Voter suppression comes in many forms and from many branches of the Republican Party. Nathan Sproul’s company du jour was busy registering Republicans while destroying Democrats’ registration forms and Republican controlled legislatures passed voter ID laws and fired election officials who dared to challenge their edits.
Corporate bosses, like David Siegel, did their share by not so subtly threatening their employees jobs if the employees don’t vote Romney.
Indeed, the GOP has worked hard to suppress the vote, even in one case, looking to the Supreme Court.
Let’s get back to Nathan Sproul. He is known as a longtime Republican “strategist”, specializing in the more old-fashioned methodology for voter suppression. His tactics, traced back to 2004, include: destroying forms by those wishing to register Democrat, using what some might call fraudulent means to de-register Democrats and then there’s are the fictional characters that were registered as Republicans.
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It comes as no surprise that Sproul, Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove have some connections.
Today, Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog reported on those connections.
“And, on Tuesday, The BRAD BLOG has learned, Gonzalez sent similar letters to Karl Rove [PDF] and former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie [PDF] seeking their explanation for the nearly one million dollars which American Crossroads, the nation’s second largest Super PAC, co-founded by the pair, paid to Sproul’s companies during this election cycle.”
The connections don’t end there. Rove’s American Crossroads shares an address with Sproul’s Strategic Allied Consulting, along with Ed Gillespie’s 527 group and HoltzmanVogelJosefiak PLLC. The latter is a top RNC law firm headed up by Jill Holtzman Vogel who also now serves as a Virginia State Senator from the 27th District.
Remember the big show Republicans made of firing Nathan Sproul because they don’t tolerate election fraud? Well, it seems friendship with good neighbors is much thicker than a little election fraud among Republicans.
On October 5th, BlueNC reported the emergence of a new Sproul shell company, called Issue Advocacy Partners to provide services in “at least” in at least Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, New York and New Jersey.
Sproul was paid $430,000 by California’s Republican Party after the vote registration story broke. While most of the money is reported to be for “signature gathering”, it appears the California Republicans paid $34,000 for voter registration in the state.
The company, Grassroots Outreach, just happens to share the same corporate address as Lincoln Strategy Groups hired by the Romney Campaign during the primaries and the ever famous Sproul & Associates.
Nathan Sproul also admitted to the Brad Blog that Grassroots Outreach is one of his companies, though he denies the company provided voter registration services to the Republican Party in California.
“Those entries are incorrect,” he told us. “We did not do any voter registration work for the [California Republican Party] in 2012 as indicated. I think its a simple mistake in reporting. I think that should have been for signature gathering as well.”
Of course, Sproul has more shadowy companies than Imelda Marcos had shoes. So it comes as no surprise that Sproul had several more shell companies ready to step in should something go wrong.
The L.A. Times reports Republicans also hired Issue Advocacy Partners to do “conservative vote identification” work in as many as 30 states. Like Strategic Allied Consulting, Nathan Sproul’s name does not appear in the paperwork for Issue Advocacy Partners. By the way, Wisconsin’s Republicans paid this company $500,000 for its services in Scott Walker’s recall race.
Meanwhile, Sproul’s “promise” to cooperate with the House Oversight committee is proving to to be empty. According to a statement by Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, Nathan Sproul refused his written request to cooperate with the committee.
In a letter to Congressman Cumming; Sproul attorney, Frederick R. Petti said:
Although Mr. Sproul appreciates your offer to allow him to discuss this matter with your Committee, he believes the more appropriate avenue is to stay outside the realm of politics, especially given the closeness of Election Day
So let me get this straight. After engaging in voter registration fraud over several election cycles, Sproul is suddenly concerned about being appropriate? While being paid millions of dollars by Mitt Romney, the RNC and state Republican to perform various task, including multiple forms of voter registration fraud; Mr. Sproul is concerned about “staying outside the realm of politics”?
Moreover, what of the fees he got from American Crossroads, along with the additional fees providing services to state level Republicans. Surely, they got something for that money.
In reality, the politics would be infinitely better off Sproul truly decided to stay out of the political realm.
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