Posts on Chris Simcox

When he was running for president, Mike Huckabee made no secret of his displeasure with the current leadership of the Religious Right, regularly chiding them for refusing to support his candidacy.  It was, at least in part, because of their glaring lack of support that Huckabee’s campaign eventually folded, forcing him to drop-out of the race and it looks as if Huckabee is not particularly prepared to let bygones be bygones:

Mike Huckabee can't definitively explain why he couldn't win the Republican presidential nomination, but he thinks the desire of Christian leaders to be "kingmakers," media coverage and Mother Nature all had something to do with it.

"Rank-and-file evangelicals supported me strongly, but a lot of the leadership did not," the former Arkansas governor says. "Let's face it, if you're not going to be king, the next best thing is to be the kingmaker. And if the person gets there without you, you become less relevant."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson backed Rudolph W. Giuliani; American Value President and former presidential hopeful Gary Bauer endorsed Sen. John McCain; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins remained neutral, even as Mr. Huckabee was wowing their supporters and winning the values voter straw polls they organized.

Huckabee seems particularly galled by Religious Right’s allegations that he was weak on foreign policy issues and didn’t fully comprehend to threat posed to this country by “Islamo-fascism,” which he says was nonsense since he was the only one who really understood the true nature of the threat:

"I was the one person who talked about this being a theological war, not just a geopolitical war [because] it was unlike a traditional war over borders and boundaries," he says.

While Huckabee remains bitter over his inability to win over the Right’s current leadership, it appears as if various other right-wing outsiders are equally bitter over the prospect of having to support John McCain and are considering defecting to the Constitution Party:

[I]is 2008 the year when a third-party candidate would find some traction among those disaffected by the abortion, marriage and national security stances found in the records of the three front-runners left in the race?

Charles Lewis, national outreach director for Christian Exodus, is one of those behind the launch of the new Save America Summit website, and believes it's not only time, it's overdue.

Among those participating in this third-party-seeking Save America Summit are Flip Benham, Wiley Drake, Bill Federer, Gordon Klingenschmitt, Howard Phillips, Chris Simcox, as well as representatives of organizations such as Gun Owners of America, the Council for National Policy, and Stop the ACLU and others who are convinced that McCain, Obama, and Clinton all plan "an EU-style unification of America with socialist Canada and Mexico during the next administration."

Sadly for Huckabee, he can't seem to get any love from these right-wing activists either, since they seem to have already narrowed down their choices for president to four people: Alan Keyes, Roy Moore, Jerome Corsi, and former Sen. Bob Smith.

After Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee last week, other anti-immigrant border vigilantes rushed to repudiate their erstwhile comrade. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist in 2005, dismissed the latter’s influence and criticized Huckabee’s “duplicitous” immigration program. The leader of another Minutemen splinter group called the endorsement “disturbing.”

A variety of anti-immigrant groups also came out of the woodwork to pile on Gilchrist in a letter distributed by Americans for Legal Immigration: “We denounce Jim Gilchrist's solo endorsement of a pro-amnesty and Open Borders candidate for President. Mr. Gilchrist does NOT speak for us!” Signatories included representatives of a number of local Minutemen franchises, a FAIR front group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and many more.

This week, Gilchrist is facing heavy pressure from WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, the premier advocate of the “North American Union” conspiracy theory. Corsi’s approach, rather than simply denouncing Gilchrist, was to confront him with the claim that Huckabee’s immigration program contained some element making it unacceptable to them. In response, Gilchrist “backtracked” on his endorsement, according to a Corsi article titled “Minuteman reconsiders Huckabee endorsement.”

The only problem with Corsi’s friendlier approach—helping Gilchrist along with his retraction of the endorsement—is that Gilchrist denies it:

But Gilchrist says Corsi's article is not accurate. "I am holding firm. I am endorsing Governor Mike Huckabee for president. I'm not wavering or waffling," he states.

And as for the WorldNetDaily report? "I have to say that Mr. Corsi really made me feel like he was interrogating me like a police investigator or a prosecuting attorney, rather than interviewing me," Gilchrist asserts. "He kept insisting that I was waffling -- and I did not say that; he kept saying that. And apparently he had an agenda."

But Corsi says he sticks by his story. "If Jim can't keep his story straight from one day to the other, ... I'll be happy to play back [for him] the recordings I made of him each day and Jim can listen to himself saying that he was going to reconsider the endorsement of Huckabee," he says.

What’s strangest about this exchange between Corsi and Gilchrist—with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, agendas—is that the two know each other very well. They wrote a book together on the Minutemen last year. Now, sadly, it seems they are no longer on speaking terms: Corsi’s latest article, which accuses Gilchrist of going soft, ends with the poignant line, “Gilchrist declined to comment.”

Yesterday we wrote that Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee might be more of a hand up for the struggling anti-immigrant activist than for the cresting presidential candidate, given Gilchrist’s troubles maintaining leadership of his own group, much less a movement.

Sure enough, other anti-immigrant groups are rushing to dispute Gilchrist’s relevance. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project in 2005 to form the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, rushed out a mass e-mail dissing his rival:

No National Minuteman Group has endorsed Mike Huckabee. One individual Minuteman has personally endorsed him. For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the nation's largest Minuteman organization, is a 501(C)4 non-profit organization and cannot and does not endorse any candidate for public office. MCDC is not associated with Mr. Jim Gilchrist, who today endorsed Mike Huckabee for president. Jim Gilchrist’s erstwhile Minuteman Project is itself an organization which by its own representations as a non-profit civic group cannot legally endorse candidates. It does not have any volunteers who observe illegal border activity. It has no border fence building projects. Jim Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of most patriots in the "Minuteman movement" – who under no circumstances could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan” recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee. The national media needs to recognize that Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement is his own personal statement, nothing more.

Another splinter group, the Patriots Border Alliance, called the endorsement “at best disturbing.” Group leader Bob Wright said, “[Huckabee’s] past rhetoric about the goals of Minutemen everywhere has been vicious — parroting the tired and discredited foolishness that an American citizen's desire to see the law enforced is somehow racist or xenophobic." A group called Americans for Legal Immigration also sent a mass e-mail warning against Huckabee.

This summer, we noted that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps’ project to build their own fence along with U.S.-Mexico border was falling short of promises, while contributors raised questions about where all the money went. One major donor sued the anti-immigrant vigilante group, and a number of the group’s officials and state coordinators challenged MCDC leader Chris Simcox’s financial management, only to have Simcox fire them all.

Now CNN has picked up the story, sending a reporter down to look for the much-vaunted high-tech “Israeli-style” fence, and finding little more than a cattle guard on one ranch and a short stretch of mesh wire on another.

The Minutemen quickly responded to the negative press—with a fundraising e-mail:

It's not news that the Minutemen have critics and are under constant assault from the liberal media and open border alliance organizations. But in spite of all this, the Minutemen press on! Giving leadership and hope to America since our patriots sounded the first national call in 2005 to Secure Our Borders NOW, our committed and courageous Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers are showing that good people CAN make a difference in the defense of our nation’s security, sovereignty, safety and prosperity.

According to the MCDC, the vigilante group is only trying to do a job the “feckless federal government” won’t do, but its complaint sounds more like the criticism of its own fence:

[The government] is long on talk and short on performance, selling the American people short as it has for decades. The Feds are stalling, wasting time, putting up inferior fencing at vast expense on delayed timelines—all in the hopes that the people of this country will be won over by their political grandstanding and public relations.

Would the real anti-immigrant vigilante group please stand up?

This summer we noted the apparent meltdown of both factions of the national Minuteman movement, anti-immigrant vigilantes that rose to stardom during an armed “border vigil” in 2005. Back then, disagreements about funding caused the group to split, with Chris Simcox heading the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) and Jim Gilchrist heading the Minuteman Project. More recently, Simcox faced criticism over dubious financial management, with his own volunteer leaders complaining that promised money wasn’t arriving and his IRS filings showing revenue mostly going towards “personnel services.” When several of his officers and 14 state coordinators demanded a meeting with Simcox to address their concerns, he promptly fired them all for insubordination.

Meanwhile, Gilchrist’s smaller outfit had its own trouble: The ostensible board ousted Gilchrist over money management. Gilchrist sued to regain the group’s paltry assets, and, giving up, started a new group called Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

On Saturday, the ex-Minutemen who were booted from MCDC by Simcox assembled a “border vigil” near Palominas, Arizona, calling themselves the Patriots’ Border Alliance. Joining them is Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project.. Coincidentally, the defectors’ 30-day project, called “Operation Allied Minutemen,” began just one day after MCDC’s own 30-day “vigil,” “Operation Secure America.”

In response, reports the Washington Times, Simcox reiterated his claim that members of this new faction were terminated from MCDC for "purposefully undermining the national operations" of the organization, and that others "failed in their roles as national directors ... fixated on a conspiracy theory that our finances are not in order, and voluntarily tucked their tails between their legs and quit."

Mr. Simcox also said that while the PBA's operational procedures are in violation of county ordinances in Arizona, "We wish them luck. We continue with our extremely successful mission of ensuring our borders are secured."

As the two bickering Minutemen factions compete for the scarce media coverage of their events—a far cry from the circus of 2005—we can only imagine the scene on the border:

Citizen Outreach and Americans for Tax Reform plan Conservative Leadership Conference for October in Nevada. Gingrich, Thompson, Tancredo, Giuliani, McCain, Romney invited.

When the anti-immigrant Minutemen emerged onto the national scene, Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper wrote glowing profiles of the border vigilantes, but over the past year, relations have soured as Seper investigated allegations of shady finances from within the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. In Seper’s reports, one mysterious factor has been the numerous ways MCDC is intertwined with a host of non-profit and for-profit organizations associated with Alan Keyes. While Chris Simcox, head of MCDC, responded once last year with some unconvincing filings, the groups and leaders implicated have remained silent.

Now, one Keyes group is responding. Although only briefly mentioned in the Times, RenewAmerica – a web site featuring writing by Keyes and like-minded commentators – calls a recent article “an obvious (and unprovoked) effort to discredit the organization.” In the article, Seper examines the FEC filings of the Minuteman PAC and discovers that 97 percent of the money it spent went to “operating expenses,” including many payments to for-profit consulting and fundraising companies associated with Keyes. These filings – as well as filings for a second Minuteman PAC – are publicly available.

In listing some of these PAC expenditures, Seper mentions RenewAmerica in passing:

Politechs Inc., a Los Angeles-based political consulting firm headed by Mary Parker Lewis, a key adviser to MCDC and a top official in several tax-exempt fundraising organizations led or founded by Mr. Keyes. In the report, the Minuteman PAC said it paid $10,000 for fundraising to Politechs. Mrs. Lewis served as chief of staff for Mr. Keyes' 1996 and 2000 presidential runs and in his 2004 senatorial race against Barack Obama in Illinois. She also is executive director of Declaration Foundation and chief of staff at Renew America, another tax-exempt fundraising group founded by Mr. Keyes.

According to RenewAmerica counsel Steven Voigt, “Ms. Lewis--a longtime colleague of Alan Keyes--is in fact Keyes' Chief of Staff, not RenewAmerica's. She's not an officer of RenewAmerica.”

What’s more interesting, though, is Voigt’s angry denial that RenewAmerica is even a non-profit at all. “RenewAmerica is not tax-exempt,” he writes. This may come as a surprise to those who have donated to the company. In the fine print, the group says that “to avoid federal government intrusion, your donation to RenewAmerica.us is NOT tax deductible.” Registered non-profits, which don’t pay taxes, are required to report publicly their revenue, their expenditures, and the salaries of the top officials.

Voigt parlays this mention of RenewAmerica – as a biographical detail of Keyes associate Mary Lewis – into a broadside against Seper’s “bad journalism,” and adds suggestively, “I am left to wonder whether the rest of his article is equally unreliable.” But since the Keyes groups actually implicated in this article on the Minutemen’s suspicious finances have yet to respond (perhaps preoccupied with drafting Keyes to run for president), and Voigt is unwilling to look into it (“I am not counsel to any of the other organizations mentioned in that article, so I don't know”), Voigt’s editorial raises more questions than it settles.

The Minuteman PAC, founded to provide direct support to anti-immigrant candidates in accord with the principles of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, appears to carry the same symptoms of financial mismanagement as the MCDC itself.

Last week we reported on the internal meltdown at MCDC, where some of the group’s officers and 15 of its state coordinators were fired en masse after requesting a meeting with MCDC President Chris Simcox. The dispute arose out of allegations that Simcox hadn’t raised as much money as he claimed and wasn’t spending it as he had promised, on things like “field equipment” or background checks. Instead, MCDC’s 2005 IRS filing revealed the bulk of the group’s budget went to unspecified “professional services.” In addition, Minuteman dissidents had questions about MCDC’s vaguely-defined relationship with Alan Keyes’ non-profit Declaration Alliance and various consulting businesses associated with Keyes.

A look at the most recent FEC filings of Minuteman PAC, which lists Simcox as its honorary chairman, shows that while the group raised over $300,000 in the first quarter of 2007, and spent more than $270,000, only $10,000 went toward a candidate running for office. As the Washington Times reports, 97 percent of the money the group raised went to “‘operating expenses,’ including advertising, fundraising and telemarketing to promote the Minuteman PAC.”

An Arizona man who mortgaged his house to finance a small fence on someone else’s private land along the U.S.-Mexico border is suing the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps for putting up cheap cattle fencing rather than an “Israeli-style” barrier, and failing to complete even that.

“Jim Campbell is a great American,” declared MCDC President Chris Simcox a year ago, when Campbell gave the group $100,000 for the fence project. Campbell said then, “I can now rest comfortably knowing that I can look the next generation in the eye and say to them: ‘We stepped up and did what we could to preserve the future of your country.’” Now Campbell has changed his tune:

But Mr. Campbell said he has seen no work on the fence that Mr. Simcox promised on the Palominas, Ariz., ranch of John and Jack Ladd since he made the donation in June 2006. He said the 11 miles of fencing that MCDC says it has built consists of a five-strand barbed-wire range fence similar to what is already in place. …

"To date, MCDC has not constructed any 'Israeli-style' border fencing ... in breach of agreement between it and Campbell," the lawsuit said.

For his part, Simcox denies any mismanagement of funds, and blamed the lack of progress on lack of donors: “His $100,000 is sitting out there on the Hodges ranch. We’ve showed good faith. … I’m sorry it has not gone as quickly as we had thought, but you can only erect as much fence as you have the donations for.”

But Campbell’s accusation that Simcox diverted the money to other purposes echoes complaints raised recently by other Minuteman volunteers. MCDC’s financial filings showed revenues far lower than Simcox had claimed, and money wasn’t spent where he claimed it was – instead, most of the group’s budget went to unspecified “personnel services.”

Internal MCDC disagreements came to a head last week, when a group including officers and 14 state coordinators sent a letter to Simcox demanding a meeting. Simcox responded by accusing them of insubordination and firing the lot. “I did not expect Chris to be happy about it, but neither I nor the state leaders anticipated the paranoia driven nightmare we were about to be plunged into,” said the former deputy director of the group.

Although he had never held office before, when Bill Greene decided to run to replace Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Georgia), who died last month, he knew he would have at least two advantages: a ready audience of activists and donors from the mailing list of RightMarch.com, the Internet marketing tool he built, and support from some of the right-wing leaders whose missives he has enthusiastically distributed. And so in February Greene announced his candidacy to his “over one million supporters nationally” as an extension of the grassroots activism he has encouraged in the past:

Now, we have the chance to make YOUR voice -- the voice of grassroots, hard-working patriotic Americans -- heard even LOUDER...

... From the INSIDE of Congress!

Yesterday, I announced my candidacy as a Republican Candidate for Georgia's 10th Congressional District.

And this week, Greene passed along an endorsement from Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, who wrote that electing Greene is “a chance to finally make progress” on “keep[ing] our neighborhoods safe from drug dealers, rapists and potential terrorists.”

·  Bill has been a leader in the fight against illegal immigration as a grassroots activist, delivering millions of messages to Capitol Hill from constituents, demanding NO AMNESTY for illegals;

·  He has personally mustered with us on the U.S.-Mexican border as a volunteer with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, standing watch to report the illegals streaming unhindered across our officially undefended Arizona border;

Most importantly, given Simcox’s many problems with finances,

· Bill has helped us to raise tens of thousands of dollars for MCDC operations and projects, such as the Border Fence Project;

According to Simcox, Greene, who cut his political teeth working for GOP direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie, “has to have the financial firepower to blanket the local radio and television markets with a barrage of ads, as well as the ability to field an army of volunteers led by experienced staffers who know how to get out the vote. Add in the print ads and direct mail efforts to communicate with every likely voter in one of the largest districts in Georgia, and you’ll see why the Bill Greene campaign is facing HUGE expenses.”

“We are holding a political protest,” said Chris Simcox, head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of his group’s vigilante gatherings on the U.S.-Mexico border. Minutes before, he had complained to the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the border patrol was not rushing to the scene when he called them from his stakeout. For Simcox, this was evidence of a crisis on the border, a lack of “operation control” that politicians should address “by all means necessary.” On the other hand, it could be that the border patrol agents have day jobs.

Simcox was the star of an immigration panel at CPAC on Saturday, where he called on activists to “take this battle to city councils, state legislatures,” and Congress, and to sidestep what he called the “lamestream media.” He announced that “We the people in Arizona” are circumventing Congress by introducing two more ballot measures this month: one to “abolish all sanctuary laws” and train every law enforcement officer to enforce federal immigration laws, and a second to require employers to prove their employees are not violating immigration laws. Simcox also criticized the immigration positions of the many GOP presidential candidates to speak at the conference, with the exceptions of Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo: “I’ve met many wonderful conservatives [at CPAC]. Unfortunately, none of them are running for president.”

Simcox was joined by Georgia state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, sponsor of what she called the “strongest piece of illegal immigration legislation in the nation.” Her reasons for such concern about immigration ranged from supposedly “spiraling costs” and “overcrowding” of public schools to “sex predators” to the mythical threat of a “North American Union” being secretly formed by the Bush administration to unite the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as one sovereign entity. She has already introduced a resolution in Georgia on that matter.

Like the other panelists, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) encouraged the audience to look for ways that states could take over federal immigration policymaking, although he did not mention his own current effort: King is suing his home state for offering voter information in multiple languages. Instead, King took to task “powerful business interests” he said were behind the “flood” of immigrants, as well as liberals, who he said support immigration because immigrants “will assimilate into the left-wing liberal enclave” of majority-Hispanic congressional districts. These forces conspire, according to King, to produce the “massive price we are paying in the streets of America.” King, at some length, cited his own fictional statistics about “criminal aliens” involved in rape and murder. In order to account for his wildly inflated numbers, King explained that young men will bring most of “society’s pathologies” from their home countries, which have higher murder rates than the U.S.

But King did see hope in the recent immigration raids at Swift meat-processing facilities: “They were Caucasian-Americans lined up for those jobs.”

Constitution Party reportedly considering Minuteman leaders Jim Gilchrist and Alan Keyes, and “Swift Boat” co-author Corsi, for 2008.

“We are asking everyone who has already donated to the fence, to DOUBLE that donation now during this Christmas Season.” More on the group’s finances.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has been under scrutiny from The Washington Times and others recently for its finances – for example, the largest portion of its 2005 budget went to unspecified “professional services.” Times reporter Jerry Seper has written in the past about the close association of the Minutemen with a variety of consulting groups associated with Alan Keyes, who is also the head of the Declaration Alliance. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps bills itself as “a project of” the Declaration Alliance, and MCDC president Chris Simcox has defended the ties as adding credibility to his group.

Now Seper reports in The Times that the Declaration Alliance and its associated Declaration Foundation are having their own credibility problems:

The Declaration Foundation … was fined $6,500 in August and prohibited by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations from soliciting donations until it becomes "properly registered."  The Aug. 18 "agreement and order," signed by Declaration Foundation Executive Director Mary Parker Lewis, a top Minuteman adviser, acknowledged that the charity made false statements in seeking to solicit donations, failed to properly administer money it had collected, and withheld documents sought as part of an "investigative subpoena."

According to the bureau, the Declaration Foundation failed over a four-year period to submit audited financial statements, gave false information when it said it did not share revenue with other nonprofit or tax-exempt groups, and misstated the truth when it said none of its officers or employees was tied to any vendor providing services or goods.

The bureau said the Declaration Foundation improperly shared revenue with the Declaration Alliance, another tax-exempt charity founded by Mr. Keyes, which also has been active in overseeing the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC).

As more questions are raised about the financial management of the border vigilante group, it seemed telling that yesterday the Minutemen announced the creation of a new project – Minuteman attorneys:

[United States Justice Foundation] and MCDC have set up a joint project called the Minuteman Protection Program (MPP) to provide legal assistance to Minuteman members and insist on the enforcement of state, local, and federal laws relating to the illegal immigration issue.

"If you are an attorney, or if you know an attorney, wishing to help in these issues, please contact, or have them contact, us," the e-mail appeal says.

Houston Chronicle wonders what “personnel services” cost half its 2005 budget; the group is stonewalling media.