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Americans Elect is still being tight-lipped about their donors, but they're fairly open about their leadership and prime staff, which includes a lot of CEOs, prominent conservatives, and other assorted controversial figures.
Take, for instance, Michael and Kellen Arno, Americans Elect's Ballot Access Advisor and National Field Director. This is important because they are also President and Vice-President of Arno Political Consultants, a for-profit signature-gathering firm which has acquired somewhat of a reputation for fraudulent signatures and other ballot fraud, almost always in while working for a big business, a far-right cause, or a Republican organization. Both Arnos appear to work almost exclusively with Republicans, and one conservative think-tank brags that Michael "has been involved in every Republican Presidential Campaign since 1980". Other sites corroborate the heavy Republican leanings of the Arnos and their company. Of course, hiring a company with a strong reputation for ballot fraud doesn't bode well for Americans Elect's whole "decide-everything-by-ballot" strategy!
Dan Winslow, their Chief Legal Counsel, was previously Mitt Romney's chief legal counsel. Also, he's currently a freshman member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, a Republican who campaigned on spending cuts and "entitlement reform", wants to cut public employee pay and benefits, and has vowed never to increase taxes while a State Representative.
Peter Ackerman, the Chairman of Americans Elect, is an ex-chairman of the Cato Institute. Before Americans Elect changed their tax status from a Section 527 political party to a Section 501c4 social welfare organization (which, unlike a political party, does not have to disclose its donors), he donated $1.55 million to Americans Elect and is currently the only donor whose identity we know. He also has ties to many corporations, including being a high-level executive or owner in no less than three companies. Peter's son, Elliot Ackerman, is the Chief Operations Officer of Americans Elect and has no particular history or qualifications other than nepotism.
Also among their list of supporters is Mark McKinnon, executive in two media/communications companies. Claiming that personally meeting with George W. Bush was what inspired him to become a Republican, he was Bush's chief media advisor during Bush's campaigns, and gave the McCains some advice as a "close friend". Late last year, he helped found No Labels, a "grassroots" political non-profit which aims to be "a centrist equivalent to the tea-party movement on the right and MoveOn on the left", championing the cause of bipartisanship and protecting self-proclaimed moderates from so-called radicals from the far-left and far-right.
Not to worry, though, it's not JUST Republicans. Americans Elect also boasts such Democratic names as Will Marshall, a New Democrat and founding member of the DLC, as well as the president of the neocon DLC thinktank known as the Progressive Policy Institute. And let's not forget his memorable service on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq!
Of course, there's also an array of CEOs and high-ranking execs involved. Finance seems to be particularly overrepresented in their leadership, and I count no less than nine members who are high-level members of companies with names like "Strategic Investment Group", "Lionstone Capital Management", and "JP Morgan Chase & Co". They also count the Managing Director of the International Institute of Finance among their numbers.
If that's not enough for you, there's plenty more questionable connections to be had.
This is all very very important, because the people influential enough to be listed as "Leadership" are very likely candidates for AE's "Candidate Certification Committee", which has the sole authority to veto proposed candidates. While they can be overruled by a supermajority vote from all registered members of the AE party (not just 66% of the voters, but 66% of the people on the membership rolls), that is a ridiculous and almost impossible requirement.
In addition, they've attempted to deflect criticism based on their big-money donations by claiming that the money they've raised from big-money donors so far is just "low-interest loans" that will be paid back as they get more small donors. At first glance, it sounds reasonable. But what that really means is that a significant percentage of real donations will be diverted to paying off (with interest) the original investments from their rich initial "donors". It amounts to admitting that every time someone donates a dollar to Americans Elect, part of that dollar goes directly to paying off their richest supporters. Which, I suppose, is another reason why they want to keep their finances secret as long as possible.
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They've attempted to justify taking money from big donors by saying that those big corporate donations were just "loans" that they will pay back once they've got enough small donor money coming in. Assuming that they are telling the truth, which is of course impossible to verify since they're so secretive about their finances, that means that the businesses will get all their money back, plus interest. So they're putting money in because they're guaranteed a profit if Americans Elect gets enough donations.
Why does it matter how many donations they get? Because that's where they're going to get the money to pay off the big donors! If you gave them any money, a portion of your donation would be forwarded to their corporate supporters and richer donors...including the chairman. The rest of your money would go to their marketing department, where it would be used to attract more supporters and convince more people to donate. What little money they're actually spending on political stuff will no doubt go to the political consulting company run by their National Field Director. The chance of actually making a difference in the political field is just a bonus; the main objective is to make everybody involved as much money as possible.
It's not too different from a Ponzi scheme, really, except that the initial investors are all in on the scam, and the later "investors" are regular people donating money with no expectation of returns. As long as this fake political party keeps its supporters' spirits high enough to keep getting donations of free money, the scam won't fall apart until the Feds investigate their finances. They're clearly intending to make this a long-term hustle, too; since the organization's stated goal is only to get a candidate on the ballots, supporters won't be as disheartened when Americans Elect cheaps out on the actual campaign and gets crushed in the general election.
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It's similar to a Ponzi scheme, with one key difference: in a traditional Ponzi scheme, all participants are investing money with expectations of getting a big return on that money, and the scammer has to keep bringing in more new investors to get money with which to fake those huge returns for earlier investors. Since those new investors are also expecting returns on their investment, the conman always owes more money than he has, and the scheme eventually collapses.
Since Americans Elect presents itself as a political party, on the other hand, most of the people sending in their money are donors who don't expect to ever get a dime of that money back. That means that the Ackermans and Arnos are bringing in more money without actually increasing the amounts they'll eventually have to pay out, making the scheme theoretically sustainable and allowing them to put a lot of that money into marketing the scheme to the wider public.
The catch, of course, is that it's most likely illegal. They just haven't been investigated for it yet, and the extent of their activities is unknown because they registered with the IRS as a nonprofit group rather than as a political party. Sooner or later, they'll get investigated by either the FEC or the IRS and they'll quickly break down after that.
In fact, wanting to be exempt from campaign finance laws was one of the two major reasons that AE's predecessor group, Unity08, was shuttered. Apparently, they felt that the FEC's individual contribution limits were a bipartisan conspiracy to prevent small third-parties from breaking the dependence on big money, and that there was no way they could build a movement from millions of small donors if restricted to receiving no more than $5,000 per person. The difference here is that Unity08 wrote to the FEC and asked if they could do it, while Americans Elect seems to have decided to simply do it and hope the FEC doesn't notice.
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