Tag: Donald Ferguson

The combative head of an anti-environmentalist Washington, D.C. nonprofit with Colorado roots vowed on Thursday to appeal last week’s Montana Supreme Court ruling upholding the state’s nearly 100-year-old ban on corporate campaign spending.

A moderate Montana Republican who says her bid for state lawmaker last year was torpedoed by the illegal campaign tactics of an anti-green, pro-drilling political group registered in Colorado has seen her ranch on the Yellowstone River near Laurel inundated with ExxonMobil oil.

A political nonprofit labeling itself the “nation's largest grassroots opponent of radical environmentalism” sarcastically welcomed the anticipated presidential candidacy of Republican Newt Gingrich on Monday, calling the former U.S. Speaker of the House “Al Gore hiding under a Phil Donahue wig.”

Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility and a key backer of Colorado’s aggressive renewable energy standard (RES), reacted with skepticism to Monday’s lawsuit seeking to overturn a state law mandating 30 percent of Xcel’s electricity be produced by renewable sources by 2020. “... We understand that [the complaint] was made by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization,” Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz told the Colorado Independent. “We would be surprised if a federal court would overturn Colorado's legislatively approved Renewable Energy Standard.”

A bill originally intended to force 501(c)4 groups to disclose the donors of money given to 527 groups may be introduced soon in the Senate by Gail Schwartz.

A nonprofit anti-clean-energy lobbying group active in Colorado politics is taking credit for derailing the presidential aspirations of former Republic Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. American Tradition Partnership (ATP), a 501(c)4 “dedicated to fighting environmental extremism,” has ties to Western Tradition Partnership, a group that has targeted numerous Democratic candidates in Colorado dating back to 2008. Increasingly, the groups are targeting Republicans seen as too moderate on environmental and energy issues.

The head of a conservative nonprofit blasted by Democrats for “tasteless” and possibly illegal mailers targeting state Sen. Gail Schwartz in last month’s election told The Colorado Independent (TCI) Tuesday that “we engaged in no electioneering or 527 activity and always follow the law.” Donald Ferguson, executive director of Western Tradition Partnership (WTP), clarified that the mailers featuring Schwartz’s face on Donald Trump’s body with the tagline “You’re Fired!” were paid for by the registered 501(c)4 “social welfare” nonprofit, not an associated 527 group called Western Tradition Partnership Education Fund.