Friday: Schubert Flint & Prop 8 Money Goes to Maine

(This started out as a reply comment in a recommended diary over at GOS by Bill in Portland, Maine, to somebody who said the Veto 1 sure looked like Prop 8, and it sort of took on a life of its own as I started putting in the links.)

The PR on “Yes on People’s Veto # 1” in Maine- It’s being run by Schubert Flint,  http://www.schubertpa.com/who_…  the exact same Sacramento- based Republican PR firm that ran the Prop 8 campaign here in CA last year, to drag Republicans across the finish line, with laundered tax free donation money.

This is just another job for people like this, altho they won’t put it up on their Schubert Flint website under the “past successes” category.

There is still LOTS of out of state money going east towards Maine-  as I have said in several other comments, it’s just not going to be obvious unless one knows where to look.

Let’s take a peek:

   This is the state of CA cal access page for the ProtectMarriage.com Yes On 8, A Project of CA Renewal, which was one of the major donor committees that was working on the bad side here in CA in 2008 to deny others their civil rights of freedom of marriage to their loved ones.  According to Protectmarriage.com Yes on 8’s financial summery, they’ve spent nearly 3/4 of a million dollars from January to June this year.

First, I’ve pulled up the expenditures they have been making between January 1 and June 30 2009 of this year, out of this old Prop 8 account:

http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/C…

Scroll down to the 12th expenditure made on January 9, 2009.

Payee: 1/19/2009   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints , office expenses,  $7,517.04

Yes, the Prop 8 people are paying the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for “office expenses.”

Now scroll up a bit, to more expenditures:

Payee:  Schubert Flint Public Affairs, Campaign Consultants,  for  January 28, February 5, March 3, April 8,  and June 10  of this year 2009, 5 payments, just over $56,000  total

$10,000

$10,000

$13,476

$11,415

$12,645

Schubert Flint, in addition to the substantial money they are being paid out of the groups working for the People’s Veto #1 in Maine,

as shown in this pdf download here for “standformarriagemaine.com,” from the state of mainecampaignfinance.com website

are scoring at least $10,000 a month this year, out of this ongoing CA Prop 8 account.  Add that to the over $30,000 that Schu- Fli picked up from  Stand for Marriage Maine, the Yes on Veto #1 group who is using the same creepy symbols and advertisements as the Prop 8 group,

just in the month of June 2009, and that’s a lot of money to us regular folk.

Now we’re going to look at this same Protectmarriage.com account, but at the contributions for the same election cycle this year, under the category of “Late and over $5000 donations”

You will note that these donations were made in late Oct of 2008, and one huge one on election day Nov 4, but they were not FILED until Feb of 2009.   It’s like leftover Halloween candy for them.

Look who the donor is, and what the donation is being used for

http://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Ca…

Name of Contributor:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT  84150,   for “amendment 1”  

10.2.2008      $8,325

10.6.2008      $6,875

10.7.2008      $1,119

10.8.2008      $2,781.89

10.9.2008      $5,505.62

10.10.2008    $6,338.93

10.15,2008    $2,913.94

10.24.2008    $2078.97

10.31.2008    $2,531.20  

   roughly $46,000 subtotal  +  $119 thousand, so this is about  $166,000  total from the JCLDS to the Protectmarriage.com Prop 8 account

11.4.2008  $119,311.87   was this election day? YES but it was Filed on 2/4/2009

and there is one $5000 donation from Larry Gardner of Dean Gardner Investments, St George, UT 84770, made on 10/2/8/08   but filed on 1/272009

And now we’ll look at the Regular Donations for the Protectmarriage.com Yes on 8 account for this year of 2009, sorted as to amount, but also scroll all the way down for a few more large donations, as the page is behaving a bit wonky:

http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/C…

And before you ask, yes, a lot of these donations are LDS related as the donors are members of LDS Church wards and listed as Bishops, even if they are listed here with a secular occupation, and they had donated earlier to the Prop 8 campaign before the election last November in CA.  There are also donations from other churches.

Other’s donations are equally interesting. There’s one $10,000 donation from the Vice Chair of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, a lawyer named Gregory Coleman who used to be a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The $1000 donation from James Fullmer Construction (who also donated to Prop 8 back in July of 2008 and Oct of 2008)  very likely could have come out of his tax exempt Private Foundation.  When I pulled up the IRS filing records for this (501)(c)(3) charity for 2008, I discovered that most of the income for this comes from his own contributions.  Under “grants paid” there was a “other miscellaneous” category of $14,900.  The IRS filing lists other “grants” to other anti gay marriage groups such as the Family Research Council.

The innocent looking $1000 on 2/16/2009, from Mrs. Cynthia Kenny, “homemaker,” of Granite Bay (a wealthy suburb of Sacramento near Folsom Lake)  is just the tip of the iceberg, or rather, the putting green on the Golf Course.  The Kenny family owns Golfland Family Fun Centers, based in Sunnyvale, CA, and Mrs. Kenny gave $25,100 to Prop 8 during the year 2008.  The other Kennys who manage the golf course fun centers in the chain donated at least $10,459 more.

Again, many of these donations, including the $25,000 from the owner of Los Almamitos Racecourse, Edward Allred (WTF, stop gay quarterhorses from marrying?!)

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2…

were made from January of this year up until June, and then they were logged in the July 29 Prop 8 Protectmarriage.com filing.

This shows that the donors, having already secured a temporary “victory” here in CA,  clearly were planning on continuing to strip the civil rights away from complete strangers wherever else that Protectmarriage.com felt that they could use the money.

From Jeff Flint of Schubert Flint, on Oct 7, 2009, in the San Francisco Chronicle, his diss of the No on 1 advocates:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…

“They may be responding faster, but I wouldn’t say smarter,” said Jeff Flint, whose firm helped create the Yes on 1 ads. “Their campaign still hasn’t answered the fundamental question of this campaign. There’s a lot more at stake for society when you’re restructuring marriage.”

“A lot of this stuff about advertising may mean something to political reporters and insiders,” said Flint, “but to a lot of Mainers dealing with this around their kitchen table, that doesn’t matter.”

We aren’t talking about “restructuring marriage.”  My nearly 3 decades of marriage (to the same person) didn’t get “restructured” at all by 18,000 other people hopping into the pot during their window of opportunity.  

We’re talking about tax evasion, campaign finance, donation limits, money laundering, sleazy public relations firms, the separation of church and state as stated by the Constitution establishing no State Religion, tax deductions, and civil rights, and the Republican Party’s bizarre obsession with sticking their noses into other people’s bedrooms.  And until this travesty of a disgusting practice stops, this IS going to be a topic around my kitchen table.  The fundamental question?  How much longer is this going to go on, before the tax evasion scam disguised as a “morality” play  is no longer workable?