Tea Party Patriots President Jenny Beth Martin really wants human-turtle hybrid Mitch McConnell out of office! In face, she wants him gone so badly that last month, Martin said the group would be “putting our money where our mouth is.” Apparently, the group’s “mouth” is Martin’s bank account, given that the super PAC has spent just $56,000 in support of McConnell challenger Matt Bevin–less than half of what Martin has been paid in consulting fees since July.
The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund has blown nearly $ 2 million on fundraising, polling, and consulting fees in the first three months of this year, but barely anything on the candidates it is supporting–a practice that seems to be the norm amongst Tea Party super PACs.
The Washington Post found that many of the top Tea Party groups have spent a tiny amount on candidates when compared to spending–you know, like consultants’ salaries and other wasteful spending.
How much is actually being spent on candidates? Out of $37.5 million raised by the PACs associated with six major Tea Party groups, less than $7 million has actually been spent helping candidates, according to the WaPo analysis, which was based on data provided by the Sunlight Foundation.
Approximately half of the money raised has gone to fundraising efforts and into the pockets of Tea Party leaders and their family members in the form of “consulting fees,” airfare, retirement plans, and even interior decorating.
Face it, Tea Party–your “movement” has gone corporate. Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, the Madison Project, and others are doling out six-figure salaries to leaders while spending less than 5% of the hard-earned money you donated on election-related activities this election cycle.
Some are better than other. Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks have spent about 40% of their money on candidate support such as ads and yard signs, but that’s still less than half.
This minimal spending on candidates is in contrast to the 2012 election cycle, in which super PACs, on average, had spent about 64% on actually helping people get elected, according to FEC data.
Of course, Tea Party leaders scrambled to justify the selfish squandering of money. “I don’t have Adelson money,” said Dan Backer, a campaign finance lawyer in Alexandria, VA and treasurer of the Tea Party Leadership Fund. “I have grass-roots money. Grass-roots money is a lot harder and more expensive to raise.”
The Tea Party Leadership fund has wastefully spent about $250,000 to a total of eight consulting firms. The Madison Project has instituted a $50,000 retirement plan for its staff. The Senate conservatives fund tossed over $52,000 to a luxury interior design firm to paint and decorate its Capitol Hill townhouse office–all while railing against “wasteful spending” in the government.
Adam Brandon, FreedomWorks’ executive vice president, said that much of the group’s sweet, sweet, super PAC lucre goes toward training activists to make phone calls (something that most telemarketing call centers can accomplish in a few days with minimal training expenditures) and walk door-to-door. Those things, he says, are not classified as being campaign-related but pay off politically in the end. He said that actually running ads would “would be a complete waste of our money.”
Tea Party Patriots spokesman Kevin Broughton said that the super PAC had to spend time “marshaling resources” and “plans” to be more active in the summer and fall. We’re sure they will be, now that this information has come to light.
Chairwoman Jenny Beth Martin oversees all spending, and has “marshaled” About $15,000 a month into her own bank account–roughly $120,000 since July while drawing a lucrative $272,000 salary as President of the Tea Party Patriots’ nonprofit arm, according to the group’s most recent tax filing. In total Martin, who filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and used to clean homes to bring in extra money, will draw more than $450,000 in salary his year–who says the Tea Party can not be a life-changing experience?
Richard Norman, another Tea Party Patriots official, is paid $15,000 a month to oversee fundraising for the nonprofit and superPAC–and the group has doled out at least $2.7 million to direct mail firms run by Norman since June 2012 to solicit the funds that pay his and Martin’s salaries–a move that surely further lines his pockets.
Tea Party Patriots is not the only group in the practice of driving business to firms owned by its higher-ups. The Senate Conservatives Fund has paid a company owned by its Executive Director Matt Hoskins $288,000 this election cycle. Hoskins would not comment on that (of course), but says the group “plans” to spend 70% of its funds on candidates in this year’s midterms.
But wait–there’s more! Tea Party Express, run by Republican consultant Sal Russo, had paid Russo’s firm $2.75 million since the beginning of 2013 while spending just $45,000 on candidates and less than $162,000 on ads and bus tours supporting them. He claims that the astronomical figure is misleading because most of the payments to his firm were reimbursements for the cost of staffing the bus tours and rallies the group holds across the country. “Everything goes on our credit card,” he said. “Sometimes there’s up to 45 people that we’ve got to feed and house.”
Unlike nonprofits, superPACS face very few limitations on how they spend their money, allowing Tea Party groups to abuse those funds for personal gain. In fact, while nonprofits are run by a board of directors, PACs are often run by a single consultant.
“There’s a big loophole,” said Tony Herman, a Washington campaign finance lawyer who recently served as general counsel to the FEC. “It really is sort of the wild, wild West.”
These groups are blowing their money on frivolous pursuits all while begging for donors to give as much as they can. The Tea Party Citizens Fund begs supporters to “make the most generous contribution possible” to help fund “the ads, the get-out-the-vote campaigns, the research and the volunteer training sessions we need to take the fight to the big-spending incumbents!” However, as we mentioned, the group has blown $2 million on efforts that do not support candidates in the least.
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