Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
We’ve finally solved the mystery of one of the biggest and most elusive sponsors of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, and it all comes back to a reclusive Republican donor who’s used his companies to funnel millions of dollars to conservative groups in the past under circumstances that some federal regulators described as blatant end-runs around campaign-finance laws.
Last week’s PAY DIRT noted the scant public information about Dragging Canoe, described to us by a CPAC spokesperson as a conservative-friendly resort in rural Tennessee. But the resort didn’t appear to have a website. As CPAC kicked off this morning, a Dragging Canoe ad greeted conference goers with a website that is currently just a GoDaddy placeholder landing page and boasted social media accounts that do not seem to be set up.
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According to that promotion, the resort aims to open next year on a large plot of land outside of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, backed by Knoxville GOP donor William Rose. Rose incorporated Dragging Canoe LLC last year, and the land the resort is set to occupy is being marketed by a real-estate company called Specialty Investments Group, which, as late as 2012, counted Rose as its chairman, president, CEO, and general counsel.
His role with Specialty Investments Group came out during proceedings at the Federal Election Commission, where the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center had accused Rose of illegally funneling more than $12 million through SIG and a subsidiary to conservative group FreedomWorks’ political arm.
Rose denied the charges, and the FEC deadlocked on the matter, stymieing further investigation. But in their statement on the allegations, and similar charges leveled in three other cases that the FEC considered simultaneously, Democratic commissioners Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub called the four cases “some of the most crystal-clear violations this commission has seen in recent memory.”
Now Rose appears to be using SIG and Dragging Canoe LLC to facilitate additional financial contributions. Dragging Canoe ponied up $250,000 to underwrite this year’s CPAC, and in exchange will get heavy promotion from the American Conservative Union, the group that organizes the conference.
When PAY DIRT first asked ACU for information on Dragging Canoe, spokesman Ian Walters said it “is an entertainment, shopping, eating, and educational destination dedicated to Second Amendment and conservative values and ideals located in Pigeon Forge, TN.”
We teamed up with Daily Beast colleague Jackie Kucinich to find out what we could about the planned resort. Neither the Pigeon Forge chamber of commerce nor the city’s tourism office had heard of it. The chambers in nearby Sevierville and Gatlinburg were likewise unaware of any resort that matched the description CPAC provided.
Dragging Canoe LLC was incorporated in early November, and lists just two names in its incorporation records: Rose, and Hailey Ownby. The latter is an account manager at SIG. And while that company’s website no longer mentions Rose, he is listed as its business agent in Tennessee incorporation records.
After we reached out to note that the resort doesn’t yet appear to exist, Walters send an amended statement framing it in the future tense.
SIG generally buys, develops, and then flips real-estate projects in Tennessee. Among its projects is a plot of land in Pigeon Forge that it bills as the site of a future resort along the lines of what Dragging Canoe apparently has plans for. A development concept posted on its website details plans crafted nearly a decade ago for a 340-acre “premier mountain resort” containing 1,500 residential units.
SIG’s current president did not respond to numerous requests for comment, but we’ll be sure to find what information we can when CPAC kicks off tomorrow.
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