Former
FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey says the conservative outlet that
helped launch the Tea Party paid Glenn Beck at least $1 million last
year to fundraise for the organization, an arrangement he said provided
"too little value" for the money.
"The arrangement was simply FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck money and
Glenn Beck said nice things about FreedomWorks on the air," Armey, the
former House majority leader, told
Media Matters Friday. "I saw that a million dollars went to Beck this past year, that was the annual expenditure."
Armey, who left the organization this past fall after a dispute over
its internal operations, said a similar arrangement was also in place
with Rush Limbaugh, but did not know the exact financial details.
"I put it down now as basically as paid advertising for FreedomWorks by Beck," Armey said, calling it a mistake.
Media Matters contacted Armey after
Mother Jones magazine
published
a leaked copy of the document FreedomWorks prepared for its Winter 2012
board of directors meeting. That document alluded to "embedded media
programs" for fundraising that featured the two conservative radio hosts
and claimed that fundraising efforts featuring them raised nearly $1.3
million in 2012, not including event ticket sales from third-party
vendors.
From the leaked FreedomWorks document:
Mother Jones further reported that the organization "plans
to continue its financial support for Glenn Beck's media enterprise,
including sharing a TV studio with and leasing office space to the
Washington bureau of
TheBlaze, Beck's website and TV network."
Armey said he was told of the Beck arrangement when it first began,
but that it would only cost the organization about $250,000 a year.
"Once that was approved by the trustees, it then took on a life of its
own, it got bigger than we understood it to be. All of a sudden it was
we are paying Limbaugh as well as Beck." FreedomWorks did not respond to
repeated requests for comment.
Beck has been reading
on-air appeals for FreedomWorks since at least April 2010. In June of that year,
Media Matters reported that the organization was using Beck's endorsement to raise money.
Politico highlighted
the relationship as an example of a conservative group "paying hefty
sponsorship fees to the popular talk show hosts" in exchange for
"regular on-air plugs." The FreedomWorks document leaked to
Mother Jones states that their fundraising relationship with Limbaugh began in 2012.
According to Armey, such programs are ineffective.
"If Limbaugh and Beck, if we were using those resources to recruit
activists and inform activists and to encourage and enthuse activists,
that's one thing," Armey explained. "If we are using these things to
raise money; one, it's a damned expensive way to raise money; and two,
it makes raising money an end on to itself not an instrumental activity
to support the foundation work that our organization does."
Armey also said the relationship with Beck expanded to include
rallies that were co-sponsored by Beck and FreedomWorks, and included
appearances by FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe.
Armey said he objected to these events, dubbed
FreePACs, because they often charged admission to FreedomWorks activists.
A review of promotional information for the events found $20 was a standard
donation requested at some of the locations, while a Dallas, TX., FreePAC last summer
charged prices as high as $971.
"You don't charge activists to attend rallies. I would consider that
wholly inappropriate behavior," Armey said. "There was a lot of
resentment on the part of the activists. They would naturally expect
that they are providing the activist power and think that they have a
right to attend."
"The principal value to anyone from the relationship with Beck was
Matt Kibbe, who got to share Beck's stage with him," Armey said, adding
that he found out about the July 2012 Dallas rally after his name was
already being used to promote it.
"They put out an email under my name that had more information than I
had," he recalled. "That is why when I resigned I had them cease and
desist using my name."
Armey said he began looking into the specifics of the Beck and
Limbaugh arrangements last year after hearing from others in the
organization that such activities were being done without his knowledge.
"I had come to the point where I don't know how much we are spending
on Beck and Limbaugh, but we are spending too damn much and we are
getting too little value out of it," Armey said. "It was something I
only found out about after inquiring into the affairs in September or
October.
"Starting in January of last year, in that general neighborhood, what
we had was a pattern that Kibbe got into a pattern of consistently
working out arrangements with people without telling me what he was
doing," Armey added. "They had people issue directives, 'don't tell
Armey about this.' I had people close to me saying there is something
fishy here, you better look into it."
Armey pointed out that any reports of revenue raised through the Beck
and Limbaugh arrangements does not take into account the money paid to
them in the deal.
"It is like federal budgeting," he said. "We count the receipts we
get from people who have sent in money, and we, meaning they, I am not a
part of it anymore, do not count what the funds that are laying out
are. They don't say, we paid Beck a million dollars and we had this
program where we raised $300,000, you had a net cost of $600,000, or
whatever the numbers are."
But don't expect those payments to end: FreedomWorks' leaked 2013
budget plan includes "Glenn Beck Radio Ads," "Blenn Beck TV," "TheBlaze Action Center," and the "Rush Limbaugh Contract."
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