League of Conservation voters. International Brotherhood of Teamsters. MoveOn. The Democrat’s House Majority PAC. AFSCME. Sounds like a list of the people who were donating money to support RIck Weiland’s campaign, doesn’t it? And they did. But they also spent over $100,000 to support another person running. The self-anointed ‘most conservative’ candidate in South Dakota’s race for US Senate, Gordon Howie.
This past year, a PAC was formed to support the candidacy of Gordon Howie, ran by Howie confederate Gary Coe, called “Many True Conservatives.” And if you look at their expenditures, in the FEC Report below, Many True Conservatives spent nearly every dime to promote the candidacy of Gordon Kenneth Howie.
Many True Conservatives 2014 4q FEC
Where did this PAC get their money? Well, if you look at the report, they took in nearly all of their money (Over $108,000 total) from a single source – Every Voice Action.
Don’t remember them? They came in late in the game, and were reported on briefly by David Montgomery at the Argus Leader. In reference to their support of Rick Weiland:
Every Voice Action received $1.58 million through Sept. 30. It’s received another $665,000 in the past two weeks.
Who are these donors? The biggest ones are other groups.
For example, the better-funded Mayday PAC gave $458,000 to its comrade in the fight against Mike Rounds.
Another group, “Friends of Democracy IE,” was even more generous. It gave $1.15 million to Every Voice. Donnelly is the treasurer of Friends of Democracy, another Super PAC founded “to end Super PACs.” Hopping over to Friends of Democracy’s FEC page, we can see it’s been primarily funded by a famous name: Soros.
In particular, it’s been given most of its money by Jonathan Soros, son of the famous financier (and liberal donor) George Soros. This election cycle, Jonathan Soros gave Friends of Democracy $1.5 million. George Soros gave it another $250,000; other George Soros children Andrea Soros and Alex Soros gave $250,000 and $375,000. It also got a lot of money from Napster founder and Facebook investor Sean Parker ($245,000), Google engineer Matt Cutts ($285,000), Kathleen McGrath of Encino, Calif. ($100,000), and John Pritzker of the Pritzker family.
Back to Every Voice Action. It’s also received $100,000 from CWA Working Voices, the independent expenditure arm of the Communication Workers of America; $100,000 from former Stride Rite president Arnold Hiatt; $50,000 from Cutts; $50,000 from private equity billionaire Jerome Kohlberg; and $50,000 from early Google employee David DesJardins. Other donors gave it less than $50,000; I’ll list them all at the bottom.
It also got an in-kind donation of $11,427.42 from the House Majority PAC, a PAC devoted to helping House Democrats. That was listed as being shared polling costs in districts where Every Voice Action is backing Democratic congressional candidates.
And if you’re interested in seeing where this liberal Democratic PAC spent their money, you can read at least one of the Every Voice Action FEC reports here. And I’d draw your particular attention to pages 24, 25, etc., where it says “Many True Conservatives:”
What makes this even more bizarre is the rhetoric that came from Coe in his support of Howie:
South Dakota is a pivotal state in the US Senate race due to a need to defeat the liberal agenda. We must topple the Harry Reid empire before he totally destroys all our Judeo-Christian values and assists President Obama in plunging our nation into total financial ruin.
There is only one true conservative in the South Dakota Senate race. Gordon Howie, running as an independent, a man of no compromise, is that man. Gordon has continued to work for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, high moral values and has been a leader for many years in the fight to stop killing the unborn.
and..
The Democrat Rick Weiland is very liberal and totally aligned with the Obama-Reid ideology. Larry Pressler, a one time liberal republican, based on his record and press releases, is now an Obama/Obamacare endorsing socialist.
Read that note from Gary Coe here at the Gordon Howie for Senate web site.
So, Gordon Howie and Gary Coe were deathly concerned about Liberals. Yet Coe’s “Many True Conservatives” were all about sucking up as much cash as they could collect from the liberal left. Somehow Gary Coe had no problem soliciting and spending Soros family money. And Union Money. And money from a PAC devoted to elect House Democrats.
All to get Gordon Howie elected.
Kind of makes you wonder who the true conservatives are. Because we sure know who they aren’t.
Gordon is a fraud. No wonder he was hugging Weiland at every turn.
That’s a good point. I’d forgotten about their joint appearance. No wonder!
Even worse- many true conservatives did not file fec reports identifying their donors prior to the election- a major fec violation.
So we have someone who consistently promotes conservative principles and adamantly calls for their implementation, who takes liberal money from liberal coffers and spends it to promote conservative values, and to expose a liberal masquerading as a conservative who expanded government, embraced tax increases, embraced to amnesty, and refused to fight Obamacare? Sure, that sounds like a real liberal to me.
Yeah keep on telling yourself that. If you do it enough times, you might actually succeeded in convincing yourself to be the only person who would believe it.
Gordon’s friend and ally took liberal democrat money to beat the Republican in the race. It’s in black and white on the page, yet you try to make excuses for it.
Gordon and his RINO friends were no more than useful idiots for the Dems.
It’s only okay when moderates take money from liberals to push liberal agendas.
anonymous 10:33 there is no ocean of whitewash with which you can freshen the outside of this cup of lies. to be a tool of the soros family in maintaining the grip he had on the senate until now is unexcusable in every single circle of republicanism and conservatism. period dot bingo.
inexcusable too.
Anon, let us know when Gordon wins the support of Republicans. Because right now it looks like his cronies were only able to raise money from Unions and liberal PACs.
That should tell you something right there.
Wow!!! Good research and find, Pat! These are the tidbits that rarely get uncovered. However, it’s not surprising. Guy pal Nelson took the stage with Weiland also. I thought Howie was a notch above Nelson though when it came to getting money (no matter where it came from) and publicity but apparently not.
“All to get Gordon Howie elected.” Assuming this was sarcastic as clearly, Weiland used Howie behind the scenes as much as he used Nelson front and center. They were just trying to pull votes. I guess Weiland knew Nelson was dumb enough to fall for his antics, whereas Howie wasn’t as much but maybe he was just so desperate, he didn’t know who was behind the money at that point. I’m skeptic about the dates though. That’s alot of money that late in the game to be throwing at Howie when he was already a non-factor in late October. Do the late October dates listed mean that’s when they contributed or reported? I could totally see them trying this in August/early September but shocking if the funds actually went in late October. Waste of $$$ either way.
Nelson pulled as many votes as RINO Larry Rhoden who was the former GOP House Majority Leader AND former 22 year liberal Democrat turned Republican to get elected. Pretty good for the conservative Republican all the RINOs love to hate.
Odd to me that you take backhand at Rhoden when he isn’t even mentioned in the comment above or any at all in this post. Hmmm. Seems I just made a discovery of my own’ you gave yourself away. For shame. True RINO is who??? I now know some other accusations to be true; undoubtedly. We’ll see if you post the rest.
Most voters (like 95+) don’t know who the Leaders in Pierre are, let alone who their own Reps are. Rhoden did NO campaigning, Nelson went all out, letters across the state with lies, (good for him).
Gotta have a weasel in every crowd. Never thought it’d be you. 🙁
I had a lot of respect for Nelson once upon a time but since then don’t have hardly any.
Fact!!!! Nelson did not pull as many votes as Rhoden but to that crowd facts don’t really matter .
There is only one “Third Place Stace” and only one slice of humble pie.
Rhoden might have severely underperformed as a candidate. He might have beat Nelson by 1% but Rhoden still shined because he did everyone else a favor by showing that a guy who ran a bad campaign but treated people with respect was a more proven vote getter than a guy who ran around trashing everyone at every turn.
At the end of it Rhoden won a lot of people’s respect and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him running for Congress or Governor in the future and earning a lot more support.
Rhoden for Governor sounds pretty nice.
Amen to that!
Basically Nelson’s efforts turned into fewer votes than a guy who did almost nothing with signs, t-shirts and pens.
Gordon Howie is a total disgrace. What happened to him? He has totally sold out and is campaigning for satan these days.
Are you calling Soros the devil?!?!?!
You beat me to it. . .
The person who shamelessly claims to be “the One” or “the True” or “the Best” is always the one with a mask on. Always.
Why? No creature is ever the epitome. It like a poker-tell that screams “Look under the mask.”
All I really know about Howie is the difference between the size of the West River TEA party before he announced his run for governor, and the size of the TEA party after he announced. It was like a bomb had been set off.
Did it really lose steam and/or get smaller?
in fact yes, in terms of attendance of public rallies. it was measurable. it reverted from a more wide spectrum public demonstration to a mostly far right group in a fairly short time. though to be fair, movements like this can’t sustain greater size once the public anger tide subsides, it did seem the howie announcement was a turning point in the downsizing that did occur. i don’t think anyone tracked the actual numbers meeting to meeting, the observation is a general observation.
it could be argued that core group of tea party people were always there at the start, and never left despite the political shifts of the howie announcement, and the split of the rapid city group; this core group was much smaller than the large size groups who attended the initial rallies in the first year. two significant gatherings afterward in rapid city involved celebrity appearances by talk host glenn beck and rock star ted nugent.
given the outcome of the republican primary and the general election last year, whatever sway the in-state tea party held in 2009 has pretty much evaporated and i don’t think the opposite could be argued.
if in fact annual membership lists exist which prove the shrinkage didn’t occur, then there is no doubt that most tea party members voted rounds in the general.
I just went to a few meetings around that time. I might be wrong.
Governor Rhoden
Yes.
Mr Rhoden would make a swell Governor. What say you, Rhoden Rhangers?
Grudz I don’t think the guy with the stubby arms nor the guy with skinny arms would like to see Rhoden Rhangers take over Pierre or the Governors office
Nobody’s saying that Howie is a liberal. This is the same game the left played with Paul Broun in Georgia. The idea was for the left to pump money into a candidate who had absolutely zero chance of actually winning the general in the hopes that they get nominated or at least draw enough votes away from the more mainstream Republican so that a candidate they can beat wins the nomination.
They did the same thing in Missouri in 2012. Aiken got about $3 million from Democrats dumped into his primary campaign in the hopes that he would win the nomination — which he did. Liberal cash also went into the Sharron Angle campaign and in ads for her in the 2010 Republican primary.
This is an old game by Democrats. Pump cash into the campaign of the candidate that you think you have the best chance of beating.
i believe people were calling howie a tool. he’s not liberal at all.
National Tea Party Objectives= South Dakota Actual Governance.
South Dakota Faux Tea Party= Looney Bin Salon
socialists in our country seem to hold a prime presumption that inside each american is a budding communist waiting to be freed from the oppression that the current u-s places on them. it’s the only way to be intellectually honest in wanting to force a better oppression on them, to think that they are begging to be freed by your oligarch aspirations. the far right seems to have an equal and opposite presumption, that inside each oppressed american is a budding constitutionalist, yearning to live free or die by returning to some idealized past more-free american dream. it’s the way to rationalize your losses while you constantly oppress yourself and remove yourself from political relevance as you wait for the buried “will” of the people to emerge, to no avail. the actual truth is that the u-s is a great country every day, and a system which has grown to balance good social progress with protection of individual liberties is alive and well and waiting for everyone to share in its governance with less malice and more charity. there’s a point in each of us where we have to get over ourselves.
I wouldn’t make too much of it. I don’t think it has any effect on Mr. Howie’s views – or those of these liberal PACs. They simply seem to have thought it worth their while to put some money into his campaign in hopes of drawing off conservative support from Rounds – dividing their opposition in hopes Weiland could come up between. They surely never thought Howie had a chance of actually winning.
That Howie took the money shouldn’t be a big shock, either. If George Soros wants to give me money for advocating views he opposes, that’s his problem.
It does show that these folks really didn’t know just how small a clique it is that Howie appeals to, but that, too, isn’t a real surprise. The Democrats who live in this state don’t seem to understand the electorate here – how could we expect their fat cats in other states to do so?
well said.
I’m so glad that all the moderates won election by claiming to be conservatives. They protected SD from the unreasonable limited government and tax cutting mentality of conservatives.
Time to turn our attention back to the unRepublican tax increase proposals at hand.
mike rounds won by being the only demonstrable top-tier candidate in his race and voters knew it. many republicans around the state won because there was no democrat opponent (so i guess that means they out-conservative’d their conservative primary opponent. how does that happen?) compared to the screwy government-expansion ideas that democrats come forward with every year, the most left-ward republican comes off as a tightwad in this state. despite every uber-conservative claim of moral and fiscal superiority the ubers keep getting shoved to the curb. anon 4:44 how does this keep happening if you’re right?
In my opinion, all that said they were conservative, they are. There are different levels of being conservative but all that had experience in the primary (Rounds, Rhoden & Nelson) are all conservative – varying degrees with only one saying he was THE most but unfortunately, his record didn’t match it despite his selected view. And also, who didn’t even vote in SD when he returned until he ran.
*facepalm* This looks ridiculously bad for Howie. He should have taken the money and ran. Use it on a winning campaign for conservative values later on. One winnable issue or race at a time man. He could have turned it into something good but blew it fighting someone arguably more conservative than Thune that he didn’t stand a chance winning against. Very surprised at the fact he actually got money from that group and disappointed in how it was used.
it’s clear the howie campaign intended to use it all on the senate race and do his best to pull votes from rounds. what’s funny is all the people who supported his effort by giving money and / or time and effort of their own to help.