Jetton To GOP Candidates: Only Take Laundered Money From Strip Clubs
Earlier today, Speaker Rod Jetton sent an email to GOP candidates for the House urging them not to accept contributions from the PAC, People For Private Enterprise, a front-group for the adult entertainment industry in Missouri.
Certain organizations that you may not intend to accept money from might try to contribute to your campaign. Often these groups have ambiguous names that do not clearly indicate the interests of the organization.
This might seem unremarkable, unless you happen to remember that Speaker Jetton's General Counsel is a consultant to a PAC that was used to launder money from People For Private Enterprise and to get that money into the hands of GOP candidates.
From a March 4, 2006 KC Star story on the topic:
Bartle's bill passed the Senate on March 29, and by March 30, it was ready to be assigned to a House committee. On March 31, a political action committee called People for Private Enterprise, whose treasurer is a Kansas City strip club owner, made the $35,000 contribution to the Committee for Honest Campaigns, which was paying Lograsso for his fundraising and consulting work.
On April 4, Jetton assigned the measure to the House Local Government Committee headed by Rep. Bob Johnson, a socially moderate Republican from Lee's Summit who was not enthusiastic about the bill.
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Bartle, a conservative, was furious when he learned the bill had been sent to Johnson's committee. "I knew good and well (Johnson's) local government (committee) was an inhospitable place for an anti-porn bill," he said.
Among those who testified against the bill when Johnson gave it a hearing on April 21 was Dick Snow, a co-owner of Bazooka’s Showgirls, a club in downtown Kansas City that features fully nude dancing.
Snow is also listed as the treasurer of People for Private Enterprise, formed in 2004 and which, until 2005, had given only a few thousand dollars to candidates, all Democrats. However, from Feb. 7 to March 31, the period in which Bartle's bill cleared the Senate and headed to the House, $66,800 in donations poured into that fund-raising committee, according to reports with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Many of the contributors were clearly strip clubs and adult video stores.
So why did People for Private Enterprise give the Committee for Honest Campaigns $35,000, the largest single contribution the Republican-directed fundraising committee had ever reported?
Snow did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
David Byrn, treasurer of the Committee for Honest Campaigns, said: "I don't comment on contributions that I receive and contributions that are made out of the committee."
Byrn, a Blue Springs attorney and former Jackson County Republican Party committeeman, was treasurer of Lograsso’s fund-raising committee when he was in the House, and the two attended law school together.
In fact, the Committee for Honest Campaigns, which gave primarily to Republican candidates, paid Lograsso $7,700 in fees for fundraising or consulting work from November 2004 through December 2005.
Click here to listen to an archived Temple Tantrum on the topic.
The full text of Speaker Rod Jetton's email from earlier today follows:
From: "Speaker Rod Jetton" <(redacted)@gmail.com>
To: (redacted)
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 14:52:49 -0400
Subject: Screening Campaign ContributionsDear (redacted),As your campaign committee begins to receive contributions, it is especially important that you, or your treasurer, conduct due diligence in screening these donations. Certain organizations that you may not intend to accept money from might try to contribute to your campaign. Often these groups have ambiguous names that do not clearly indicate the interests of the organization.
A prime example of this is People for Private Enterprise, a political action committee representing the adult entertainment industry. If this PAC attempts to send you an unsolicited check, as they did recently in the case of several Republican candidates, simply return the check in the mail. Please exercise careful oversight to ensure that your committee does not accept contributions from this or a similar group. You may also wish to review your past financial reports to verify that your committee has not inadvertently accepted any such contributions.
Please do not hesitate to contact the HRCC staff on this or any other topic.
Sincerely,Rod Jetton
