5/03/2006

Focus on “Focus: South Dakota”
Group quickly gains prominence in South Dakota abortion debate

BY STEVE SIBSON FOR DAKOTA VOICE
SIBBY ONLINE

On March 6, 2006, South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed HB1215, a bill that bans all abortions in South Dakota except to save the life of the mother. Rounds said, "In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society."

Most were expecting a legal challenge from Planned Parenthood, but on March 15, the Associated Press reported that the first reaction from the pro-abortion crowd was a petition drive lead by a Wisconsin group to put the bill on South Dakota’s November ballot. The out of state group was headed by Noah Beck Hahn-Walter of Waukesha Wisconsin and had filed the text of a petition drive with the South Dakota secretary of state on March 14.

The group immediately came under attack by the leaders of the pro-abortion movement. According to an Associated Press report, Kelda Roys, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin said, "I've been involved in pro-choice advocacy in Wisconsin for years, and I never heard of this person or organization." Elizabeth Larson, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood's Wisconsin chapter said, "We don't know who this guy is, nor does anyone in the progressive community."

In South Dakota the reaction came form a group called Focus South Dakota. Jim Robinson, treasurer of the group, said that his group was going to do the petition drive. Robinson said this about the Wisconsin group, "They're not organized, and we asked them to withdraw the petition because we want this to be a totally South Dakota operation.”

So what is Focus South Dakota and is it “a totally South Dakota operation”? The above mentioned AP report said this, “Focus: South Dakota was formed in 2003 and is a tax-exempt political organization that can weigh in on issues but cannot take sides among candidates.”

On October 5, 2004, Jon Lauck of the “Daschle v. Thune” blog, disclosed details of the group’s three operatives who were close associates of Tom Daschle. Jeff Masten was former Chairman of the Democratic Party in South Dakota, ACLU lobbyist, and a Daschle donor. A second organizer is the aforementioned Jim Robinson, who is a former executive director of the South Dakota Democratic Party, a consultant to Senator Tim Johnson, the DNC, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and the Sierra Club, and a Daschle donor. Another organizer is Jody Severson, a consultant to Daschle who also worked with him in the 1970s on Senator Abourezk's staff.

The group’s 2004 financial activity is available online. The Center for Public Integrity (www.public-i.org) obtained their data from the IRS. Focus South Dakota received $697,250 during the 2003-2004 election cycle. Of that, $77,250 came from South Dakota addresses, whereas the remaining 89% came from out of state addresses. Their claim to be a “totally South Dakota operation” seems to be in question.

Kate Looby, South Dakota director of Planned Parenthood, said this in a March 15 Argus Leader report, "I think this is not something that can or should come from people outside South Dakota." On March 24, when a Focus South Dakota funded group announced their petition drive to put HB 1215 on the November ballot, Looby’s Planned Parenthood was there providing the training.

Now going back to March 15, Joe Kafka of AP issued a report regarding a poll Focus South Dakota had done. Kafka portrayed the poll this way:

“Pollsters hired by Focus: South Dakota contacted 630 South Dakota voters by telephone for random interviews from Thursday through Saturday, and 62 percent said the legislation is too extreme, 33 percent said they support the bill and the rest were undecided.”

What the AP didn’t report was that Jim Robinson, the treasurer of Focus South Dakota is also the president of Robinson and Muenster Associates, the “Pollsters” they hired. That fact would seem relevant to the objectivity of the poll.

But the AP report did include Leslie Unruh’s concern that the poll wasn’t done correctly and that Focus South Dakota received $20,000 from Planned Parenthood and $5,000 from NARAL.

The AP report then quoted the treasurer of Focus South Dakota:

"She's just making that up," Robinson told The Associated Press. "We don't file finance reports with the Federal Election Commission or the state. We're not required to because we're not that kind of an organization."

Perhaps unknown to Robinson was the IRS data available at The Center for Public Integrity web site. That is where the record of the $20,000 from Planned Parenthood and the $5,000 from NARAL can be found. After I posted that information at the Rapid City Journal’s blog, Mount Blogmore, reporter Kevin Woster confronted Robinson with those facts.

Woster spoke to Robinson via a telephone call from England. On March 20, 2006, Woster posted Robinson’s response at Mount Blogmore:

“I actually was mistaken,” he said. “We had received a couple of small donations from those people. They were relatively small given the size of the overall donations we received.”

Upon further analysis of the Focus South Dakota donors, all but $250 of the $77,250 that is tied to South Dakota addresses are from Rapid City. The largest was $50,000 from Black Hills Surgery Center, LLC. Another $5,000 came from Ray Hillenbrand.

The most interesting donors from Rapid City were two that had the same PO Box…$12,000 from Northwestern Engineering and $10,000 from Harney Lumber Company. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that South Dakota state Senator Stan Adelstein owns both. And it was through Northwestern Engineering that Adelstein funded formation of the South Dakota Mainstream Coalition last summer. It is the same Stan Adelstein who is co-chair of the Focus South Dakota funded group who are organizing a petition drive to put the ban on abortion on the November ballot. And it is the same Stan Adelstein who is being honored by Planned Parenthood with the Barry Goldwater award, which “is presented each year to an outstanding Republican legislator who has acted as a leader within the Republican Party to protect reproductive rights.”