ad is paid for by a front group you've never heard of; the "American Future Fund." I hadn't ever heard of the "American Future Fund" either, so I started poking around, trying to see if I could figure out who the American Future Fund is. Here's some of what I found about the American Future Fund: Chris Cillizza has called [the American Future Fund] "the most likely conduit for soft-money donations to be spent on some of the most hotly contested Senate races this fall." It's staffed by a number of premium GOP operatives, including Mitt Romney Iowa specialists and George W. Bush's personal pollster. And there's evidence that the organization was originally put together by Karl Rove himself. The New Republic (links removed)
And this... Last week, Peter Stone in the National Journal confirmed that Karl Rove is actively involved in organizing independent political groups. According to Stone, "One new group being cobbled together includes old associates of Rove from the lobbying and communications firm DCI Group, including Tom Synhorst." My research uncovered a number of links between American Future Fund, the DCI Group and former Iowa congressman, Jim Nussle. Nussle was appointed Executive Director of the Office of Managment and Budget in September 2007 after a failed gubernatorial bid in 2006 and a brief stint as a consultant to Rudy Giuliani's campaign in early 2007. TPMCafe.com (links removed)
There seem to be a number of people trying to figure out who this "American Future Fund" really is, but it does seem to have ties to Karl Rove and his people. AFF recently (yesterday) started running attacks ads in Iowa, going after Democratic Governor Chet Culver. AFF is a bit of a moving target, so it's kind of hard to figure out. Nobody has cracked the nut yet, but there are some things one can glean from the record about this shadowy group. First, it was originally created in 2007 in Iowa by an employee of the the Virginia-based "Holtzman Vogel" law firm, Jessica Young (click here for the articles of incorporation). She listed her address as "98 Alexandria Pike" in Warrenton, Virginia; then the address of the Holtzman Vogel. Vogel also appears to have a hand in AFF: Torchinsky, a former Bush campaign lawyer, works for the law firm run by Vogel and his wife, Virginia State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel. Holtzman Vogel's own political career may owe something to similarly hardball tactics. A former RNC counsel herself, she faced a tight primary in her Virginia Senate race, but prevailed after her opponent, Mike Tate, was indicted for campaign finance irregularities. The person who brought the complaint to the attention of authorities was Holtzman Vogel's baby-sitter, and the local prosecutor who initially handled it was a Holtzman Vogel supporter. The charges against Tate were eventually dropped. As for AFF itself, the group already has earned a reputation for trafficking in vicious and misleading shots against Democrats. A typical recent ad alleged that the government "planned to give flu shots to detainees at Guantanamo." It also has worked closely with Dick Armey's FreedomWorks to help promote the Tea Party rallies against health-care reform. Republican heavy-hitters Jan Van Lohuizen, Ed Tobin, Ben Ginsberg are all reportedly involved with the group. Shadowy GOP-Linked Group Plans Barrage Of 2010 Robo-Calls (TalkingPointsMemo.com) (links removed) (and click here)
Did you get that?!? This Holtzman Vogel apparently won an election when her babysitter filed a politically-motivated and apparently false criminal charge against her opponent, which was then dismissed by a judge. If that doesn't have the stink of Karl Rove on it, I don't know what does. Over the weekend I was reminded of the robo-call thought I'd briefly had on Friday, so I Googled "robo call" and "north dakota." This story from Wednesday of last week came up: BISMARCK, N.D. — North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is challenging an advocacy group's claim that it should be able to make pre-recorded phone calls in the state. North Dakota law bans "robo-calls" unless they are introduced by a live operator. A group called American Future Fund Political Action is asking the Federal Election Commission to override the law. The group supports conservative political causes. It contends that federal election campaign law allows the pre-recorded calls, and that federal law on telemarketing should trump North Dakota's restrictions. Fargo Forum (emphasis added)
I love how the Associated Press (via the Fargo Forum) characterizes AFF as being "an advocacy group." Yep. It's just your regular old advocacy group. It wasn't embroiled in a legal battle over questionable campaign advertising against Al Franken in Minnesota last year. It hadn't -- by Wednesday of last week -- already spent thousands of dollars on big full-page ads in North Dakota's newspapers. It doesn't have an interesting history in Iowa. AFF doesn't suspiciously claim to be a multi-million dollar non-profit that, according to its 990 form, pays its key people exactly nothing ($0) in salaries. It wasn't set up as a front group by the RNC's lawyers for Karl Rove. No investigative journalism needed here, kids. These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along. If you read Stenehjem's resistance to the AFF effort to void the North Dakota anti-robo-call law, you might wonder whether Stenehjem first got editorial input from Rove himself. Some might argue this is just "laying the groundwork" for future action by the AFF. You have to wonder if Rove has offered Stenehjem another big pile of corporate influence money laundered through the Republican State Leadership Committee. These would all be good questions, but it's also heartwarming that Stenehjem tips his hat to his old friend by citing the case of Karl Rove & Company v. Thornburgh, 39 F.3d 1273 (5th Cir. 1994), in his "resistence" letter to the F.E.C. It probably gave Rove a warm fuzzy feeling in the big empty place in Rove's chest where most people have their heart. This "American Future Fund" is working awfully hard and spending a lot of money to make an impact here in North Dakota all of a sudden. They probably paid about four thousand dollars to the Bismarck Tribune for a full-page, Black Friday anti-Kent-Conrad ad -- in a year when it makes no sense to spend money on anti-Kent-Conrad ads (i.e. he's not running for anything any time soon) -- and they're fighting to get the right for corporations to do political attack robo-calls in North Dakota. And they seem to have all these connections to evil Republican mastermind Karl Rove, who recently met with Wayne Stenehjem up in Minot. It doesn't take a tin-foil hat to wonder whether these AFF campaigns -- and, perhaps, wasting tax dollars by going after an innocent blog that gets too close to the truth -- were subjects of discussion between Stenehjem and Rove when the old friends met privately in Minot recently. Whatever it is they are doing, you have to wonder what all these right-wing hoodlums are up to here in North Dakota. Stay tuned.
 |
Show/hide comments
Show/hide comment form
