Tuesday, February 11, 2014

IA group puts $50,000 in dark money ads behind NE Gov. candidate who tried to outlaw LGBT protection ordinances

Update: Charlie Janssen has left the crowded GOP primary field of gubernatorial candidates, but uber-homophobe Nebraska AG Jon Bruning has just joined the pack, which includes Peter Ricketts, GOP scion of TD Ameritrade fortune, biggest contributor to McCoy's first state senate campaign, and brother of Laura Ricketts, gay supporter of Lambda Legal.

Beau McCoy
     In 2012, Nebraska State Senator Beau McCoy, a home-schooled, global warming denier, introduced LB912, a copy of a Tennessee law that negated Nashville's LGBT antidiscrimination ordinance. The proposed Nebraska legislation failed.
     Now, Robynn Tysver of the Omaha World-Herald reports that Iowa's ultra-right-wing American Future Fund is pouring $49,000 of dark money into Nebraska ads to advance McCoy's candidacy.
     American Future Fund has been around since 2007. In past years, it has been a major player in presidential politics, spending more than $25 million in 2012 in support of Republicans.
     While its individual donors do not have to be reported, the group has been linked by some to Charles and David Koch, billionaires who have spent millions in recent elections on television advertisements supporting Republicans and criticizing Democrats.
     Tysver noted that Open Secrets, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign financial reports, reported that two groups with ties to the Koch brothers donated about 92 percent of the American Future Fund's revenue in 2012, based on tax forms filed with the IRS.
     In the Nebraska television ad, the American Future Fund hails McCoy as one of Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman's “closest allies” in the Nebraska Legislature.
     Nick Ryan, founder of the American Future Fund and the Concordia Group, rails against a supposed conspiracy here between the Federal Elections Commission and the Internal Revenue Service against his dark money political organization, one he absurdly told Greta Von Susteren was a "grassroots" group.






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