March 21, 2018 01:36 PM UTC

More Colorado Republicans Linked to Cambridge Analytica

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• by: Colorado Pols

We wrote on Tuesday about the connections between disgraced data firm Cambridge Analytica and Republican efforts to win control of the Colorado State Senate in 2014. Today, Blair Miller of Denver7 drops another related bombshell linking Cambridge Analytica with two shadowy Republican organizations called “Centennial Coalition” and “Concerned Citizens for Colorado” that targeted State Sen. Andy Kerr over what were dubbed “‘partial birth and gender-elected abortion’ ideals”:

Denver7 also obtained mailers sent by the Centennial Coalition during the election, in which the recipients were urged to call Kerr, with a message: “Let’s remind Senator Andy Kerr that Coloradans cherish girls and boys equally and, we don’t support his extreme agenda.”

Other mailers included messages like “Senator Andy Kerr Makes Me Uncomfortable” and “Senator Andy Kerr Doesn’t Play Well With Others.”

“Knowing that there are these very shadowy groups, with foreign connections and very dark political connections nationally, is pretty disturbing,” Kerr told Denver7. “Knowing that my races and some of my colleague’s races have come down to, sometimes, a few hundred votes one way or the other…this kind of data, $400,000 here or there, can have huge impacts.”

Miller’s reporting quotes Republican operatives Andy George and Katie Kennedy on their connections to the organizations in question. Their responses are…questionable:

George told Denver7 Tuesday he didn’t know who the Centennial Coalition was. He did not respond to a follow-up question about why the Centennial Coalition was named in the Concerned Citizens tax filing as receiving the $100,000 grant, the same year the Centennial Coalition spent $100,000.

Kennedy told Denver7 Monday that the Centennial Coalition “did only issue work in 2014 and hasn’t done anything since then” and did not answer questions about the company’s work with Cambridge Analytica. She renewed the Centennial Coalition LLC’s good standing in December 2017, filings show.

Denver7 notes several other prominent Republicans connected to these organizations through tax documents — including former Senate President Bill Cadman, former Senate Majority Leader Mark Scheffel, and Jesse Mallory, a former Cadman chief of staff and the current state director for the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity.