_______________Austin Rail Now

Tea Party activist. Photo: Alternet.org.

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They’re at it again — Let’s Go Austin, the heavily funded elite outfit established to campaign for the official Highland-Riverside urban rail plan and $600 million in City bonds to fund it, are continuing their preferred tactic of trying to smear tar over their opposition to make them seem like something they aren’t. And in this case, the tar is made from Tea.

As Austin Rail Now explained in our post of Oct. 27th,

It’s become clear that a prominent, desperate tactic of the “Let’s Go Austin” campaign to promote the urban rail bonds ballot measure is to “Tea-bait” the opposition — to try to smear all of us, “progressives”, liberals, leftists, rail transit advocates, transit critics, moderates, conservatives, neighborhood associations, and other opponents of this misguided proposal — as homogeneous minions of the rightwing Tea Party. …

Project Connect leaders and the Let’s Go Austin campaign know very well that this is not only a fraud, it’s an absurd fraud. Ironically, what’s made this light rail ballot battle especially newsworthy — even on a national scale — is that rail supporters and “progressive” community leaders and neighborhoods have been in the forefront of criticizing and opposing the official planning process and its ultimately selected route plan since the beginning.

Reality and truth be damned — Let’s Go Austin plows ahead with this same theme in their latest mailer (“Which Will It Be?”), claiming “The Austin Tea Party and a millionaire road maintenance contractor are behind the misleading campaign against Prop. 1.” (Actually, it’s not “Prop. 1” anymore; on the ballot, it’s “Proposition, City of Austin“. But anyway…)

Obviously driving this “fear & smear” propaganda is the need to obfuscate the inconvenient truth that Austin’s strongest rail supporters have spearheaded the opposition to this corrupt, misguided rail proposal from the get-go. These have included eminently pro-transit groups like the Light Rail Now Project, AURA (Austinites for Urban Rail Action), the nonprofit Central Austin Community Development Corporation (CACDC), Our Rail, and important core-city neighborhood groups that have a firmly established record of supporting urban rail, and yet have also been at the forefront of the criticism of, and eventual opposition to, the whole thrust of Austin’s urban rail planning since its inception the mid-2000s. And it’s been these groups in particular that have continued to spearhead opposition ever since the Highland-Riverside proposal was solidified late last year.

Light Rail Now, CACDC, Our Rail PAC, and other groups strongly support urban rail in the Guadalupe-Lamar corridor.

And the anti-rail opposition? Of course, highway proponents, anti-taxation activists, and, yes, some Tea Party sympathizers have emerged to oppose this rail bonds proposition — but wouldn’t they do so in any case? What’s surely revved them up, and encouraged them to pour exceptionally heavy resources into this fracas, is undoubtedly the leading role of rail supporters disgusted and outraged at the corruption and distortion of the rail transit planning process and de facto disenfranchisement of the wider community from involvement.

But, in a Democratic Party-leaning city with a substantial base of “progressive” voters, Let’s Go Austin clearly deems it useful to try to paint the opposition as a monolithic Tea Party chimera. And, by strong-arming a preponderant chunk of the local business community, the local civic leadership have managed to lead much of the major local media to buy into this contrived portrayal of the urban rail controversy and the bonds debate as merely a faceoff between conservative roads and anti-tax partisans, hostile to rail transit, versus future-looking, rational “progressives” favoring the official urban rail proposition.

This deception is pretty brazen. But it gets worse — how about some real chutzpah?

Recent research by AURA, with results posted Oct. 21st on their website, seems to have caught Let’s Go Austin (LGA) with some very embarrassing underwear exposed. AURA summarizes what it describes as “an important finding” about LGA’s campaign for the bonds proposition (which, like LGA, AURA refers to as “Prop 1”):

a review of the LGA PAC’s latest campaign finance report reveals that much of its funding comes from major donors to Republican Party candidates and causes. The LGA PAC’s portrayal of Prop 1 as a progressive choice thus appears to be another in its series of deliberate efforts to distract and mislead Austin voters. Frankly, it would be fairer to describe Prop 1 as a plan for “Republican Rail.”

Citing LGA’s campaign funding of nearly half a million dollars, with an average donation of over $6,000 (“A grassroots campaign this is not”), AURA’s study found that some of LGA’s largest donors were also major donors to the Texas Republican Party. You know, the one controlled for much of the past decade by the … Tea Party?

For example, the Downtown Austin Alliance contributed over a quarter-million dollars to LGA; its own treasurer, “also an individual donor to the LGA PAC”, happens to be “managing partner of McCall, Parkhurst & Horton, L.L.P., a law firm with an extensive history of large donations to statewide Republicans, including more than $75,000 to Greg Abbott.”

AURA’s study also focuses on LGA’s third largest donor, the Real Estate Council of Austin (RECA),

which contributed $25,000. RECA also has a long history of contributing to Republicans, including $50,000 to Rick Perry and more than $63,000 to David Dewhurst. A quick search of RECA’s history in the Texas Tribune’s campaign finance database finds at least $180,000 in contributions to major Republicans.

AURA also discovered that, even lower on the food chain, the bankrolling of the Tea Party-connected GOP was in full swing:

The Republican donor trend continues with individuals, corporations, and PACs that donated to the LGA PAC in the $1,000–$5,000 range. A set of eight donors who gave $36,500 to the LGA PAC (almost 30% of the funds we have not yet detailed here) also contributed more than $700,000 to a veritable Who’s Who of the Texas Republican Party.

All told, the LGA PAC’s donors and DAA board members have contributed more than a million dollars to Republican campaigns. If you were to apply the Let’s Go Austin PAC’s preferred campaign strategy, you’d say that a vote for Prop 1 is a vote for Dan Patrick!

Summarizing all this, AURA delivers a stinging assessment:

Given this funding base, perhaps it’s no wonder Prop 1 sacrifices the rest of Austin’s transit system to benefit a handful of private business owners and real estate developers. Funneling taxpayer money into private hands is the very essence of the Texas Republican Party’s ‘business friendly’ agenda, and a similar agenda is at the center of the Let’s Go Austin PAC’s campaign. Just follow the money.

There’s nothing particularly reprehensible in major donors to a rail transit campaign also having contributed to the Republican Party. But in this case, some of Let’s Go Austin’s most generous funders have been pumping huge amounts of money to a Texas GOP that not only has staunchly resisted state funding for mass transit and instead favored highway expansion, but is dominated by the Tea Party. You know — the same Tea Party that LGA is using as a bogeyman to frighten Austin voters against listening to the “progressives”, liberals, leftists, and transit advocates telling them to oppose this urban rail bonds proposition.

Now, that’s chutzpah. On steroids.

And you know the saying, “People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”? AURA’s investigation suggests that Let’s Go Austin is inhabiting a very fragile glass house. ■