Republican 419 Schemes, Cont'd

It's pretty hilarious that Michelle Malkin's secret weapon, the candidate who was going to stick it to that traitor and coward Jack Murtha, is one of the useful idiots propping up BMW Direct's Republican thievery project:

Lt. Col. William Russell is a clean-cut Army veteran who served in Iraq, the Gulf War and at the Pentagon on 9/11, according to a campaign Web site.

Malkin claims there's been a "great media wall of silence around Russell's upstart campaign." OK, let's break that silence and take a close look.

In the most recent quarter Russell raised $669,534, almost all from out-of-state donors who presumably are on BMW Direct's list of self-styled conservatives with a good track record of responding to direct-mail fundraising.

At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).

The only expenses that appear to be spent on an actual campaign totaled about $20,000 for Web site design, a low-budget video and a campaign consultant based in Pennsylvania rather than Washington.

He reports having $269,953 in cash on hand. But he also reports debts totaling $242,521 -- almost all for direct mail expenses to BMW Direct and its vendors.

So that leaves him only about $27,431 ahead -- not much for a guy who's raised a total of nearly $1 million this election cycle.

Hilarious. Republicans really do treat their supporters like complete suckers. And they come back over and over again. La Malkin has responded to this with crickets, so far. Wonder if she got any BMW Direct kickbacks for talking up one of their "heroes"?

No Fair, They're Delegitimizing Illegitimate Fundraising!

I actually kind of like The Next Right, at times a serious attempt to reconcile the conservative movement with its past and put it on a path to the future. But they're doing themselves a disservice with all the squealing about a recent Talking Points Memo exposé on BMW Direct, a direct-mail firm that appears to exist to bilk donators out of money and stick it in their pocket instead of to the candidates they tout. Their claim is that liberal bloggers don't know anything about direct mail, and that it costs a lot of money in start-up to find donors, called "prospecting" in the jargon.

The problem here is that the candidates in question raised lots of money, sometimes over a number of cycles, and even after solidifying a donor base, the money never reached their campaigns and instead was re-routed to BMW Direct. And the proof comes from talking to some of those candidates.

Dr. Ada Fisher doesn't have much good to say about BMW Direct, the Washington political firm that raised money on behalf of her 2006 bid for a North Carolina House seat.

"They sort of -- what shall I say? -- screwed me," Fisher said in a recent interview.

BMW Direct raised more than $400,000 for Fisher during the last election cycle, but only about $30,000 made it back to her to use in her campaign against U.S. Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC). Sound familiar?

Fisher complained that she never understood where the money raised on her behalf was going. She did not know that many key vendors used by BMW Direct were owned or operated by BMW staffers.

"They make it seem like each of these people is a private entity. But as you listen more and more and you get smarter, you realize they all work together," Fisher said.

BMW's excuse on this is that Fisher was a "special case". I'm sure she was very special for the company's balance sheet, but otherwise, not so much.

The Next Right can whine all they want about it, but it'd be nice if they faced up to the fact that their evangelizing for direct mail is enabling thieves. It doesn't mean that all direct mail is thievery, but BMW Direct is a pretty clear-cut case.

Checking The Wheels On The BMW (Direct)

TPM Muckraker and the new investigative group Pro Publica have their meathooks in this story about BMW Direct, a conservative fundraising groups that raises loads of cash all over the country for obscure clients and then taking a substantial cut of that money for themselves, essentially bilking contributors out of millions. Here's what we know so far:

• This wasn't limited to candidates, but for dummy PACs like the "Freedom's Defense Fund" which don't appear to actually exist.

• Apparently there's a two-tiered model for how BMW raises money for candidates. Sometimes they fund legitimate ones, like Reps. Geoff Davis and Virgil Goode, but BMW appears to take a lot less money out of their hauls for direct mail services. Then there are the nobody candidates like Deborah Travis Honeycutt, and almost all of her money goes into BMW's pocket. In the case of the obscure candidates, BMW appears to be significantly involved with their campaigns, with members of the organization serving as campaign Treausrers. It seems to me that the established Congressmen are the bait that enables BMW to hook the smaller fish.

• Pro Publica did some more searching. This is really sad:

Characteristic of BMW Direct's fundraising campaigns, more than 80 percent of the contributions came from out of the state and most donors disclosed their occupation as "retired," according to CQ Money Line. Among them was a 91 year-old man, whose family has become so alarmed by his giving to various Republican campaigns -- $139,000 since 1996 - that they've asked his caretaker to screen his calls and mail.

Despite this, the firm denies any wrongdoing in interviews to Pro Publica. Of course, they're not proud of the new-found exposure either - after the initial breaking of this story in the Boston Globe, BMW took their Web pages down.

• Incredibly, the suckers in this game (aside from the contributors), the candidates themselves, don't appear to be bothered by giving all their fundraising money to some direct-mail firm:

That didn't seem to bother (Honeycutt's) campaign manager, Michael Murphy.

"We've been very pleased with them. BMW Direct has been able to help us raise resources and tap into a thirst in the country for the principles and platforms that she stands on," he said.

Murphy was unable to say what that campaign money raised was spent on. The three campaign staffers are volunteers, and so far the main activity has been "pressing the flesh," he said.

Maybe BMW cuts these people in on the action after the fact. I don't know.

The overriding point here is that the conservative movement has set up a substantial series of organizations to steal from their most robust supporters to enrich themselves. That's how they fund-raise and that's how they govern.

Con Men

Rick Perlstein used to call his blog The Big Con, and he explained that modern conservatism was, at its root, a giant con game on its own constituency.

Have I got a story for him.

During the first quarter of 2008, BMW Direct, a conservative political firm in Washington, helped raise more than $500,000 for an obscure Republican longshot running for Congress in Georgia.

But in a replay of the firm's modus operandi in a Massachusetts race, as chronicled by the Boston Globe, most of the money raised by BMW Direct in the Georgia race has come from out-of-state contributors and been spent on supposed campaign-related services provide by the firm and its affiliates.

A half a million dollars in a single quarter is a substantial haul for even well-financed, high-profile candidates, let alone someone like like Deborah Travis Honeycutt, who ran for the seat in 2006 and lost by 38 points [...]

Honeycutt's campaign has brought in more than $1.7 million so far this election cycle. It has also spent more than $1.5 million.

For the most recent quarter, the campaign raised $620,016.72 in mostly small donations from across the country, according to her most recent FEC filing. And she spent $537,622.68 during the first quarter, most of which was to cover the costs of the direct mail campaign.

Only a small fraction of the money went to pay for a campaign on the ground. The total money spent in Georgia was $16,695. That covered expenses listed as political field work, public relations and media.

However, more than $314,000 went to BMW Direct and its affiliates who all work in the same downtown Washington office building. That's not including the other large payments to other Washington-area firms for direct mail-related expenses.

The best ending to this story would be if there were no Deborah Travis Honeycutt, only a photo grabbed out of a K-Mart picture frame.

This is the modern conservative movement distilled to its very essence - stealing from its most ardent supporters, using politics for profit-taking, promising the world and giving back nothing. If I didn't know any better I'd think it was a evangelical ministry.

It seems fairly clear that this is theft, and yet I'm struggling to determine how this would be prosecuted as a crime. Honeycutt is on the ballot as a candidate, complying with FEC reports, and using the small-dollar donations to pay staff, a legitimate expense. If she didn't exist I suppose there would be something about bilking people out of cash under false pretenses, but then the same could be said of every Republican who promised to overturn Roe and limit the size of government. I don't know if there is a relevant statute. Just a short con by some low-lifes. Or, if you prefer, the Grand Old Party.

...speaking of con men, see too the "PUMAs," supposedly Hillary supporters who are organizing to stop Obama, run by a woman who's made one substantive political donation in her life, and it was to John McCain. Rick Perlstein, late of The Big Con, has more.