Tag Archives: pac

Meet the Sex Hypnotherapist Helping the GOP Retake the Senate

by RobBrackctapyct Posted on May 8, 2014

Mother Jones

As Democrats and Republicans jostle for control of the Senate in 2014, the Senate race in Oregon—where the incumbent is Democrat Jeffery Merkley—is not considered much of a pickup opportunity for the GOP. But several Republican superdonors are trying to change that, including a multimillionaire vintner, one of the wealthiest conservative families in the country, and a sex hypnotist who has warned rape victims not to try to get “mileage” out of their stories.

These donors are opening their checkbooks for Monica Wehby, a political novice and Portland pediatric surgeon. A moderate, Wehby is touting her opposition to Obamacare. But Wehby is skipping the primary’s only televised debate on May 16 and avoiding excess face time with the press. So she can use plenty of money on her side—and the donors’ five- and six-figure contributions to super-PACs supporting Wehby have helped make her the leading candidate in the May 20 primary.

Wehby’s most controversial benefactor is Loren Parks of Nevada, a medical-device retailer and a hypnotherapy hobbyist. Parks has donated $75,000 to a super-PAC with the awkward name If He Votes Like That in Salem Imagine What He Will Do in Congress, which has pelted Wehby’s main opponent, state Rep. Jason Conger, with negative television ads. On Tuesday, a state PAC to which Parks gave $50,000, the Taxpayers Association of Oregon PAC, released a poll showing Wehby had a 21-point lead over Conger—a figure the Oregonian called “questionable.”

A prolific contributor to state and federal candidates in Oregon, Parks is frequently described as the largest political donor in the state’s history. He made his fortune selling medical equipment but gained notoriety in the past few years for starring in a YouTube series on treating sexual afflictions through hypnosis. In one of his dozens of video, Parks says some women grow fat so they won’t be tempted to cheat on their husbands. In another, he claims he can help heal the trauma of rape and incest victims, but not “if you’re getting mileage out of it, if you’re getting status, satisfaction from telling your story again and again.” In that video, Parks sounds a buzzer and shouts “Disconnect! Disconnect!” over and over.

On his website, Parks notes, “I am not a doctor.” Yet he says he used his methods to relieve a woman of multiple sclerosis symptoms, adding, “this woman probably got her MS because she had left her husband, gone off with another man.” On a now-defunct personal website, he once bragged that he could hypnotize women into becoming “sex machines.”

Parks has become infamous in Oregon for these remarks. This caused one Republican running for state office this year to return $30,000 that Parks had given directly to his campaign. Parks has also settled out of court two civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual misconduct. One involved a mentally impaired woman whom Parks slept with after she approached him about his therapy. The other settlement resolved a case filed by a former employee who accused Parks of sending her extremely lewd emails and “trying to brainwash her into being his sexual and travel companion.”

Parks and Wehby’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Continue Reading »

View original article: 

Meet the Sex Hypnotherapist Helping the GOP Retake the Senate

Posted in Anchor, Bragg, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Meet the Sex Hypnotherapist Helping the GOP Retake the Senate

The Lawyer Behind the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Has a New Cause: Sarah Palin for Senate

by ImogeneSchafer Posted on April 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

When the Supreme Court recently demolished yet another chunk of the nation’s campaign finance laws, Dan Backer arguably cheered louder than anyone. It was Backer, a Washington, DC-area attorney active in conservative politics, who had convinced an Alabama businessman named Shaun McCutcheon to challenge the government’s limit on the number of candidates, party committees, and political action committees an individual can contribute to in a single election cycle. (The basic limits on how much money that donor can give to each candidate, party, or PAC remain intact.) Backer, who represented McCutcheon, responded to the news of the Supreme Court’s decision by tweeting (in apparent reference to William Wallace in Braveheart): “FREEEEDOMMMMM!!!!”

Backer’s victory is shining some light on another high-profile cause of his: Convincing Sarah Palin to run for US Senate.

In an email headlined “Palin for Senate” recently blasted out by a PAC called the Tea Party Leadership Fund, Backer writes, “Sarah’s the proven leader we need.” He goes on, “She has a better grasp on world politics, and she knows what it means to cherish and protect our American freedoms far better than THE MAN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING THE FREE WORLD.” Backer slams incumbent Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) for spending “too much time in Washington, DC, begging the Obama administration for favors rather than representing the good people of Alaska.” Palin supporters need to act quick, Backer warns: The window for her to get into the race “has almost closed.” And so Backer asks recipients to sign a petition and gather enough signatures to “to push Sarah Palin over the top in a critical run for Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014.”

In an interview, Backer said almost 100,000 people had signed the Palin for Senate petition. If Palin did enter the race,he said the Tea Party Leadership PAC would bolster her candidacy with direct mail and radio ads. “Nobody’s going to be a greater agent for change than Sarah Palin from Alaska,” Backer told me. “She will bring something to the race and she will disrupt the Senate. And disruption is good.”

Read the email:

DV.load(“//www.documentcloud.org/documents/1112091-backer-palin-senate-email.js”,
width: 630,
height: 500,
sidebar: false,
text: false,
pdf: false,
container: “#DV-viewer-1112091-backer-palin-senate-email”
);

Backer’s plea isn’t entirely out of left field. Palin has made noises about running for Senate in Alaska. Last summer, she said on Sean Hannity’s radio show that she was considering a run. “I’ve considered it because people have requested me considering it,” she said. “But I’m still waiting to see what the lineup will be and hoping that…there will be some new blood, new energy, not just kind of picking from the same old politicians in the state.” But this email comes when it’s getting late for a possible Palin campaign. (The filing deadline is six weeks away.) Right now, the much-watched Alaska Senate race pits Begich against Republican Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell. Most polling shows Begich in the lead, but the seat is considered a toss-up Senate race that could determine which party ends up controlling the upper chamber.

Backer’s email asks for more than just a signature; it includes a plea to donate $5 or more to the Tea Party Leadership Fund PAC. (Backer is the PAC’s treasurer.) A cynical political observer might wonder if this “Palin for Senate” effort could be more of a fundraising ploy than a realistic attempt to get Palin into the race. Campaign records show that the Tea Party Leadership Fund has so far raked in $3.8 million in the 2013-14 election cycle, and most of that money—almost $9 of every $10—has gone to fundraising, legal fees (to Backer’s own firm), consulting, and other related expenses.

But Backer says the Tea Party Leadership PAC has spent so much non-electoral money because it was building its donor lists during 2013, an off year. This year, he says, the PAC plans to be a counterweight to the outside money from corporations and trade associations backing establishment Republican candidates. “We knew this was going to be a tough cycle and a tough year,” he said. “You need resources you can put on the ground when you need them.”

Source: 

The Lawyer Behind the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Has a New Cause: Sarah Palin for Senate

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Lawyer Behind the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Has a New Cause: Sarah Palin for Senate

How Two Hillary Clinton Superfans Became Super-PAC Power Players

by MarylouBozeman Posted on February 18, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

He’s a 28 year-old reserve police officer completing a bachelor’s degree in criminology at Virginia’s George Mason University. She’s a 62-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt scholar and history professor at George Washington University in DC. Adam Parkhomenko and Allida Black are unlikely friends; they are the even unlikelier masterminds of Ready for Hillary, a super-PAC that has risen from rag-tag origins to become a central component of Hillary Clinton’s shadow presidential campaign-in-waiting.

Parkhomenko and Black fall well outside the Clintons’ rarefied inner circle of advisers, consultants, fund-raisers, and confidantes. Both are Hillary super fans who until very recently were political neophytes. Yet since co-founding Ready for Hillary in January 2013, they’ve managed to raise $4 million, which they are channeling into building a massive database of supporters and volunteers that will become the foundation for Clinton’s presidential run if she jumps into the race. (Within the Ready-for-Hillary world, there’s little doubt that leap will come.) Parkhomenko and Black have also attracted key Clinton aides and allies to their super-PAC and have, thus, obtained the unofficial blessing of the Clintons themselves. These two groupies have worked their way backstage to hang out with the band.

Parkhomenko and Black first met in 2003 at a Halloween party hosted by Jim Turpin, then-chair of the Arlington County Democrats in Virginia. Parkhomenko was a 17-year-old community college student then, but he was already a Hillary Clinton crusader. That fall, he had created a website, VoteHillary.org, featuring a petition urging Clinton to enter the 2004 presidential campaign. It garnered over 100,000 signatures.

“I liked him,” Black recalls of that first encounter, “because he pushed back with confidence and not with arrogance, which for a 17-year-old is a stunning feat.” The two established a close rapport, even though Black found his notion of online organizing a tad naïve. “She’s been one of my best friends since I met her,” Parkhomenko says. “We clicked.”

Parkhomenko’s online campaign failed to sway Clinton, but the effort got him noticed. He earned a Washington Post Magazine profile from Mark Leibovich. A framed copy signed by Clinton (“Adam—Thanks for believing!”) now hangs in Parkhomenko’s Ready for Hillary office.

Parkohmenko’s pro-Hillary fervor also drew attention from HILLPAC, Clinton’s political action committee. In December 2003, the group reached out to ask if he wanted to volunteer for the PAC. He accepted the invitation, put his community college classes on hold—”Hillary would always ask about school, almost as much as my mom,” he says—and soon worked his way up to full-time staffer.

HILLPAC was a small operation, merely four or five employees, and Parkhomenko split his time between the PAC and Friends of Hillary, Clinton’s Senate reelection committee. He worked advance for Clinton events, wrote thank-you notes, and handled scheduling. He had been brought in by Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime Clinton hand—she worked as Hillary’s scheduler in 1992—who oversaw the PAC and the election committee. Solis Doyle referred to Parkhomenko as her “chief of stuff.”

When Clinton announced her bid for the presidency in 2007, Solis Doyle was tapped as her campaign manager. Parkhomenko became Solis Doyle’s assistant—the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper of the presidential candidate. Parkhomenko was known throughout the campaign as Solis Doyle’s right hand, which came back to bite him when Solis Doyle was fired in early 2008. Solis Doyle exited the campaign in February and Parkhomenko left soon thereafter. He was 22-years-old.

Parkhomenko couldn’t quite shake the Hillary bug. He created another pro-Hillary website that spring, VoteBoth.com, to encourage Clinton supporters to goad Obama into picking Clinton as his running mate. After that failed, Parkhomenko took a break from politics. He reenrolled at Northern Virginia Community College in the fall of 2008 and became a reserve police officer in Washington, DC. But he quickly returned to the political fold. In 2009, he ran for an open House of Delegates seat in Arlington, ultimately finishing third in a five-way race. After that, he buckled down on completing his college degree, later transferring from community college to George Mason University.

Though he lost touch with his old Clinton coworkers, Black and Parkhomenko remained close. He had moved into her spare bedroom during the 2008 presidential campaign after Black insisted that he not waste money on rent while living on a campaign staffer’s salary.

Continue Reading »

Excerpt from – 

How Two Hillary Clinton Superfans Became Super-PAC Power Players

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Two Hillary Clinton Superfans Became Super-PAC Power Players