Big Presence Creates Big Influence on Lawmakers (Texas tea-party super lobbyist)
Long analysis, see link. If Goodhair Perry decides to run for president, this guy will be a major influence on his campaign:
His nickname around the Texas Capitol is Mucus.
It is a play on Michael Quinn Sullivan’s initials — M.Q.S. — but the moniker is fitting on at least two levels: it underscores how much of an irritant the conservative activist has become to politicians who buck his Tea Party orthodoxy, and it also says something about Mr. Sullivan’s staying power in Republican-ruled Texas.
They cannot get rid of him.
“I’ve got to commend him,” said Senator Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston. “He’s whipped it up pretty successfully to make himself appear to be much more of a power than I think he really is in terms of delivering votes to or against somebody in an election.”
Mr. Sullivan is by no means the only conservative partisan in Austin. But the 6-foot-4 Eagle Scout has emerged as the most recognizable face of a new brand of grass-roots activists, emboldened by the success of the Tea Party movement and not afraid to rock the boat. They have been loosely described — bitterly in many quarters — as “outside groups” that have driven much of the budget slashing in the waning 2011 legislative session.
Mr. Sullivan, 41, presides over two of the most influential of those groups, Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. The latter has spawned a political action committee that makes campaign donations, mostly to conservative Republicans. In 2009, the former paid Mr. Sullivan $100,000, about a quarter of its budget, I.R.S. disclosures show.
The two organizations operate together as a relatively seamless political advocacy outfit that blasts politicians (typically the “moderate” Republicans) who stray from the notion that the only solution to the state’s fiscal woes is spending cuts — the deeper the better.
The intellectual underpinning for them is the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the influential conservative research organization where Mr. Sullivan once served as spokesman and vice president. Modeled after the Heritage Foundation in Washington, the Texas foundation was created by Dr. James Leininger, who made a fortune in the medical-products industry and has been showering conservative Republicans with his largesse for decades.
Money, however, is not Mr. Sullivan’s currency. He has gained influence by ranking lawmakers’ work in a highly watched (and feared) “scorecard” of votes. Mr. Sullivan holds the scorecard like an anvil over the heads of Texas legislators, getting the word out via e-mail and social media, and personal visits to their districts. He gave more than 200 speeches in 2010, and he is gearing up for a full schedule ahead of the 2012 elections. He will be endorsing staunch budget cutters, of course.
“Likewise, folks who didn’t perform as well, I’ll be in their districts, too, talking about their records and also seeing if there is receptivity to folks who might do a better job,” Mr. Sullivan said.
His groups and the policy foundation share an influential Midland donor and board member, the oilman Tim Dunn, chairman and chief executive of CrownQuest Operating. Mr. Dunn said he was by far the largest donor to Mr. Sullivan’s nonprofit groups.
The policy foundation, meanwhile, has a huge and diverse donor base, made up mostly of individuals, followed by nonprofits and companies, disclosures by the groups indicate. The list of donors remains private, and officials declined to release it.
What is not secret is that the groups are extremely close to Gov. Rick Perry. Mr. Perry, currently the longest-serving governor in the United States, donated all of the proceeds of his Washington-bashing book “Fed Up!” to the policy foundation.
And the governor’s former policy director, Brooke Rollins, is president and chief executive of the foundation, which started in San Antonio in 1989 with one employee and a $100,000 budget. In 2010, it had 29 employees and $4.5 million in income.
Mr. Sullivan often heaps praise on the governor. A recent “tele-town hall” Mr. Sullivan staged with Mr. Perry on a call-in line — which drew nearly 80,000 voters — had the feel of a pro-Perry infomercial.
Mr. Sullivan also has a ubiquitous presence on YouTube, where he has posted videos claiming that Texans are “inherently better” than people from places like California and Michigan and criticizing the Pilgrims’ colony at Plymouth as a failed experiment in socialism.
Regardless of their closeness, Mr. Sullivan does not hesitate to criticize the governor or any other Republican when he disagrees with them (Mr. Sullivan has also criticized The Texas Tribune and other news media outlets as “liberal” and out of step with the views of average Texans). He and Mr. Dunn started Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility specifically to oppose the business-tax overhaul Mr. Perry championed as a school finance fix in 2006. And in Mr. Sullivan’s view, the governor’s cherished job-luring programs — the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Technology Fund — amount to “corporate welfare” that should be abolished.