Tim Phillips, CEO of Americans for Prosperity
(Leadership Institute)
When Durham, New Hampshire, city officials learned that President Obama would be
making a campaign stop in their town of 15,000 with a speech at Oyster River High School, they asked the reelection team to reimburse for what they knew they would incur because of the visit. Obama for America turned them down. But an anonymous Durham citizen vowed to cover the extra expensives for security and traffic control, estimated at $20,000-$30,000.
This spurred the local branch of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity organization to file a "Right to Know" request with the city to learn who the donor is. AFP claims the money amounts to an in-kind contribution to the Obama campaign.
“The people of Durham have a right to know the identity of this anonymous donor and what his or her intentions are in giving this significant sum of money,” Corey R. Lewandowski, the state director of Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire, said in a statement. “The donor may have business pending before the town or may be trying to skirt FEC law, which precludes this sort of donation.”
Just being good citizens. Uh-huh.
Back in October 2010, AFP had a different view about how the anonymity of its donors should be handled. AFP was heavily involved in flipping the House majority from Democratic to Republican that year. In an interview at the time, Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, told Jake Tapper at ABC:
Tapper: One of the questions being asked by some of the good government groups and even by President Obama is who s funding these ads, so in the spirit of disclosure, would you tell us who some of your contributors are?
Phillips: When you have the President of the United States attacking your organization, which he's doing, it's fair game, but if he attacks individual Americans, then that's wrong. And if we disclose our financial supporters, that's exactly what would happen. You would have the supporters of this president, or Pelosi, or Senator Reid attacking these individual Americans for simply exercising their First Amendment rights.
AFP donors don't, of course, have any business interests that might mesh with
their donations to the organization. They would never be up to any political chicanery or skulduggery. Their secretiveness is pure and clean.
Case #312,963 in right-wing hypocrisy. Noted, filed and shelved. Sigh.