Connecting the dots: DeCoster, Miller, Crawford
“Habitual violators should not be allowed to pollute our politics,” said Brenna Findley, the young Republican lawyer who is throwing a scare into Democrat Tom Miller’s plan to be attorney general for life. She went on: “It is time for Tom Miller to step up, finally do the right thing, and return the thousands he received from habitual violator Jack DeCoster.”
So Miller did. He returned the $10,000 that Pete DeCoster — Jack’s son and successor at the infamous egg operation in northern Iowa — gave the Miller campaign in December 2005. Ten years earlier, Miller — who this year is running for his eighth four-year term — had sued the DeCosters five times, and the courts found them guilty of screwing up the state’s water and its land with their hog operations. The DeCosters kept losing, all the way up to the Iowa Supreme Court, and the losses meant they were — for up to five years — habitual and chronic violators under the classifications determined by the Department of Natural Resources. DeCoster was the first company ever to be deemed a habitual violator in Iowa.
Why Pete DeCoster gave money to Miller — and why Miller would accept it, one of the two largest contributions to his campaign — is, at first glance, a mystery. In the first place, the DeCosters are regularly in trouble with the law; they’ve paid more than $15 million in fines to the federal government and various states over the past 15 years. In the second place, Miller was running unopposed. In the third place, Pete DeCoster and his wife are registered Republicans in Wright County. Yet they gave a combined $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, and various DeCosters have given $400,000 to the Democratic Governors Association over the past few years.
What’s the connection? Jerry Crawford, perhaps. Pete DeCoster is one of the 10 investors in Paddy O’Prado, the wonder horse that finished third in the Kentucky Derby this year. Crawford — lawyer, pol, moneyman, horseman — found the horse and put together the group that owns it. He also has represented DeCoster interests as a lawyer, though not in the recent salmonella matters. Crawford was also the Midwest co-chair of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and for 15 years he was on the finance committee of the Democratic Governors Association. And the only other person to give $10,000 to Miller’s campaign against no opponent in 2006 was... Jerry Crawford.
All right, that explains that, perhaps. But back to Findley. Peter and Alina DeCoster of Clarion are registered Republicans, and while Peter’s parents, Austin (Jack) and Patricia DeCoster, aren’t registered to vote in Iowa — they live in Maine, though they, too, own a house in Clarion, according to Wright County real-estate records — they clearly have Republican leanings. The elder DeCosters, who are said to be generous and religious folks, gave $30,000 to Iowans for Tax Relief in 2006, and the younger DeCosters gave $5,000 to the Iowa Family PAC in 2008.
Presumably, if a contribution to Miller from a habitual violator “pollutes our politics,” as Findley says, then so do these other contributions to these special-interest groups. But Findley has not mentioned them — let alone ask that they be returned. Perhaps this is why: Iowans for Tax Relief is the conservative, Muscatine-based group that believes in everything that Brenna Findley believes in. They have the same views on taxes, on the size of government, on business and everything else. Also, at the time of the contributions, Jeff Boeyink was high in the hierarchy of Iowans for Tax Relief; he now is campaign manager for Terry Branstad, who is Findley’s biggest booster. The Iowa Family PAC “exists to elect pro-family lawmakers,” and it, too, believes in the things Findley believes in.
So much for pollution. ...
Word around Ames is that The Ames Tribune is for sale. The Omaha World-Herald bought the paper and its affiliates a decade ago for more than $30 million from Midwest Newspapers, which was owned primarily by publisher Gary Gerlach, editor Michael Gartner and the children of the late Des Moines lawyer David Belin. Omaha then also bought The Boone News-Republican. The Tribune recently farmed out its printing to Iowa Falls, an odd move for a newspaper hoping to be sold in that it forecloses the possibility of commercial printing revenue for a new buyer. At any rate, one guy, who may or may not know what he’s talking about, says the operation is being shopped for around $7 million. CV
