Tue 5 Dec 2006
Grassroots Arizona PAC 40% funded by Democrat Donors.
Posted by Fredo under Political Parties[13] Comments
Greg Wendt and Lisa Wendt of San Francisco, CA (generous benefactors of the Democrat Party and its candidates) gave over 40% of the funds for Grassroots Arizona; a PAC set up to target the Republican chairman of legislative district 11. The details are chronicled below.
On August 10, 2006 a Candidate Support or Opposition Committee called Grassroots Arizona PAC was registered with the Arizona Secretary of States office. Anne Lynch is listed as the chairman and Jane Lynch as the treasurer.
The first two donations were made by Jane Lynch and Paul Hickman. Since Jane is the treasurer her name is not a big surprise. It is our understanding that Paul Hickman is Chief of Staff for U.S. Senator John McCain. That is interesting.
The purpose of the PAC seems to have been to get PC’s elected in LD 11 that would support someone besides Rob Haney as chairman. The PAC also mailed out a letter to LD 11 PC’s in support of Fife Symington for chairman. The letter was signed by Jon Kyl, John Shadegg, Jeff Flake, Rick Renzi, and several other Republicans from Arizona.
Besides the seed money put in by Lynch and Hickman several other people made donations. Most of them seem to be well-connected Republican’s from the Phoenix area. In all the PAC raised $16,400 in direct contributions. Up to this point it would look like several Republican insiders conspired to suppress Ron Haney and his group of conservative PC’s in LD 11. It is regrettable that it came to this but a case can be made that it should not be a surprise that McCain and the party establishment wanted to oust Haney. Rob has not been very supportive of McCain.
There were two names on the PAC donation list that we could not trace right away, Gregory Wendt and Lisa Wendt. At first we were thrown off by the last name Wendt, which has some meaning in Phoenix. But it turns out that Gregory (or Greg) and Lisa are not from Phoenix. The tip-off was Lisa’s employer listed on the disclosure forms, Hambrecht. That is not a common name and it led us right to WR Hambrecht + Co, a financial service firm based in San Francisco, CA.
Once we got to California it all opened up. Besides donating $3,400 each to the Grassroots Arizona PAC (over 40% of the PAC funding), Greg and Lisa have been very generous to Democrats. For Greg see this link. For Lisa see the following link here. Further details can be found by searching the Federal Election Commission’s web site. Greg’s has donated to such people as Ron Wyden, Max Cleland, Barack Obama, Diane Feinstein, and Claire McCaskill, among many other Democrats. So how does a big time Democrat donor from San Francisco end up funding a PAC set up to target a legislative district chairman in North-Central Phoenix? Perhaps the answer comes from one of the very few Republicans that Mr. Wendt has supported, John McCain. Greg donated several thousand to McCain in 2003. The link can further be seen by checking the donations of Mrs. Lisa Wendt. She has been very generous to many of the same politicians as Greg, including McCain. She also gave $5,000 to Straight Talk America on 8-1-05 and another $5,000 on 3-31-06. This is all public record available on the FEC site, including her employer W.R. Hambrecht. The amazing part is not that they made a donation but that they even found out about the Grassroots Arizona PAC. It looks like someone could not find enough people from inside his party to neutralize one of their own so he had to turn to Democrats for the rest of the money.
Many people claiming to be loyal Republicans have objected to Rob Haney’s actions. None of these people cared to disclose that several “loyal Republicans” conspired with a PAC heavily funded by two Democrat donors from out of state. I have a very simple questions for Senator Kyl, when did you know that the letter you were signing to oust a hard-working district chairman was funded by Democrat donors? Will this be standard procedure from now on, to conspire with national Democrat supporters to silence the Republican base?
Monday 12-4-06, 10:35 pm
December 5th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Interesting.
How low can McCain and his freinds go?
December 5th, 2006 at 6:36 am
Kinda reminds me of the first time I saw Arizona Right to Life endorsing pro-life Democrats.
December 5th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Actually it was Arizona Right to Life Political Action Committee (AZLIFEPAC). AZLIFEPAC’s vision was to see an election cycle in which every candidate was pro-life. Sorta the opposite of Planned Parenthood and NARAL who would like to see every candidate running be a pro-abortion candidate.
December 5th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
Excellent work guys!
December 5th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Great work. It only supports what we already knew, that is that John RINO McCain has a secret agenda that he does not discuss with conservtive republicans.
December 5th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
It appears that McCain and his bunch will stop at nothing! We cannot let our guard down for one moment. Just like the terrorists, they are always plotting and planning.
December 6th, 2006 at 5:56 am
Even assuming the PAC’s only goal (ahem) was to help McCain in D11, that figure seems pretty low for what was apparently at stake. Kyl just spent at least $11.5M to keep his senate seat, so why would another senator with POTUS ambitions balk at spending a little more about .001% of that, or $16k, to get his own district’s endorsement?
I realize some people really hate McCain, but it’s like road rage: overwhelming and impossible to justify.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
It’s all about quashing any opposition to McCain in Arizona. Putting a machine in place to politically knock off any homestate opposition would clear the way for his POTUS run while avoiding any embarassment from within his own GOP ranks.
December 6th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Sorry Petrol, but in Arizona that amount of money is truly significant, especially for something as insignificant as a Legislative District Chairman’s election. There are candidates for the State Legislature who run their entire general election on $17,000. Frankly, while the creation of a PAC just to screw with a district chair is jaw-dropping enough, the fact that they spent so much money, including using professional campaign staff, and still couldn’t beat a guy with no money, is probably more shocking.
My guess is that the donors had no idea what their money was for. They only knew that McCain was asking for it, so they sent it. That is why who they are and what party they are becomes so interesting…
December 7th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
McCain has lost ground after his support of the amnisty bill. I hope I have someone to vote for in 2008.
December 8th, 2006 at 3:46 am
Now I know more of the story of the campaigning against me for election as a Precinct Committeeman in the Madison Heights district. What an honor it is to be opposed by Grassroots Arizona! Their efforts failed in my case too!
April 24th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
[...] If the name doesn’t ring a bell, you might want to jog your memory with this informative Sonoran Alliance post. [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
WOW! How misinformed one can be by expecting The Republic newspaper to inform you. Excellent coverage Sonoran Alliance. I don’t know what awards they give for blogs but, you just earned first place in my heart. Thank you for bothering to inform the public.