An e-mail sent to me by The Center for Media and Democracy
September 6, 2013
CONTACT: Nikolina Lazic,
nikolina@prwatch.org
Scott Walker Backs Down, Rescinds $500,000 Grant
Last week, CMD reported that a small GOP lobby shop tied to the Tea
Party and David Koch's Americans for Prosperity group was awarded a
$500,000 grant in a backdoor, sweetheart deal cooked up by ALEC
leadership in the State Legislature and sanctioned by the Walker
administration.
The United Sportsmen of Wisconsin Foundation was the only applicant
for a newly-created grant to promote hunting, fishing, and trapping in
the state, despite the organization having no record in outdoors
training. The organization does have a record of lobbying on extreme gun
measures, controversial mines, and other GOP priorities. The
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported that the grant was slipped into the budget bill by outgoing
Majority Leader Scott Suder with terms that excluded most sporting
groups in the state. The grant was not properly advertised, conveniently
leaving United Sportsmen as the sole applicant.
CMD documented
Suder’s ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council and the
extensive ties United Sportsmen staff had to the Kochs and the Tea
Party, plus their history of partisan electoral politics in the state.
Listed as “educators” on the grant were Americans for Prosperity's Luke
Hilgemann, Sauk County Tea Party leader John Keegan, and Annette Olson,
Americans for Prosperity "Activist of the Year" for 2012. CMD uncovered
that the web domain for the group was registered by an Americans for
Prosperity-Wisconsin staffer named John Connors.
We sent out an alert prompting almost 1,000 Wisconsinites to contact
the committee overnight. The United Sportsmen representative couldn’t be
bothered to show up at last week’s committee hearing (joining by phone)
and couldn’t answer basic questions, prompting one committee member to
say that the "whole deal just doesn't smell right.” One Wisconsin Now
uncovered a loophole in the bill regarding the group's tax status and
later United Sportsmen apologized for misleading legislators into
thinking it was a tax-exempt charity.
Thanks to these efforts and yours, Scott Walker is backing down and
rescinding the grant, showing that even in the land of the shameless,
the people can sometimes win.
