dark money shop
1/22 new term?
https://www.desmog.com/2019/10/22/empowerment-alliance-dark-money-natural-gas-industry/
no lnx many. vids
The Empowerment Alliance’ and Other New Dark Money Groups Sound a Lot Like the Natural Gas Industry
By Dana Drugmandon Oct 22, 2019
Amid the crescendo of calls for climate action and rising rage directed at the fossil fuel industry, petroleum producers and their allies are engaging in an aggressive promotional push focused on natural gas. The same month that the American Petroleum Institute (API) started running ads emphasizing gas’s role in reducing carbon emissions, a new dark money group has launched under the patriotic guise of promoting “America’s energy independence” by promoting, you guessed it, natural gas.
That group, called The Empowerment Alliance (TEA), is a registered 501(c)4 that does not disclose its donors (and is not required to under law). TEA launched on September 30 with a news release filled with natural gas industry talking points and attacks on the Green New Deal. The organization describes natural gas as “essential to our shared prosperity” in terms of jobs, national security, energy costs, and even air quality, while the Green New Deal is labeled as “radical and unachievable” and a “risky tax scheme.”
This anonymously funded organization, from its leaders to its messaging, is part of a broader chorus of misleading talking points that goes beyond the “natural gas and oil” industry (as the API ads say) to conservative media pundits and top strategists and officials within the Trump administration and the GOP.
Key Players and Plans
The Empowerment Alliance is known to be run by two top figures and lobbyists for the Republican Party.
James Nathanson, the executive director, is a longtime Republican operative and apparent dark money extraordinaire. Nathanson’s business consulting firm in Dayton, Ohio, James S. Nathanson & Associates, has funded various conservative candidates and Republican Party groups and SuperPACs. But while these donations are transparent, Nathanson has also headed a group called Freedom Vote, Inc. — another 501(c)(4) dark money organization. Freedom Vote (FV) has been accused of failing to report more than $1.1 million spent on political attack ads during the 2016 U.S. Senate race in Ohio.
Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed official complaints against Freedom Vote to the IRS and Federal Election Commission (FEC), and even filed a lawsuit in June seeking to compel the FEC to take enforcement action against the organization. Nathanson was also a central subject to a 2004 complaint to the FEC for violating campaign finance law in Ohio election campaigns.
Terry Holt, partner at the PR firm HDMK, is TEA’s communications director and spokesman. He was senior communications strategist for the George W. Bush presidential campaigns and has worked for former House Speaker John Boehner. According to his HDMK profile, he has “provided long-term communications and media strategy for several chief executives at leading trade associations and corporations.” Notably, HDMK was hired in 2010 to do communications and PR for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal industry lobby group.
HDMK boasts on its website about its work to build localized support for expanding big energy infrastructure: “To reset the conversation about the construction of energy infrastructure at the national level, HDMK built a grassroots coalition of workers, small and medium sized businesses, civic leaders, unions, and other local supporters. By activating local supporters and giving them a voice at the national level, we created favorable news coverage during the heated debate about the expansion of America’s energy infrastructure.”
The Empowerment Alliance appears poised to undertake this sameindustry-funded “grassroots” strategy. Holt told Politico the group plans to “run ads, engage in grassroots work and reach out to the media and may set up a lobbying operation down the road.” The group’s anonymous donors are hoping it will be a “significant factor” in the 2020 election.
The group also revealed that it intends to “mount an aggressive fundraising campaign in the coming months with plans to announce a formal leadership structure and new initiatives before the end of the year.” TEA has started running paid ads on Facebook spending a total of more than $8,000 so far.