Ward Connerly, the multi-millionaire California political operative has initiated again his plan to re-write Missouri’s state constitution and outlaw equal opportunity programs after failing in four of five states that he attempted to pass his divisive and deception “civil rights” initiative. On Thursday, the Missouri Secretary of State’s office announced that it had approved for circulation Connerly’s proposed initiative.
“The people of Missouri joined three other states this year in rejecting Ward Connerly’s out-of state campaign to re-write state constitutions and outlaw equal opportunity programs but he hasn’t learned any lessons from his failure,” said Kristina Wilfore, Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, “Before he gets started again he needs to take responsibility for the trail of fraud he has left in his path.”
This year Connerly spent over $3 million in out-of-state funding to re-write constitutions in five states- Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. As a result, he failed to qualify for the ballot in Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Connerly’s initiative was defeated in Colorado 51%-49% but passed in Nebraska 58%-42%. However a court decision is still pending on a legal challenge that questions whether Connerly’s campaign broke the law to in order to place the initiative on the ballot in Nebraska.
He chose to employ an out-of-state, paid signature gathering firm with a shady past to collect petitions for his initiatives, and was plagued by charges of fraud and deception in every state.
Arizona: State and local officials found widespread irregularities with over 140,000 signatures that Connerly turned in. In addition 100,000 fraudulent or suspicious signatures turned in by Connerly to Arizona’s Secretary of State were the subject of a legal challenge that ultimately proved unnecessary once the initiative was rejected from the ballot.
Colorado: Connerly faced a legal challenge in Colorado where 70,000 signatures he turned in were the subject of a lawsuit. Over 56,000 signatures failed to match any registered voter, even using the broadest screen possible to combat any data entry errors.
Missouri: In Missouri, Connerly faced charges of using deceptive tactics and desperately recruited people from out-of-state to “earn big bucks” helping him gather signatures, including a racist group from California. It has also been reported that one of Connerly’s paid signature gathers was picked up by police because he was wanted in three states for voter fraud related charges. Connerly failed to gain enough qualified signatures to make the 2008 ballot.
Nebraska: Over 50,000 signatures are the subject of a legal challenge. The lawsuit questions the fraudulent and illegal actions of paid petition circulators and public notaries employed by Connerly. One of Connerly’s paid signature gatherers in Nebraska testified in court that he and others engaged in voter fraud and deception and, in October, a warrant was issued for the arrest of a Connerly petition circulator.
Oklahoma: When Connerly turned in his signatures, the Oklahoma Secretary of State referred a report on Connerly’s petitions to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court citing numerous problems with the signatures including: circulators who signed the petition multiple times, numerous duplicates, and ninety-two people who gave different versions of the same address. In an unprecedented move, Connerly requested to have 140,000 signatures and his initiative withdrawn in order to avoid the legal consequences of funding the fraud and irregularities that plagued the petitions he submitted to the state.
“Ward Connerly’s campaign to outlaw equal opportunity programs is a fraud and so is he,” said Wilfore, “This effort is about nothing more than Connerly deceiving people and profiting off it.”
Using his two tax exempt, charitable, non-profit organizations as a personal ATM, Connerly has lined his own pockets with over $7.6 million in profits from 1997 to mid-2006.
This includes over $500,000 in salary from 2004 to mid-2006 and $2.2 million in payments that Connerly paid himself just for “speaking fees and interviews.” This $7.6 million figure doesn’t include the money Connerly has paid himself since June 30, 2006.
This year The American Conservative revealed: “In 1998, 22 percent of his nonprofits’ revenue was paid to Connerly in salary or to his firm. By 2001, Connerly’s salary and the fees charged by Connerly and Associates ate up 49 percent of the nonprofits’ combined revenue. Most of the money paid to the firm was listed on tax forms as “speaking fees.” In 2006, when Connerly took up a concrete goal in political activism—ending Michigan’s affirmative-action policies—the cut of nonprofit revenue paid to him and his firm rose to 66 percent of total receipts, nearly $1.6 million.”
They also revealed that Connerly was under investigation by the IRS, writing, “An IRS spokesman said that he could not comment on a case under investigation.”
One big question going forward is how much Connerly has profited from his non-profits since mid-2006 and how much his non-profit organizations paid out to him over the last two and half years.
“Before Connerly asks one person in Missouri to sign a petition to get his initiative on the ballot he needs to come clean and let people know how much he has profited off his divisive and deceptive campaign over the last two years and start answering questions about reports of being under investigation,” Wilfore said.
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) is the progressive “think-and-do tank” for ballot measure research, development and campaign support.