"Nonpartisan" Johnson County contests are very partisan
Democratic Board Chair Mike Kelly's PAC promotes four Democrats in attempt to silence opposition in Board of County Commissioners and District Attorney office
Amberwave PAC, like many Political Action Committees (PACs) in Kansas, filed its campaign finance report on Monday in anticipation of the Nov. 5 election.
Mike Kelly, chair of the Board of County Commissioners, announced in March he was launching the Amberwave PAC, even though he is not a PAC officer.
At the announcement the Amberwave website showed their goal was to knock out the Republican sheriff, Republican Board members, and the Republican District Attorney.
Incumbent sheriff Calvin Hayden, a Republican, was eliminated in the August primary, so Amberwave has two remaining goals.
October Report
The summary page for the October report shows $121,000 was raised but only about $26,000 was spent.
The most interesting summary line is the $119,379 of “other transactions.”
Contributions
Contributors to Amberwave in the August PAC report:
$10,000 received from The Bluestem Fund (Topeka); $5000 from Garten Trust (unknown location); $5000 Pipefitters Local #533 Volunteer Political Fund (KCMO); $10,000 from the DRIVE Committee (DC).
In the current report, Gov. Laura Kelly’s Middle of the Road PAC chipped in $10,000 to Amberwave, while four labor unions contributed $22,500.
A mysterious contributor, Local Jobs & Economic Development — without any known address — contributed the most with $85,000. All three known contributors to this organization have “dark money” connections.
A bit of searching revealed an IRS 990 showing this organization formed in 2022 as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit in Dover, DE.
Additional searches of IRS 990s revealed this organization received funding from two related “dark money” sources in 2022:
$75,000 from Tides Advocacy.
$1,040,000 from Tides Foundation.
A third donor of $200,000 to Local Jobs & Economic Development Fund was the Energy Action Fund, which Influence Watch describes as “a major pass-through funder to environmentalist organizations and causes.”
But the Energy Action Fund in 2022 received major funding of $950,000 from dark money Arabella Advisors Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Expenditures
Amberwave’s largest expenditure was nearly $24,000 on “consultant mail/consulting.”
The PAC gave three $500 contributions to each of the Democrats running in the Board of County Commissioner contests: Shirley Allenbrand, Julie Brewer and Jeff Meyers.
The PAC gave a fourth $500 contribution to Democrat Vanessa Riebli, who is opposing Republican Steve Howe, for Johnson County District Attorney.
Other Transactions
The report summary shows a figure of $119,379.80 for “other transactions,” but the the four parts add up to only $105,132.42.
One can speculate the $500 figure above is incorrect and should have been $14,247.38 to arrive at the reported other transactions total.
It’s unclear why “other transactions” were not reported in the format given by the online sample form.
Amberwave is planning significant mailings in all these contests in the next week.
The “other” Kelly
At the state level, Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is the pubic spokesperson for the Middle of the Road PAC even though she is not a PAC officer.
Gov. Kelly’s stated purpose for “her” PAC is to restructure the Kansas legislature so overrides of her vetoes are less likely. If a politician is not in the “middle of the road” as defined by Gov. Kelly she skewers them in video ads as “extremists.”
These two unrelated Kelly’s are trying to have their way politically by using PACs to silence their opposition.
While Kelly is supporting Democrats, his primary goal is to have people elected throughout the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC)/Climate Action KC "region" who will push for radical climate policies under the guise that these policies are reasonable.
When Commisar Kelly was turning over the reins of his Climate Action KC organization to assume his position with the Johnson County Board of County Commissioners (JCBOCC), he was asked several times what could be done to ensure the policies pushed by Climate Action KC would be pushed at the city and county levels on both sides of the Kansas/Missouri state line? His response was that "they" were actively recruiting like-minded individuals to run for city and county elected positions throughout the region. Residents in the "region" need to understand that Kelly's ambitions are not just to turn Johnson County into KCMO-West, but to execute a scorched earth, Shermanesque March to the Sea in deploying his radical, globalist, WEF, UN Agenda 2030 agenda throughout the 119 cities in 9 counties in Kansas and Missouri under the control of MARC and the additional county of Douglas County in Kansas, along with the cities of Lawrence, Eudora and Baldwin City under the control of Climate Action KC.