Sinquefield Spokesperson Not Sure If Sinquefield Has Opinion On Sinquefield-Funded Project

From a recent Beacon article:

Better Together executive director Nancy Rice said last week that she hasn't talked to Sinquefield about the new organization.

Better Together is funded by the Missouri Council for a Better Environment (MCBE).  Nancy Rice is the media contact person for MCBE, a group previously funded exclusively by Sinquefield.  She's a spokesperson for Sinquefield.  She works for his lobbying group. Sinquefield was reported in August to be working on this project.

These games are silly.  Just stop.

Finance Report for Fake Local Control: How A Right-Wing Idealogue Pays Off Local "Democrats"

Now that the Mayor's office and right-wing multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield have thrown local control activists under the bus and are pushing for a new ballot initiative that would actually decrease accountability and transparency, it might be worth taking a closer look at some of the campaign finance reports for Rex's front group, A Safer Missouri. Rex, if you recall, wants to gut state government and shift the tax burden to the poor, and local "Democrats" who get paid by him conveniently stay quiet on these disastrous ideas, just like they did when Rex pushed a statewide ballot initiative to get rid of the earnings tax. How many local "Democrats" need to be on the payroll of a right-wing ideologue with crazy ideas before St. Louis residents start to worry about our City's future?

First things first for documenting the atrocities: the astroturf local control group is called A Safer Missouri. Only one person has ever donated to the group: Rex Sinquefield.


And who benefits from the amazing generosity of Rex, who graciously took time out of his busy schedule of trying to privatize everything in Missouri to magically start caring about this issue last year? Why, St. Louis "Democrats" of course! One of the biggest beneficiaries was Martin Casas, former President of the St. Louis Young Dems and a current candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives. Casas, if you recall, previously said that he had no position on the disastrous Everything Tax, which should be enough to disqualify anyone from calling themselves a Democrat, asked people to sign a petition from the right-wing front group United for Missouri while working for Rex, and also claimed that he had "no idea" if signing up for A Safer Missouri would help build Rex's email list:


In light of how much Casas was paid by Rex, it's pretty hard to believe this claim was true. And how much was that? Casas got close to a cool $20,000 from Rex Sinquefield in 2011 according to the most recent campaign report:

And this is all in addition to the fact that Casas's wife is also on Rex's payroll, through a different organization.

Another local principled "Democrat" who benefited from Sinquefield's kindheartedness was Gregg Christian, Democratic Committeeman in the 15th Ward. Here's A Safer Missouri's payment to Christian's company Gladius Communications for "graphic design:"

Was Gladius responsible for this beautiful logo? Cause I'd say that's worth about $4,000 just by itself:

Another local Democrat paid off in this campaign is Nancy Rice, but she's paid by Rex for a lot of things (she works for Pelopidas) so I won't bother to document the cash for this situation.

Every politician who has ever taken money from ideologues has claimed that the money has *nothing* to do with their future votes. Yet we know our democracy is broken because the uber-wealthy have far too much influence on our laws via their donations. If St. Louisans are really worried about Democracy being for sale, we're going to have to start paying better attention to what's happening locally. Having "Democrats" in office isn't any better than Republicans, if they're all getting paid by the same people.

What's the Cost of Local Control?

Like most St. Louis residents, I'm in favor of St. Louis having control of it's own police force, at least if provisions are included that ensure that the city can't raid police officers' pensions. Why should our police, unlike pretty much any other group in the country, be accountable only to a state board that might not care about the city of St. Louis and might not be familiar with it even if they do care?(I'm not saying this is true of the current board: only that the potential exists) So, in my mind, local control makes a lot of sense.

However, I do want to raise a few red flags about the coalition that has been organizing around this issue. Jamilah Nasheed, who was once described as one of Mayor Slay's "fiercest critics," is now retweeting Slay and Jeff Rainford regularly. Maybe this is not a big deal. As they always say about people trying to get things done in politics: "no permanent friends and no permanent enemies: only permanent interests"

But slightly more suspicious is the support of the effort from Rex Sinquefield and the Missouri GOP. Rex, of course, is behind the earnings tax repeal that would gut St. Louis City government, and behind efforts to eliminate income tax in favor of increases in sales taxes, which would gut state government and place a much larger burden on the poor and working class while allowing Rex's fellow millionaires to continue to stockpile money.

There are different ways of viewing Sinquefield. One might think that he views the Missouri political system as one of his chess matches, and he cynically uses his money to move politicians around like pawns. In this case, I think we'd want to be very suspicious of this new collaboration, and ask what exactly he's getting in return. On the other hand, you might look at Rex and think that he really is a True Believer in his right-wing anti-government ideology, and is more misguided than cynically trying to manipulate things. In this case, you might think that he just donated $300,000 to the local control cause because it fits with his ideals about government, and he's not necessarily expecting anything in return.

But even if you think that Uncle Rex might be willing to do some good for St. Louis without asking for some pints of blood in return, you couldn't possibly think the same about our current GOP controlled legislature. They are led by birthers, conspiracy theorists, and people with extreme hatred of anything to the left of Sarah Palin. The Republican house already voted in favor of local control; why would they do this unless they expected something in return?

What might be the exchange? I have no idea, but there are certainly extremely important issues up for discussion and Republicans are only a few votes away from a veto-proof majority. Is local control important? Yes. Is it more important that stopping the sales tax? No way. Is it more important than stopping Republicans from destroying our unions by making Missouri a right-to-work-for-less state? Definitely not. Is it more important than making sure Republicans don't game the redistricting process? Nope. I don't know if this new coalition has anything to do with these issues, but it's worth keeping an eye out.

The new "grassroots" group that is funded by Rex's $300,000 is called "A Safer Missouri." Their facebook page, which has been around for a while, only had six members when I checked. Two of those members were local Democrats Martin Casas (of the Young Democrats of St. Louis) and Nancy Rice. Ben Muehleisen has worked with Sinquefield's groups in the past.

Both Casas and Rice, along with Rainford and Slay, are big supporters of the move to charter schools and away from public schools, one of the issues Sinquefield is best known for. My guess is that this collaboration might have something to do with future cooperation on pushing for the charter school movement, arguably at the expense of public education.

I don't want to sound all "the sky is falling!" here. I'm in support of local control, and I don't have any evidence that Rex's support is in exchange for some blood money. However, I think it's important to raise the flag now, so that our future understanding will be informed. If there is any indication that some of the Democrats involved in this process fail to push back against Rex's right-wing agenda (like many did during the Prop A campaign), this will be useful background.

Update: Here's a response from Martin Casas, which makes sense to me:

Coalitions are a beautiful thing, but they are different then a circle of friends. THIs IS A HUGE ISSUE FOR THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS, and it's a civil rights issue. People frequently disagree on many issues, but when there is a common goal we have to come together and fight for it. This is the kind of thing we ask our representatives to do: to put the welfare of the people ahead of any of their personal feelings. Adam, thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this.

I can understand why Martin supports this. But what still puzzles me is why Sinquefield, the MO GOP, and even Carl Bearden (formerly of Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity) would support this. I'd really like to know what they're trying to get from this.