Politics

Report: Kellogg Foundation, SEIU funded attacks on voter ID laws

David Martosko Executive Editor
Font Size:

A progressive foundation and a labor union have combined to pour millions of dollars into a “racial justice” group that was hostile to voter ID laws during the 2012 campaign season, according to a conservative watchdog group in Wisconsin.

While True the Vote and other right-leaning campaigns were promoting ID requirements for voters and monitoring the implementation of ID laws at the state level, the Applied Research Center (ARC) was pushing back with claims that photo ID requirements at polling places were thinly veiled expressions of racism.

Media Trackers, the conservative Wisconsin group, reported Monday that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, founded by breakfast cereal magnate Will Keith Kellogg in 1930, committed $5.2 million to ARC between 2010 and September 2012.

And in an unusually overt collaboration, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) paid ARC more than $200,000 in 2011, Media Trackers reported, earmarking the financial transfers as “consulting” fees.

Voter ID laws are generally supported by Republican politicians and opposed by Democrats. The SEIU, like other large labor unions, campaigned aggressively for President Barack Obama’s re-election.

Colorlines.com, an ARC website, created an election-year program in 2012 with the liberal magazine The Nation to provide “in-depth coverage of voter suppression efforts nationwide.”

Progressives have maintained that voter ID laws’ hidden purpose is to depress the voting power of racial minorities. Brentin Mock, a columnist at The Nation and reporter for the Colorlines.com “Voting Rights Watch 2012” project, wrote in October that requiring black voters to obtain a photo ID “eerily echo[es] literacy tests” and other Jim Crow laws.

True the Vote is a conservative nonprofit, founded to monitor polling places for integrity issues. Its website highlights voter fraud convictions in 46 states, and encouraged voters on Nov. 6 to report suspicious or fraudulent activity at polling places.

The group also combs voter rolls to look for deceased Americans, and for counties where the number of registered voters exceeds the adult population.

In response, ARC and other progressive groups have denied that voter fraud is pervasive in the United States. Mock accused True the Vote in May of using a “hoax — voter fraud — to block voting rights” of minorities.

Media Trackers noted that in the press release announcing the launch of Voting Rights Watch 2012, ARC executive director Rinku Sen complained of “attempts to deny the vote to communities of color.”

Sen is also a board member of Working America, a community organizing affiliate of the powerful and wealthy AFL-CIO labor union conglomerate.

The Kellogg Foundation launched its “American Healing” program in 2011, billed as a “racial equity initiative.” That program’s 2011 and 2012 conferences included presentations from ARC, La Raza, the NAACP, and other racialist groups.

The foundation and its principal financial trust reported combined assets of $7.58 billion for the fiscal year ending in August 2011, according to data provided to The Daily Caller by FoundationSearch.com. It awarded $28.3 million in “racial equity” grants in 2011, and has reported adding to that another $9 million so far in 2012.

Follow David on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel