jonetta rose barras: Chasing money with Kent Cooper
Kent Cooper may look like some mild-mannered bureaucrat. However, he is the epitome of that oft-provided counsel to those interested in understanding the inner workings of government and politics: Follow the money.
The co-developer of DCPowerPlayers.com, he chases money with a seeming vengeance, as if it were a criminal on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He crisscrosses various platforms — financial disclosure forms, campaign finance reports, real estate records — ferreting out its hiding places.
Who knew that Donald J. Trump, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump contributed a total of $9,000 to Muriel Bowser for her mayoral campaign and inaugural in 2014?
Cooper even captures the political giving of people on a given street to the District’s elected officials. Recently he discovered that DC Attorney General Karl Racine sold his Northwest condo for nearly $1.2 million to a group called A Fishbowl LLC; Audrey Chang is listed as governor.
What is Fishbowl? Who is Chang?
While Racine confirmed the sale in an email to me, he could only report that A Fishbowl LLC is a real estate company. He declined to say where in DC his new home is located, however.
Cooper also didn’t know much about A Fishbowl when we spoke last week. He doesn’t know everything. And while DCPowerPlayers.com captures information from as far back as 2003, it does not provide live reporting. Cooper continues to tweak his website and provides regular updates. It’s likely that there will be scrubbing needed as to data and formatting as more users mine the information available on the site.
Much of the website’s value stems from Cooper’s assiduous work to connect individual names and businesses to determine whether any links exist. Where they do, he provides an option to view donations from those individuals together, which he calls a team, making it easy for users to see that they’re not independent operators.
Cooper has been exploring the magic and madness of money in politics for 40 years. He began doing so in 1972 when he was a clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives, as Congress was gearing up to handle new disclosure laws.
“They weren’t getting information out” fast enough for Cooper, so he left. He said he rented space as an individual and bought paper copies of federal records. After he removed some duplication that appeared in the records, he made “the information available to reporters at irregular hours; a lot of [the reporting] was about new PAC money,” he said.
When the Federal Election Commission got started in 1975, Cooper was brought in to create the public records office; he was there for 22 years as assistant staff director for disclosure. After that stint, he became the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent nonprofit, and hired Tony Raymond away from the commission. The duo thought they could accomplish more by launching their own company, Political Moneyline. Eventually that was sold to Congressional Quarterly; Cooper and Raymond continued to maintain the database through a contract.
“Then I reached my 70s and I thought, ‘This has gone on long enough,’” Cooper told me during a recent interview about the new DC-focused website. Raymond helped develop it, although he continues to hold the CQ contract.
Like many people who dream of retirement, Cooper came to appreciate how boring it can be sometimes. “I couldn’t sit still; I started looking at DC,” he said. That was in 2018.
As he reviewed various local disclosure forms and reports, Cooper said, “I got frustrated because I couldn’t find the data.” He said many filings were “inaccurate.” He didn’t know whether that was deliberate or simply a reflection of someone’s sloppiness.
Cooper was — and is — undeterred. He reviewed documents dating as far back as 2003. He cleaned up a lot of the mistakes that he found, and made connections where he could. Equally important, he has collected information that is spread across multiple government agencies, making it available in one space. The result is a treasure trove for reporters, political operatives and citizens who want to know more about their elected officials and the people who could be influencing them.
I met Cooper and became familiar with his website during the height of the controversy over ethical violations by then-Ward 2 DC Council member Jack Evans. I have been around local politics long enough to know that many elected officials probably had accepted or requested a contribution from some of the same individuals or businesses they were lambasting at that time for their association with Evans.
Call me cynical or skeptical. That innate suspicion is probably in the genes of most journalists. I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt after reviewing Cooper’s website.
For example, at-large Council member Elissa Silverman decried Evans’ relationship with Willco, a construction and development company. It was a client of Evans’ NSE consulting firm and had been pushing for a film production complex. It wasn’t the only company in the city that wanted one, and Evans wasn’t the only legislator who advocated for it.
Interestingly, during the time Willco had been pushing for that film complex, Silverman also had her own association with the company. Three principals of the company each donated $1,000, for a total of $3,000, to her 2014 campaign, according to DCPowerPlayers.com.
Should Silverman have disclosed her relationship with Willco during the investigation of Evans or prior to her vote to expel him from the legislature? Ward 8 Council member Trayon White likewise did not disclose the fact that, according to DCPowerPlayers.com, he received $1,500 from key individuals with Willco on July 20, 2016, for his campaign.
To be fair, these aren’t the only elected officials to receive campaign or constituent services donations from Willco or its principals and associates: Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, at-large Council member Anita Bonds, Racine and Mayor Muriel Bowser are among those who received contributions.
How much has the Willco team donors contributed to the current slate of DC politicians since 2003? It’s a total of $168,282. Of that, $79,150 went to Evans’ various campaigns and constituent services fund, according to DCPowerPlayers.com.
We can quibble about who got more. The important point is this: If we consider money received from Willco, most of the city’s current elected officials have stink on their hands.
The money is not the sole matter on which I am focused, however. What is critical here is, When should disclosure be required? Should an elected official be obligated to tell all only when employment comes into play? Or should disclosure also include when any campaign contributor of an elected official has an issue before the government — regardless of the amount of the contribution? And as far as disclosure, no, it’s not enough that the information sits hidden in plain sight on a Office of Campaign Finance database.
Not to put too fine a point on this, consider the fact that some council members have decried the involvement of real estate developers in the political process. It appears, however, that some of those same legislators have received sizable portions of their campaign contributions from that group. For example, from 2013 to 2018, Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen took in $71,480 from individuals associated with several real estate companies, including Akridge, WC Smith, Perseus Realty and Hines, according to DCPowerPlayers.com.
Surprisingly, Allen even accepted $500 in December 2017 from Geoffrey Griffis, head of City Partners, a limited partnership Griffis helped create. At the time, he and his associates, Sanford Capital, had been accused of being slum landlords and attempting to drive poor people from an apartment complex located near the Congress Heights Metro station. City Partners and Sanford intended to build a lucrative mixed-used complex on the site of the apartment building. Fortunately, Racine stepped into their path, filing a lawsuit and eventually securing a court order that dictated restrictions on those companies’ actions at the Congress Heights property.
The tenants and the AG were in a pitched battle with Griffis at the time Allen accepted that campaign contribution. There is no indication that the money was returned. Should Allen have rejected the money given how badly Griffis and his buddies were treating poor people east of the Anacostia River? Should he have at least disclosed the contribution?
Surely Trayon White knew the association; after all, he represents Congress Heights. Nevertheless, he accepted $500 from Griffis’ CityPartners 5914 LLC on Feb. 14, 2019. Those funds, according to DCPowerPlayers.com, went to White’s Do Something Constituent Services Fund.
Don’t think Cooper created the website and empowered users to track these connections because he has a dog in any fight. “I don’t care about a candidate or an issue,” he told me. “The disclosure system for a jurisdiction or election area should be one that holds up over many election years, and can accommodate any candidate or any issue, evenly and without preference.”
I agree. Don’t you?
Weeks ago, Cooper introduced himself and his website to the District’s elected officials and others. He sent a note to them essentially asking for their feedback. It seemed an opportune time. After the Evans ethics affairs, legislators expressed an interest in reforming the city’s disclosure laws and regulations, some of which are both vague and poorly enforced.
Has Cooper received any invitations to come in and talk disclosure? “I haven’t heard from anyone,” he replied, adding that, “I’m not surprised.”
Raise your hand if you’re surprised by the silence from the John A. Wilson Building.
jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
Thanks for this interesting report, Ms. Barras. Has Kent Cooper looked into donations you solicited for your non-profit organization and compared them to your coverage of those donors? Has he given any thought to whether someone who purports to be a journalist should be raising money from companies and institutions she also covers? This would also seem to warrant scrutiny, no?
Normally, I do not reply to comments. My practice has been to permit readers to have the last word. I have written opinion editorials and columns since 1994. I appreciate that I am not the only person with one.
However, you asked a question that deserves a response. Kent Cooper’s site tracks elected officials. I am not now nor have I ever been an elected official. However, the demand for honesty, integrity and humanity made by my family–great grandmother, grandmother, grandfather and mother–underscores my work, whether journalism, community service, or cultural affairs.
20 years ago, I wrote a book about the devastation of growing up without my biological father. Given the response from that book, I and a group of like-minded professionals founded a nonprofit. It is dedicated to helping to heal fatherless girls and women who suffer the trauma of father absence. Like any other nonprofit we have been fortunate enough to receive the support of corporations, foundations and individuals in this region and from around the country who understand the importance and value of the work we are doing. When someone who is a supporter of the nonprofit appears in my work, I have always and will always disclose the connection. As David Carr, now decease but who was my editor at Washington City Paper, once told someone about me, “jonetta is an equal opportunity offender. ” In other words, I offer no protection or favor to anyone.
Thank you for your question.
By indulging in such cynicism (“raise your hand if…”), you are part of the problem, not the solution – because you are implicitly legitimizing the status quo by telling us implicitly that change will not happen.
Cynicism is intellectually and emotionally lazy: any teenager is capable of cynicism. But it takes a nuanced, emotional IQ to say, “wait, what can I do to remedy the status quo? What have I been doing so far that has not worked and thus I need to change?” It’s frightfully lovely to sit on a perch and write columns scolding the world: but what are you doing to change it, if you do not see the world responding? Doing more of the same (writing columns) is then clearly not enough. What actions will you take instead? If you care about corruption, which you should, what actions are you taking that are different to whatever you have done in the past that clearly haven’t been effective? Don’t look to others to do what you will not do yourself:
Cynicism/skepticism is the bystander’s excuse for not getting off their arse and seeing their individual obligation to remedy the problem in our communities. It takes guts to be the lone person to start down a new path against the status quo; and it takes imagination to see the future possibility that is better, and stick relentlessly to that, allowing that to shape every step of your path; and most of all, it takes a deep love for our human family and community to care enough to make the immense personal sacrifices to try to change the world around us for others.
Skepticism is the opposite of love: when you have a deep love, you are motivated to action, regardless of the odds, regardless of the unpopularity and mockery that it may bring you.
Please read the words of Andrea Dworkin at the end of my letter of March 2, posted on my website. We live in an environment with a catastrophic shortage of love for our human family: let us all start to manifest our love by actions.